Religious people are less intelligent than atheists, study finds

[Peace Patriot]

77. I don't think this is a valid scientific question.

For one thing, how is "intelligence" measured in our technocratic society? Almost all measures of it are highly prejudiced against the artistic, against those whose intelligence is "in their hands" (artisans, farmers, gardeners, fixers of machinery) or their bodies (dancers, athletes), against original scientific thinkers and original thinkers of any kind, and, of course, against the poor as a class (may be very intelligent but poorly educated) and against those with language problems, as well as against rebellious, eccentric, impaired and/or restless people of various kinds.

To me, the most APPARENTLY unintelligent peasant farmer in Peru is way smarter than the assholes who imported ONE VARIETY OF POTATO into Ireland, resulting in the Irish "potato famine," whereas the "dumb peasant" in Peru knew to grow HUNDREDS of varieties of potato, as a hedge against disease--something that our "brilliant" scientific community has only come lately to understand. The Peruvian peasants got their knowledge from their parents, grandparents and ancestors--from maintaining a culture that RESPECTED that knowledge and that revered, and prayed to, and honored Mother Earth. How would those peasants have fared at Oxford?

No, the stupid English or Spanish 1%-ers (I don't know who did it--probably the English) who imported only ONE variety of potato, for the poor Irish to eat when they were pushed off the better farm lands, thought they were so much smarter than those Indians whom they considered to be "barely human"--because their measures of intelligence (and of humanity) were way off--were culturally determined, were based on WRONG assessments of one culture by another culture, and totally wrongful assumptions of superiority.

It's the same now. There are still a lot of people, who know a lot of things, and who are very intelligent, who DON'T FIT into our technocratic society, don't do well above all on standardized tests, and often don't do well in school at all.

So, a) the measure of WHO is more or less intelligent is NOT reliable, and b) a so-called scientific endeavor that, by definition, must presume to know what religion IS, as part of its "study," is, by definition, invalid.

Science CANNOT measure religion, just like it cannot measure poetry. It cannot determine what people mean by "belief" and "non-belief." And it shouldn't be trying to do so.

I have this beef with a lot of "sociology"-type "studies" that attempt to ape scientific procedure. In this case, a TECHNOCRATIC society is putting its prejudiced questions to people about their most mysterious relationship--their relationship to the unseen, to the irrational, poetic aspect of human life--and comparing that to another set of TECHNOCRATIC measurements, those for "intelligence" in a technocratic society!

I'm surprised that none of these so-called scientists questioned those premises. No, I'm not surprised. I've seen it too often.

One more thought: Was Martin Luther King highly intelligent? How would he have fared on their "intelligence" tests? Was Gandhi highly intelligent? He spent many years weaving his own loincloths. He probably would have tested as an idiot at that point. What about Vincent Van Gogh? Or Leonardo da Vinci, for that matter? Da Vinci would have scribbled all over their damned test papers with inventions of warp drive and harnesses for worm holes--and totally flunked on what they consider "intelligence."

All were highly "religious" or, in any case, highly spiritual. They were believers in SOMETHING--in God, in humanity, in the future. Can that be measured? It cannot.

This is a DUMB study, for dumb people to have dumb arguments about.

Then there are the very, very dumb, so-called "intelligent" people in our society--the ones who test well and go to Harvard and end up gainfully destroying our food chain with GMOs and pesticides, or thinking up the next weapons of mass destruction, or the data-mining programs for vast, illegal, unconstitutional domestic spying, or building six nuclear power plants on the most earthquake-prone spot on Planet Earth. Maybe more of them ought to go to church and get schooled in basic ethics and morality (even if they have to wade through the putrid wastes of organized religion to pick up the non-putrid guidelines from brilliant believers like Thomas Merton or Saint Francis of Assissi, or from Buddha or from our Bowdlerized Jesus).

Really, we need to think about what "intelligence' IS.

And we also need to think about what religion is. Recommended: Aldous Huxley's "The Perennial Philosophy." For starters.