Religion and IQ

I found the link on the Amazon Science Forum site

http://www.amazon.com/tag/scie.....tagsDetail

I'm not too sure what to make of it. The variation in religiosity is more or less what I would have expected, although I was a bit surprised at the UK scoring so high. However, the variation of average IQ with country seems a bit odd. I wonder if it actually measuring educational levels, or average literacy?

(sigh) Here we go again.

From a person who consider herself intelligent, it astonishes me that you believe in something that doesn't objectively exist, namely, an "IQ". Do you also believe in the tooth fairy?

I can measure the temperature in my room and so can you and we can both agree that it is seventy degrees. I can cross check with another thermometer or a thousand themometers if necessary and so can you and a thousand other people. We can establish irrefutably the fact of the temperture in my room. And, if you could do the same, if you put that therometer in my mouth-- 98.6 degees F-- another objectively established irrefutable fact. But can the same be said for an "IQ" test?

What is an "IQ" test? Whether it is the Stanford Binet, a SAT, GRE, or any other variation, it all boils down the the same thing. It is an assessment of someone else's mental acuity. Sounds pretty straight forward, until you start asking some foundational questions. Why are they doing the assessing? Who is doing the assessing? Who is being assessed? How are the assessments constructed? And so on. With only a moment of reflection, it should be more than apparent that these tests are utiliterian and sometimes psychological projections of what testor deem should be tested. Thus, in Saudia Arabia, memorization and recitation of the Koran would mark you as intelligent. In Britain, your ability to solve the Pons Asinorum would mark you as intelligent. But both of these kind of questions no where come near to assessing "intelligence"-- an undefined quality, like love and faith. It is undefined as intelligence is a subjective behavorial manifestion, like laughter or grief, not an intrinsic quality like body heat. As filters and gateways into what a particular culture regards as important, these tests are not without their use. However, it is scientific fraud to extend these tests beyond their limited purposes to comparing "intelligences" between races, sexes, religions, to other nations, across time, and to historical figures.

As to your basic question, the answer is that such comparisons are nonsense. Never has the hypnothesis that intelligence is evenly distributed across all people be they backwoods Baptists or Church of England atheists refuted. (The same is true with African hottentots and Manhatten investment bankers-- as a group, their intelligence is identical because their fundamental biology is identical.) Well, how can you explain the SAT score between Catholics and Episcopalians? Could it be that the former doesn't have the cultural advantages-- prep schools, access to tutors, summer camps, legacy parents, etc-- that the latter have? Daring thought!

I really wish people-- especially psychologists-- would put their intelligence to better use instead of dabbling in the pseudo-science and fairy tales of comparative IQs.