Religious stupidity (Is this an oxymoron?)

The silly – albeit flattering – view that atheists are not as stupid as religious people, according to some deeply spurious IQ -based research, has suddenly got a boost from an unexpected quarter.

“God is not just for the stupid, say Christianity’s clever people”, according to the Telegraph.

Who are these clever people?

“The Christian think tank Theos “

Well, that still makes none, by my reckoning.

The post about this daft research on the Register also brought a swathe of Christian commenters who all seemed to know their “IQ” to the exact unfeasibly high last digit. (Thereby suggesting, if nothing else, that a high level of belief in the objective validity and accuracy of IQ scores correlates with a high level of belief in, well, anything.)

Nice comment, from “Carl”

I always thought that the reason that there were less stupid comments on El Reg articles on a Sunday was because IT pros don’t work weekends – now I know it’s because they’re all at church…

8 thoughts on “Religious stupidity (Is this an oxymoron?)

  1. So God is not just for the stupid, ehh? Well, I won’t touch that one.

    In the states, there’s an interesting spread of people politically. Many people equate conservative republicans as Christians, colored red on a map. Conversely, liberal democrats are considered more open-minded thinkers and sometimes (but not always) free thinking secularists, colored blue on a map.

    If you look at this spread on a map of the US, you’ll see the Entire Northeast (think New York, Washington DC, Boston) and West Coast (Think Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle) colored blue. Then there’s a gigantic sea of red painted over the entire middle of the country, much of it farmland.

    It is any surprise that you find the free thinkers located around the urban areas, with the ability to talk to others and receive more culture? The country folk located in the red are much more isolated from civilization and other points of view.

    I won’t say one area of the country is more educated than another, but exposure to new ideas is probably not the same coast to coast.

    I get the impression you guys don’t have as many theists (percentage-size) across the pond. What’s it like?

  2. Ted, I agree with you pretty much 100% there. I cant help but think (based on my admittedly limited contact with various communities around the world) that religion and superstitions are much more prevalent in areas where there is little interaction with other cultures. This makes sense to me as I can see it being hard to sell Religion X as the one true faith when there are people from zillions of other religions going about their daily business with no rain of fire from above.

    I think there is, however, a point where it all turns in on itself. This is normally tinged with a hatred of the “outsiders” who have moved into a community, and at this point there is a rise of religious fervour.

    Still, there is hope and I strongly feel that education is the key. Stupidity may not be the right word, but poorly educated people are certainly more theistic.

  3. David
    Of course (d’oh)
    Cheers. My fault for being too lazy to check and just pulling out the wrong term from half-remembered ancient English lessons.

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