Liberals and Atheists Smarter? Intelligent People Have Values Novel in Human Evolutio

[u2scram]

Liberals and atheists smarter? Intelligent people have values novel in human evolutionary history, study finds

ScienceDaily (Feb. 24, 2010)*— More intelligent people are statistically significantly more likely to exhibit social values and religious and political preferences that are novel to the human species in evolutionary history.* Specifically, liberalism and atheism, and for men (but not women), preference for sexual exclusivity correlate with higher intelligence, a new study finds.

The study, published in the March 2010 issue of the peer-reviewed scientific journal*Social Psychology Quarterly,*advances a new theory to explain why people form particular preferences and values.* The theory suggests that more intelligent people are more likely than less intelligent people to adopt evolutionarily novel preferences and values, but intelligence does not correlate with preferences and values that are old enough to have been shaped by evolution over millions of years."

"Evolutionarily novel" preferences and values are those that humans are not biologically designed to have and our ancestors probably did not possess.* In contrast, those that our ancestors had for millions of years are "evolutionarily familiar."

"General intelligence, the ability to think and reason, endowed our ancestors with advantages in solving evolutionarily novel problems for which they did not have innate solutions," says Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics and Political Science.* "As a result, more intelligent people are more likely to recognize and understand such novel entities and situations than less intelligent people, and some of these entities and situations are preferences, values, and lifestyles."

 

[Madeline]

And then there is the cost of stupidity, willful ignorance and foolishness.....

Vampires, demons, ESP, angels, dowsing, ghosts, astrology, astral projection, crystal energy, witchcraft, the ability of prayer to heal or curses to harm, and psychic powers all fall into the category of things for which there is overwhelming evidence that they are not real. Yet millions of people believe in them. Especially around this time of year.

This month’s “Skeptical Inquirer” has an article on the huge sales of paranormal romances. These are your typical bosom-heaving, bodice-ripping, Fabio-depicting paperbacks, with the added twist that the (usually male) protagonist has some sort of supernatural ability. In the words of one editor reviewing manuscripts, “Anything paranormal goes to the top of the stack.”

You might think it’s only pulp fiction that’s affected. Not so. Rhonda Byrne’s “The Power” has been on the New York Times advice bestseller list for nine weeks now. Like Byrne’s previous work “The Secret,” it is pure and unadulterated New Age foo-foo. She claims, among other things, that whatever you dream can be yours if you make use of the (newly discovered by her) Universal Law of Attraction.

This is, if I may be so bold, horse puckey. More accurately, there is absolutely no credible evidence to support any of the things written in either “The Secret” or “The Power,” and enormous evidence against them. So that’s what I believe. When the evidence says otherwise, I’ll change my mind.

Why does any of this matter? Why not let people believe whatever they want, if it isn’t harming anybody? In fact, there are some very good reasons to speak out against nonsense.

For one, resources spent indulging silliness are resources taken from things that could actually help. Time spent taking a screaming child to an exorcism could have been spent taking her to a hospital. Time spent with “The Power” could have been spent with a therapist.

Failure to think critically also affects politics, and politics affects everybody. Remember Mike Huckabee’s tear-ridden testimony about how certain he was that supernatural forces propelled him to victory in the Iowa presidential caucuses? And yet, when he crashed and burned in the polls shortly afterward, how he was strangely silent?

Am I the only person concerned about such an individual becoming the Commander in Chief of the most powerful military in the world?

Such suspicions are not mere speculation. The Military Religious Freedom Foundation has clients who are soldiers in that same military, soldiers responsible for nuclear weapons. They came to MRFF when they were coerced to participate in prayers asking for supernatural guidance in launching their missiles. Anyone see a problem here?

For every kind of phenomenon mentioned in these past few paragraphs, many people, sometimes millions, will insist that it is absolutely real. Unfortunately, passionate testimony turns out to be a lousy way of discovering how the world actually is. Once we understand our natural human biases and try, however imperfectly, to remove them from how we acquire knowledge, evidence for “weird” things vanishes in a puff of smoke.

Fortunately, plenty of other things reveal themselves. The law of gravity. Vaccines. Antibiotics. Quantum mechanics. Cancer cures. Longer human lifespans. Crops that prevent famine. The common structure and history of all life. Space travel. Hurricane warnings. Tall buildings that stay up. The list goes on and on. Most important of all, an objective, impartial and constantly questioning approach to knowledge reveals a truly wondrous and awe-inspiring universe.

FAGIN: Belief in obvious nonsense is not a harmless indulgence | things, around, fun - Opinion - Colorado Springs Gazette, CO

 

[newpolitics]

Vindication!

 

[Madeline]

Vindication!

No shit...but then, t'aint like we didn't already know this just from our own life experience.

 

[Avatar4321]

How come these so called smart people keep repeating the same mistakes that have destroyed lives again and again throughout history?

I mean how many times do people need to repeat history before it's learned?

Our Republic was formed because the generation of our Founders understood human nature, history, and the dangerous of total government power and realized that the best way to avoid it was to allow people to be responsible for their own lives.

 

[Madeline]

How come these so called smart people keep repeating the same mistakes that have destroyed lives again and again throughout history?

I mean how many times do people need to repeat history before it's learned?

Our Republic was formed because the generation of our Founders understood human nature, history, and the dangerous of total government power and realized that the best way to avoid it was to allow people to be responsible for their own lives.

The Founders clearly intended us to have freedom, Avatar. Why do so many Americans want to criminalize abortion and gay marriage? Why do so many want to interfere in the right to worship as you choose if the person doing the worshipping is Muslim?