Are Liberals and Atheists more intelligent?

I don’t think I’d agree with that conclusion.
A lot of political opinions I’ve seen in forums weren’t exactly Pulitzer material.

They are certainly more intelligent than snails. But you probably didn’t mean that.

Sure, more education is associated with more liberalism. People who get a lot of education tend to have higher IQs. So, yeah. On average, educated people are more intelligent, and to the extent that educated people are more likely to be atheists or liberals, they contribute to the overall high intelligence of people in those groups.

I think you’re concluding the opposite:

I believe the study showed that intelligent folk were more LIKELY to be Liberals and Atheists.

That’s a very different conclusion that Liberals & Atheists are more intelligent =)

All I have to say is that Correlation =/= Causation. Being a liberal atheist myself, I want to agree, but I know of an equally high number of intelligent people who are Christian Libertarians.

Yes, Liberals and Atheists are more intelligent. They’re actually a superior race. They have evolved beyond the confines of mere humanity and soon will evolve further into beings of pure energy, leaving the physical body behind. They’re doomed to become the very Gods they don’t believe in.

Most of my friends are Professional people, doctors, MBA’s lawyers, they believe in God. I believe in God I don’t think I am stupid either. We all have a choice to believe in what we like, but personally I find I connect with someone who is at least spiritual. There seem to be more depth to them. But that is my opinion and experience of people only.

@wundayatta crystallized intelligence i.e. learning does not equal intelligence

From my personal experience the findings seem spot on.

@grumpyfish I ain’t concluding nothing :P

@VohuManah “Correlation =/= Causation” True, but many people seem to forget/overlook that.

Why? Because they can develop an opinion?

When somebody can close the holes inherent in the demoratic process and prove definitively whether or not God exists, I will wholeheartedly give them the credit they deserve.

I’m not an Atheist or a liberal, but I admire the person who can arrive at a well-developed, independent decision despite overwhelming societal pressures. Especially if they can do it minus the angry or defiant attitude often noted in a 7th grader.

Great to see you, Jerv!

I do not think political leanings vary on intelligence. It all depends on your life’s experiences, and the things you want.
I think the best we can say is that the people who tend to have “liberal thinking” also tend to do well in academics.

IQ is not a measurement of all of your intelligence. It is a measurement of certain areas of it.

I’ll do the polite thing and say that I decline to state my opinion on atheism and intelligence.

Doubt it…

Personally, I believe intelligence is based on the individual… not on their belief or political standing.

In my life I have met some incredibly ignorant and narrow-minded Atheists and Liberals. I honestly would not say that they are more intelligent than the other guys even though they do have the “we are smarter than you” kind of disposition to them that many have.

So no, sorry.

Oh yay. Another one of those soft science fluff studies.

@ChaosCross Some of the stupidest people I met were fellow classmates in Nuke School, so I think it safe to say that intelligence and stupidity are not the opposites that many people think they are. As for ignorance, well, that is independent and forms a third axis.

I think any individual who defines their world with ideological labels is lacking in imagination. A definite sign of lower intelligence.

Okay, at the risk of being offensive and elitist, I think it’s kind of absurd to refute the findings of a peer-reviewed scientific study with one’s personal anecdotes and experiences.

Certainly there are liberals/atheists who are stupid and conservatives/believers who are intelligent. What this study is showing is that as a group, on average liberals and atheists have intelligence test scores that are statistically significantly higher than conservatives and believers as a group, on average.

Meaningful questions to ask would be: how did the scientists who designed this experiment define “liberal” and “atheist”? How did they measure intelligence? Are the operationalized definitions valid? Are the tests reliable? Are their definitions generalizable to what we colloquially understand as “liberal,” “atheist,” and “intelligent”? Can their findings be replicated? Is this in line with what previous, similar studies have found in the past?

But saying “I know a smart Republican!!!” in no way comes to bear on the meaningfulness or validity of this study.

First, correlation never is equal to causation, even in the best planned studies, and this kind of pop study isn’t usually very well planned. Second, intelligence, like most other human traits is distributed along a normal curve (Bell Curve), and I can see no reason why certain religious or political beliefs would have a different distribution. Third, anecdotally speaking, does anyone think Wm F. Buckley was a dope? ( realize @nikipedia objects to this reasoning, but then I object to assuming that this was a well-designed and peer-reviewed experiment.)

@dpworkin: Have you read the study? (I have.) What are your objections to its design?

@nikipedia Do you mind saving me the trouble and giving me a brief exegesis of the design (not the data)?

G’day Jerv,

Thank you for your question and good to catch up with you again.

I think that it is a classic example of a junk survey. I quote from the CNN report

“The study takes the American view of liberal vs. conservative. It defines “liberal” in terms of concern for genetically nonrelated people and support for private resources that help those people. It does not look at other factors that play into American political beliefs, such as abortion, gun control and gay rights.”

Phrased that way, everyone in a community group or political organisation is a liberal as most people other than crooks are motivated by a general wish to help the community as they see it.

Regards

It is more an example of very poor social science than anything else

@nikipedia Dealing with averages requires more math skills than many people (regardless of political/religious affiliation) lack.

@keithold I think you underestimate the number of people who would not piss on another human if they were on fire. There truly are many people out there who would not lift a finger to help anybody else out if it meant even the slightest cost to them. People who wish to do away with government aid to the poor/disadvantaged/elderly just so that they can pay less in taxes.

Having an opinion about something or personal experiences about something does not enable you to contradict a scientific study. I’m suspicious of the findings of this study myself, but you have to seek out flaws in the study or the source—or a conflicting study. You can’t just “disagree” with a study.

Thoughts on this? Forgetting the study, (not refuting it) in personal experience I have found liberals and atheists to be more erudite, with no reason to suspect that they are more intelligent.

@nikipedia OK, I haven’t read the study, but I have read the abstract, and my reaction is that they found a weak unexplained correlation which proves absolutely nothing. I prefer to think that liberals and atheists are more intelligent, but I see nothing here that allows me to claim that it is so, scientifically.

The study says: The reasoning is that sexual exclusivity in men, liberalism and atheism all go against what would be expected given humans’ evolutionary past. In other words, none of these traits would have benefited our early human ancestors, but higher intelligence may be associated with them.

Which means smarter people are more likely to break established norms.
It does not mean that liberalism, atheism, or sexual exclusivity are smarter choices.

Kanazawa’s correlational study certainly raises some interesting questions.

It is clear that people’s assumptions about IQ and intelligence testing are based on some faulty “common knowledge”. This leads some people to make incorrect conclusions.

I urge those who addressed these issues to read more on this subject. This is not the place for a detailed lecture on psychology.

I believe people whose minds are open to considering and evaluating ideas different from those with which they were raised are generally more intelligent.

Conservatives, especially those with strong religious views, tend to be strongly resistant to considering novel solutions to problems.

Those who frequently find novel solutions or strategies to solving problems score significantly higher on measures of intelligence.

Draw your own conclusions of course but keep your mind open to new information and ideas!

I would assume the study is working with mean averages, which many times does not tell the whole story. Honestly, I wish mode and median were always stated also.

It would not surprise me if overall atheists are more intelligent, but if I remember correctly the study it was around 10 points different which is not that much really. I know many people who are religious theists who are very smart. I don;t know any atheists who are stupid though, and I do know a lot of theists who are stupid, whatever that means, conclude what you will.

Can’t speak for the Liberals but Atheists are by far the most intelligent human minds on the planet. Brilliant thinkers and handsome too!

Well, lets look at it this way. How many wars and hate crimes have been committed based on religion? How many have died because their legal guardians believed god could save them without antibiotics?

I don’t necessarily believe liberals and atheists are more intelligent, it’s just that they tend to be more open minded towards things and find the answer, instead of just attributing confusion to the work of god. I’m a bit biased though ;)

@Parrappa was hitler liberal or conservative?, How bout roe versus wade. Pol pot, Mao.

I love it. A gram of data, and a mountain of conclusions.

I have decided to become muslim. I can’t take it anymore.

@DrMC I have decided to become muslim. I can’t take it anymore.

According to yesterday’s headlines some Muslim Clerics are trying to force a man to marry a goat.

(Exactly what species do those seventy virgins belong to?)

@DarkScribe I think a goat would be good, you can have it after me.

@DrMC I think a goat would be good, you can have it after me.

Er, uh, no thanks, um, I try to remain species committed. (I am going to go and throw up now…)

@DarkScribe ah, a racist, I mean speciest

Not really. I go to a church packed with engineers and programmers and doctors oh my. I myself hold a BA-cum-laude and my father has an MBA.
I suspect sampling bias on the part of the CNN poll.

Honestly, yes. From what I have seen, atheists and liberals tend to hold better, more educated conversations and seem to have a higher degree of intelligence, however you define it. But that’s just my opinion.

@dpworkin: Only for you would I VPN into the journals on a Saturday night.

Brief synposis: The author combed through two existing data sets. The first used the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a survey that interviewed 15,197 adolescents twice during adolescence and again during adulthood. The survey collected data about, among other things, intelligence, religiosity, political ideology, and attitudes toward sexual exclusivity.

The author then ran a statistical test to see if mean IQs differed between the political and religious groups that people had identified themselves with (e.g., Very Conservative vs. Conservative vs. Middle of the road vs. Liberal vs. Very Liberal). For both political ideology and religiosity, the difference in IQs between groups was statistically significant at the level of p < .00001!

How you can call that a “weak correlation” is beyond me, since it is (1) not a correlation and (2) extremely statistically significant!

Now, if you are a good scientist, you are probably sitting here thinking, “But nikipedia! You are talking about adolescents! Does this really generalize to the rest of the population?!” Fortunately, your gracious author also asked this question. So he performed a similar study using a different data set, the General Social Surveys administered by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.

Do you want to guess what he found? I bet you can.

Let me know if you want a copy of the pdf. I have it saved now.

How much difference was reported? By percentage? By cohorts? By IQ? Which instruments? (I mean, was he comparing a Wechsler to a Stanford-Binet?) Self-selecting categories? You like that? OK, I have no terribly strong opinion. If the data were any good, I’m sure he knows how to use SPSS, but I am still not sure it means too much. Maybe conservatives score higher on different, unreported scales.

The funny thing is that if you’d suggested that people of some ethnicities are more intelligent than people of other ethnicities, the world would flay you alive. Poor Crick…

@dpworkin: I really think you should just read the paper. In both cases IQ was estimated by a verbal intelligence task (so neither Weschler nor S-B), which certainly is a questionable method, but the author goes to great pains to validate the tasks statistically.

Why do you ask how much difference was reported? I am not sure this is really meaningful, since the purpose of a statistical analysis is to compare variance within groups to variance between. Whether one group is higher overall is, in many respects, irrelevant.

But since you asked, on average, “very liberals” have 11.6 points on “very conservatives” (per study 1).

The first study effectively was a cohort study; the second controls for age but does not segregate by cohort.

Yes, the categories were self-selected, and yes, I like that. What are you implying? That it’s not that conservatives have lower IQs than liberals… it’s just that people who call themselves conservatives have lower IQs than liberals?

@Nullo: You may enjoy The Bell Curve, Herrnstein & Murray.

The Bell Curve has been rather widely discredited. I’d love you to shoot me a copy of the PDF. Shall I PM you my email address?

Oh, I meant very literally that @Nullo may enjoy The Bell Curve, not that I actually think it’s any good.

By all means, send me your address and I’ll ship it over.

@Dr_Lawrence One measure of intelligence that I have heard quite a bit is the ability to absorb and retain new information, to assimilate it with what you already know… basically to learn.

It could be argued that the average theist and/or Conservative is inflexible enough in their thinking to be considered less intelligent by those standards. After all, why use your brain when all of the answers are written in scripture or poured into your head by your party leadership?

Generalizations aside, as for me, well, I’m somewhat of an outlier.

Politically—I’m a Libertarian (fiscally conservative: free trade, low taxes, limited redistribution, etc.—socially liberal: pro choice, gay marriage, free speech, drug legalization, etc.)

Religiously—I believe in God, but no one who knows me would dare call me a religious fanatic, lol.

Intelligence—Well, I’m one of those people who’ve been told that I’m intelligent but lack common sense, i.e. both intelligent and “stupid” at the same time :-p

@nikipedia Are you saying the total study had only 197 subjects? Or, did I misunderstand? That is not a very big sampling of people.

Were you able to see the questionaire that was used? I would be curious to see it. In college I participated in a study. About 10 of us at a time showed up and took a questionaire asking questions about religious beliefs, study habits, performance in school, and happiness if I remember correctly. During the exam I asked what we should do if none of the multiple choice answers fit what I would answer. He said to just pick the one that best fit, not to skip a question.

When I stood up to give my paper to the person overseeing the group, he was busy with something so I waited a minute; by the time he was free for me to tell him something another student, who was in my group, was waiting with me. I handed him the paper I had filled out, one of those number two pencil bubble things, and said, “I really don’t know if my answers will be helpful or valid, it was very difficult for me to answer the questions, many times there was no answer that fit me. It seemed to me it was written by and for Christians, and I am Jewish and not religious. The girl next to me said, “I am Jewish also and I had the same problem.” Seems she had been waiting to tell him the same thing. He said it shouldn’t matter what religion we are because they are only trying to draw conclusions measuring if people who have a strong belief structure do better academically and some otehr measures. I still hold that the questions they asked do not give the correct conclusions.

I know I was not represented correctly on the bubble sheet, I think the majority of Jews are similar to me in my beliefs, and we know statistically Jews do well in education, a significant percentage of Jews are Atheists, but I think that questionaire would conclude a different story.

I am not quarreling with your conclusions, or even the study we are talking about, because maybe the questions were done very well. Just making a point about studies. I also lean towards believing atheists probably do score a little higher on IQ as a whole, but I figure it is probably insignificant.

I also, have no idea what types of percentages of people from lower socio-economic situations are atheists compared to higher income? That would be interesting to me. Economics has some bearing on IQ I would think. I do not mean that people with low IQ’s are more likely to be lower class, I mean if you grow up and live in the lower classes you might have less exposure to education and other things that can give opportunity for natural IQ to reach its potential.

@JLeslie: The study had 15,197 participants, which is an extraordinarily large sample size, especially for human subjects research.

That said, 197 is far more than enough to find an effect of large to moderate size. A small effect runs the risk of going undetected, but 197 is getting close enough to pick up on it. (You can do a statistical test called a power analysis to determine how many participants you need to include to avoid failing to detect an effect that exists.)

Statistical tests take into the account the size of your population. If you get a significant p value, which this study did, then that means you have found a significant difference regardless of the sample size.

And the article does quote the exact questions it used. From Study 1:

In terms of politics, do you consider yourself conservative, liberal, or middle-of-the-road?

Participants could answer very conservative, conservative, middle-of the road, liberal, or very liberal.

I hope that gives you an idea… I can show you the rest of the questions if you’re interested but they’re all like that. Straightforward self-identification questions.

The article mentions that it “controls for” earnings in dollars but does not go into a discussion of how that factor accounted for any variance in the groups.

I can send you a copy of the article too if you’re interested.

Crap, I did read it too fast. At a glance I though the 15 was separate number, the 197 after the comma seemed a separate number. Thank you for clarifying. $15K is a good number. I appreciate you taking the time to respond.

If it is no trouble you can send me the study, so I don’t bother you with more questions. But, don’t feel that you have to. You have my email right?

Liberals more intelligent, impossible:

It doesn’t take a genius to know you can’t spend your way out of debt.

@PacificRimjob You need to read Keynes, and some history of the Great Depression, lest people begin to use you as an example of the proposition that conservatives aren’t quite so bright.

@PacificRimjob “Tax and spend” works better than “Spend and bill your grandkids” though. And if you are thinking about ranting about fiscal responsibility, save your breath. We haven’t had that in DC regardless of which party was in power since…. well, not in my lifetime at least!

@dpworkin: check this out

@jerv I think Clinton came close, although he made some mistakes with the economy also. Still his philosophy of pay as you go, and cutting government spending is noteworthy. He also understood saving for a rainy day. He did not want to give back the surplus tax money, which Conservative Republicans would take issue with, and other presidents and business men might see a surplus and spend it.

@PacificRimjob I am not happy with all of the spending also, but @jerv makes a very good point. Republicans seem actually fine to pass along tax debt to future generations, they are not willing to raise taxes temporarily, not even when Bush was in, before Obama ever got there. For a while there they seemed unconcerned with spending and borrowing, that does not help the debt. Giving money and tax breaks back to people (spending) to energize the market also not a great idea in my mind. The Republicans who supported the war should have been happy to raise taxes to keep our country from being more dependent on other nations for money. Paying for, and being able to afford what someone or a government buys is what I call common sense and good business. Just ask Dave Ramsay.

I just read that article…I shared it on my FB wall but after reading through it ..well it almost seems too good to be true…like candy to me…as much as I want to harp on the religious crazies and believe me I do a lot of that…I think there are just as many intelligent people who live their lives with/for some sort of God…and I think there are plenty godless dumb-asses…if atheists were the better evolutionary alternative, then why didn’t religion die out?...I have ideas going against the norm but they make it more difficult and not less to reproduce…just ‘cause it’s hard to find anyone that shares my ideas…okay, @nikipedia all I just said is anecdotal…and I appreciate you and @dpworkin both looking into the study…

@Simone_De_Beauvoir Yeah, I am surrounded by religious right wing Republicans who run companies, and have advanced degrees here in the south. It seems illogical to some of us, but it makes perfect sense to them, and so it is. You might have heard me tell the story that an American I met who spent many many years working and living in Europe, came back to the states a few years ago, to here in Memphis. He is CXO level (can’t remember if it was CFO or CMO or COO, and he said it was a culture shock for he and his wife that other senior executives were extreley relgious, believing everything their church told them, seemingly not analyzing or thinking, but very analytical in their jobs. IQ isn’t everything.

I did see this one guy interviewed on tv who wrote a book on a similar topic. I wish I could remember the name of it. He talked to a lot of people, and I think he did his own type of study, and he concluded that liberals are more likely to be less religious, and were much more likely to know about and understand other people’s religions, and to be knowledgable politically about how the other side views things. They seemed interested in the discussion, was what he said, more open, and seeking to understand. I have to try to find that book. But, it did not seem to necessarily have been done in a scientific way. Anyway, it does not necessarily signify IQ levels in any way.

@JLeslie I remember reading somewhere it’s not about religion, it’s about how one views the world – if you can comprehend complexity (atheist or not), your IQ will be higher

@Simone_De_Beauvoir Interesting. Huh, Jeb Bush just commented on how he thinks Sarah Palin doesn’t understand how complexity of the world we live in. Something like that. I think of people who have high IQ’s as having their whole brains light up when a topic comes up. They are pulling files from all over the place in their grey matter, making sense of information, connecting it to old information, seeing how it relates to what has already been learned and coming up with hypothesis and possible conclusions. I think since religion seems so non-thinking in some ways, just follow what you are told, it is hard for us to put the two together maybe? It feels to some atheists I think that you would have to shut your brain off to follow a religion lock step without question if you had a high IQ. What do you think? But, I think probably non religious atheists just don’t fully understand how people with high IQ’s, who are very religious, really think about the whole thing. Well, I can only speak for myself.

@JLeslie I think that some people don’t make their religion or god to be everything they’re about – in that they feel a relationship to a god and that’s that…they don’t have to have it be a contradiction to all the many topics they can learn about.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir Yes, I agree. Believing in God is not the same as being a religious fundamentalist.

@nikipedia Why, exactly, would I enjoy The Bell Curve? I do not always invest my time lightly, especially when it comes to statistics.

I’ll take conservative common sense over liberal ‘intelligence’ anyday.

@JLeslie Also remember that we are talking averages here. That means that it is entirely possible for an individual to be both religious and intelligent at the same time.

However, there is a grain of truth to what you are saying in that the more intelligent devout people I know tend to be a little looser in their faith than those that follow in lock-step without question.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir And for a long time, clergy were about the only literate people around, at least in Western Europe. Of course, serfs and peasants led fairly simple lives and didn’t need to deal with much complexity.

@PacificRimjob I think that many people here would reverse that. Personally, I would just strip the partisan adjectives out since I think a little wisdom beats a lot of book smarts any day. Sadly, we have too many people on both sides of the aisle with so little common sense that you’;d thik that they didn’t have any intelligence at all.

The top scientists are really smart people and I saw that more than 90% of them are atheists.
So I guess that the top smart people tend to be atheist but this is not necessary a rule
I think you’d better read this
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1968042,00.html

@Christian95 They’re also the ones that get the most exposure to the decidedly non-Christian worlds of academia and the scientific community, and are under considerable pressure to conform. Nobody ever seems to consider that.

@Nullo I beg to differ. I know of few people who changed their religious beliefs in order to conform. I also know many religious people who have the decency to keep their religion to themselves and not impose their beliefs on others, in which case that speaks more about how intelligence and manners are related than about intelligence and religion.
Or maybe it’s because academia and science get a closer look at the true nature of the Universe, causing many intelligent people just put two and two together and decide that religion is just self-delusion (whether it actually is or not is besides the point and beyond the scope).

90% of the top scientists are atheists, but that does not mean that many many very intelligent people aren’t theists. It’s like if you have the breast cancer gene you have almost a 90% chance of developing breast cancer, but less than 10% of the women with breast cancer have the gene. It also does not mean that science attracts atheists, I agree with @jerv that scientists probably see the worls as less magical, although still awe inspiring, but more of a puzzle that has to be figured out. So, during the course of scientific study it is likely you would question God’s existence. For many people God gives us answers when we don’t know the answer, scientists believe there is an answer and we just have not figured it out yet, and they are fine accepting that we simply don’t know yet.

But, there are Lawyers, and CEO’s, and people who stay home to raise their children, and people from all walks of life that have high IQ’s.

@jerv You are free to disagree with me, of course.
I suppose that what didn’t make it into my comment is that academia, being as hostile to religion as it is, greatly reduces the chances of an academic converting along the way.
It’s kind of off-topic, but since you brought it up: is it bad manners to pass on the captain’s order to abandon ship? How rude is it to interrupt the boss’s meeting to tell them that the building is on fire? Because proselytizing is much the same in concept.
It’s funny how politeness is ridiculed by some when you’re talking about curse words, but suddenly becomes a big deal when it comes to evangelism.

@Nullo But, do you really think in the US and Europe, where a lot of the top scientists in the world are, even if they were born in other countries, are not aware of God and Christianity? It is not like being a missionary in remote areas where they have not been exposed much to the faith. Christians are everywhere, the majority of our population is Christian, and our leaders are Christian and say “God bless the United States of America,” at the end of speeches. We have God on our money. Most businesses are closed for Easter and Christmas.

It does sound like a very high number count, and of course it adheres to the hillbilly stereotype for conservatives.

It is a single study, and If I prescribed meds based on a single study a jury of my “peers” would have no sympathy. Many potential weaknesses have been mentioned – the greatest IMHO is that of correlation versus causation.

As you can see – living in large cities induces out of wedlock pregnancies, because of pollution.

How about inteligent children of fundamentalist who find a better fit with atheist, or are encouraged and rewarded by the school system. I should know, I’m raising one of them, His IQ is 140, and oddly so is mine. He is presently an atheist, and I used to be.

I think these studies are insufficient in current form, and will be worked on. But certainly chalk up one for the anti-Christian’s, and the media gloating over it.

From your favorite Blow hard

If you ever think anti-christianity is not about racism – then you just got lumped with the dumb group.

Again, the statistics being discussed here were not correlations. The statistic reported in the paper was an F-statistic suggesting that the author performed (as I would have) an ANOVA.

@nikipedia um, so you agree that pollution causes pregnancy out of wedlock?

Uh-oh. @DrMC is not reading @nikipedia‘s posts carefully enough. I looked at the study. It’s not correlative.

I’m so torn between my love of being right and my hatred for trying to talk reason into the unreasonable.

@DrMC, I’ll explain this for the third time and that’s it.

This study does not include a correlation between liberalism or atheism and intelligence.

Okay, okay, four times.

This study does not include a correlation between liberalism or atheism and intelligence!

If you read the actual paper (which, again, I have done) it does not produce an R statistic, which is used to show the strength of the relationship between two covarying factors, also known as a “correlation.”

The study instead calculates the differences between groups with an F statistic, indicating that the statistical test performed was an analysis of variance (ANOVA).

So repeating the adage that “correlation does not imply causation” is not relevant to the topic at hand.

Hey @niki, I tried.

@Nullo I think it would be more accurate to say that there are a lot of Agnostics in academia/science, people who still believe in a higher power but doubt Man’s ability to comprehend it’s true nature and thus eschew religion, than there are actual Atheists who refute the existence of a higher power. I also think that any logical-minded follower of the scientific method would have to be delusional to be an outright Atheist since you can’t prove a negative, but that is my opinion.
As for your point about manners, proselytizing is rude in that it is basically telling somebody that everything they believe is wrong, and that is ruder than just calling them an asshole. It’s one thing to question someone’s intelligence but it’s an entirely different thing when you belittle the very center of their being.
Many have tried converting me in the past. Most were decent. well-meaning people who attempted to save my soul but acknowledged that I have free will and thus can choose my own path. Those people usually get something along the lines of, “Well, I’m not convinced but if you’re right then you deserve a spot in Heaven for trying.”
However, there have also been more than a few who told me I was going to Hell because I voted for Obama or some other relatively minor thing. You have to admit that there are a fair number of overzealous Christians out there. Have you ever picketed someplace for selling Halloween candy because Halloween is a Satanic holiday? Do you believe that playing Dungeons and Dragons leads to human sacrifice? If not then you are considerably more rational than some of the people I have personally dealt with.
And I admit that I feel a bit of pity for the good Christians out there that wind up stigmatized by the actions of those types of people, just as I feel bad for the 99+% of Muslims getting a bad rep because of a few fanatics and bombers.
But to say that academia is hostile to religion is a bit of a stretch. More to the point, it’s the pot calling the mirror black, since there are scientists who have tried to back up religious claims yet religion seems VERY anti-science. Does the name Galileo ring a bell? And how many centuries was he dead before the Church apologized?
Just try and look at things objectively. Like the current partisanship in DC, you will quickly see that neither side is clean here, and it’s human nature that makes that so.

@nikipedia @dpworkin Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between correlation and coincidence. It’s even harder when you use the colloquial definitions of those words as opposed to the technical ones.

@jerv
Proselytizing doesn’t assume that everything that they believe is wrong, though. Even narrowing the scope to differences in faiths, many share some concepts. Eternity. Higher powers. Et cetera. Anyway, at some point you won’t be able to afford hurting someone’s feelings.
Being a Christian that waded his way through the university system, I can attest to the hostility of academia. I learned to approach the issue obliquely, since anything more direct would be met with withering condescension.
Yes, I am familiar with Galileo. I am also aware that, like many others (including the Lollards, the Waldenzians and William Tyndall, Translator) he ran afoul of a Pope (picture John Paul II picketing a candy store around Halloween and see if you don’t chuckle) and not actual Biblical doctrine. I am aware that Christians don’t have an especially pretty history; we are humans, after all, and this only partially illustrates the dangers of elevating any human to the role of “vicar of Christ.”
On a more…academic note, the only people who consider the Church to have a mortal figurehead are the Catholics and, AFAIK, the Church of England. While it is good that the perpetrating organization apologized, the culpability lies with it and not with the Church as governed by Christ.

@JLeslie There are certain fundamental differences between being aware of Christianity or going through the motions, and actually being a Christian. We have a lot of people sitting in their driveways thinking that this way they can be cars, and we have a lot of others (CNN among them, it seems) who scoff at and ridicule anyone who even pretends to be a Christian.

@Nullo “Proselytizing doesn’t assume that everything that they believe is wrong, though.”
That depends on who is doing the talking. True, it isn’t automatic, but it happens often enough that it can’t be disregarded either. And after about the 237th time I was told I was going to burn, I started getting a little dismissive of all proselytizers since I got sick of sorting out the wheat from the chaff. I’m only human ;)

As for your comment to @JLeslie, I have wondered if we truly are a predominantly Christian nation as many claim. It seems to me that many of those who self-identify as Christian are really not religious at all, only know of Christianity, and are afraid to be accused of being an Atheist. Many studies claim ~80% of Americans are Christians, but I just don’t see it.

There has been a very recent discussion here
http://www.fluther.com/disc/71708/are-liberals-smarter-than-conservatives/ with a reference to an article here http://www.american.com/archive/2009/october/are-liberals-smarter-than-conservatives

It’s my opinion that on average atheists are better educated than believers and more open to debate, but there are many exceptions.

IQ is not the only form of intelligence and I’m under the impression that aggressive atheists on average do have a somewhat lower EQ than non-fundamentalist believers.

@Nullo I agree. But, I thought your comment before was that scientists, for instance don’t even allow conversation about christianity to be heard. Your analogy It’s kind of off-topic, but since you brought it up: is it bad manners to pass on the captain’s order to abandon ship? How rude is it to interrupt the boss’s meeting to tell them that the building is on fire? Because proselytizing is much the same in concept meant to me that scientist are willing to go down with the ship so to speak, than be interrupted and listen to the word of Christ. Or, something like that. Did I misunderstand? My point was the scientists already know about the flood on the ship and the fire in the building, and maybe they have decided that it is not a flood, that is normal water coming in, don’t panick, and that it is not a dangerous fire, it is actually a controlled fire in the furnace to keep us warm.

Huh, that is interesting. I personally would not include the Catholics in with the Christians when counting religions in America, although I firmly feel they are Christians. As a group, and they are a large group, I feel they act and vote very differently though. The only numbers I have in my head is that Jews make up barely over 2% of the US population, and I think Christians (again I assume it includes Catholics) is about 85%, but I have no idea how accurate the Christian number is. For that matter are “they” including Muslims and Jehovas in the Christian number? I’ll try to see what the internet says.

@JLeslie I’d said that it was kind of off-topic. :) That was a response to @jerv‘s ”…religious people who have the decency to keep their religion to themselves and not impose their beliefs on others, in which case that speaks more about how intelligence and manners are related than about intelligence and religion…” in which he infers that proselytizing is rude. It took off from there. The quality of my writing deteriorates as the night wears on, and it was pretty late when I wrote it, so that might be your trouble.

@jerv There are a lot of people who say that they’re Christians because their parents were or they attended Sunday School when they were little. And there are a lot of so-called “sleeping Christians”. These, too, are valid targets for the Evangelical-class Christians.

If liberals were truly more intelligent they would follow the model of conservatism.

As it far more closely emulates natural selection.

What horseshit.

Horseshit!!

I’m PWNED!!!

So my idea that conservatism more closely resembles the concept of ‘the survival of the fittest’ proves i’m out of my mind.

Click click Bang!

First of all, the concept of the “survival of the fittest” is a misunderstanding of Darwin, and has had no currency for at least 50 years. Second of all, humans are altruistic all the time, and kinship altruism is an adaptive evolutionary mechanism. Third of all, what you said doesn’t really have a meaning, fourth of all, it’s a waste of time to discuss things with you, because you clearly aren’t bright enough to understand the issues, nor have you any original ideas.

How altruistic of you…

If that is your idea of natural selection then you’ve never seen anything natural in your life. In fact, I doubt you are even a being made of flesh and blood.

I am well aware of the “model of Conservatism” of which you speak, and probably more aware of it than many people who call themselves “Conservatives”. It’s not just an excuse to denigrate others nor is it a heartless doctrine as many seem to think.

However, what passes for “Conservatism” these days is unnatural, unless you feel that greed, corruption, selfishness, hypocrisy, and egomania are the pinnacle of Nature. Personally, as cynical as I am, even I think humans are capable of more, and any true Conservative would agree with me and @dpworkin on this.

Hypocrisy?

You mean like people claiming to be pro choice then insisting that my choice to own a firearm should be taken away?

Or the current President promising the most transparent administration ever then all but refusing to face the press except on his terms?

It’s a clever tactic to bolster your criticism of me by suggesting that in addition to not being enlightened enough to be a decent liberal I’m not even evolved enough to be proper conservative.

Nice try, points for effort.

Who wants to take your firearm away? Not Obama, and not any politician I’d ever vote for. I am a very strong supporter of the 2nd Amendment and I oppose all restrictions on it, including the ones that are supposed to regulate assault weapons.

Thats swell.

My reply was more directed @jerv

I just find it hypocritical of the pro choice set to not understand that freedom of choice encompasses far more than just the abortion issue.

Oh, you know what the whole “set” thinks. Gee you know a ton.

I didn’t quite say that, did I?

Don’t be hatin’

@PacificRimjob why are you picking on pro-choice, I don’t even think I see the relationship? Why do people who don’t want to be told they have to wait a few days to buy a gun, want to tell a woman she cannot have control over her body? It’s apples and oranges. I know pro-lifers who want to make it against the law for doctors to prescribe, and pharmacists to sell the “abortion pill,” but it is the patient who takes the pill? It is the same as saying gunsellers are responsible for when a man goes out and uses that gun to kill someone. That analogy makes more sense to me. But then I am a little partial. And, I am in favor of second amendment rights like @dpworkin.

As am I. Granted, I am in favor of background checks to keep firearms out of the hands of those with a history of violent crime and certain forms of mental illness, but I would also like for every law-abiding adult of sound mind to be able to purchase a Specter M4 without anybody complaining about the 50-round clip. If I had the $$$ and the lack of laws then I would have some pretty interesting things in my arsenal; the type of goodies that would make Ted Nugent have a screaming orgasm just thinking about. Suffice it to say, I would have a hard time voting for any candidate who wanted to take the guns away… but read on.

I understand freedom of choice beyond abortion. That is part of the reason why I support gay marriage, and also why I am generally against most of the Conservative candidates I’ve seen in my lifetime. See, many of them are for all forms of control except for gun control and regulation of corporations. They want to take my music away because the lyrics are obscene. They want to stifle science and restrain doctors. They want to dictate which forms of religion are and are not acceptable.

So, if I had to give up guns in order to keep all of those other freedoms then I would grumble but I would rather be a disarmed free man than a gun-toting slave. I would rather keep all of my freedoms, but I would give that one up to keep all the rest, which is why I usually vote Democrat.

A friend of a friend is a PHd, multiple publlished author, professor and devestatingly intelligent.

Her husband is also a PHd, multiple published author, even brighter than her, an NYU professor and lawyer.

We meet for dinner and I’m always impressed.

However they fall hook. line, and sinker for the angry, MSNBC, illogical, unsustainable, trying to shove a square peg in a round hole, far left madness.

What gives?

Intelligence and sanity are unrelated. I’ve known people with IQs of 150–190 that were clinically delusional, demented, or otherwise “not quite right”.

That said, I feel that MSNBC has about as much truth to it as Fox News. I don’t take either of them seriously. I prefer to watch The Daily Show since at least I know their agenda; to make people laugh.

Also, many would argue that the Far Right is illogical and unsustainable; a viewpoint I agree with. Extremists are illogical almost by definition, regardless of which side they are on!

Keith Olbermann of MSNBC routinely supports his opinions with evidence. His critique of the right frequently presents complete statements by individuals that contradict other complete statements by the same individual that differ only in the audience to whom they were addressing.

You may not like his opinions because they conflict with right wing doctrine but his level of journalistic integrity exceeds that of most journalists and pseudo-journalists such as O’Reilly, Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity and other Conservative broadcasters.

@Dr_Lawrence I thought it was funny when Glen Beck was ranting against Progressivism and Socialism. Have you seen Jon Stewart calling Glen Beck a Communist?

Maybe I am just a sick person, but I love seeing people hoisted by their own petard :)

I don’t watch Obermann or Maddow, but Morning Joe on MSNBC is the most balanced morning political show I know. They talk to guests for a long time, they are not fond of talking points, truly want to discuss issues, Republicans agree with dems and vice a versa, no one is towing a party line, all seem to be thinking with their own brains, but of course they lean in their own directions like all of us. Morning Joe is the closest you can get to fluther politics on TV. Hell, I love Pat Buchanan on that show.