Religious people aren't as smart as Atheists

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Originally Posted by devonin

I've heard of IQs down below 60, and I've heard of IQs up into the 190s.

140 is generally the minimum for entry in MENSA, so if you consider all MENSA members to be geniuses, then I guess that isn't a terrible bar to set, but if I were going to assign "Genius" to any subset of the population, it would have to be smaller than the top 1.0% and since MENSA ~= 140 ~= top 2%, I have to set my bar higher than that.

140 is extremely high...which is probably why he took an invalid internet IQ test >__>. He took two tests in the same day, so it's pure bs. Real tests usually take awhile, and the most common ones usually cost a few hundred dollars to administer. You can try taking 'test the nation' (Canadian) online if you want a fairly valid IQ test.

Most test batteries aren't even capable of scores over 130-140. At least for adults. If you were tested under the age of 16 then the scale can go up to infinity, technically, and it's not the same. Michael Keanary has a 'childhood' ratio IQ of 330. But anyway, 140 is 99.6th percentile for adults, and 130 is the Mensa cutoff. Tests that can go over 140 include WAIS, Binet, Ravens APM, some Catell scales and a few others, and none of them have ceilings over 160. 190 is ridiculous... one in a billion, and there are only a few people on the planet with an IQ that high. For the record, since there are currently no psychometrically valid tests capable of going over 166, any scores higher than that are extrapolations (ex Chris Langan).

I like to think of IQ as analogous to pc specs. Just because you're running a smooth ride doesn't mean you have any good hardware on it or that you utilize it.


Anyway, these results aren't surprising. The white-black gap in IQ has been known for a long time. Since the early 1900s. As an FYI, asians average higher than whites. Well educated people tend to have higher IQ's...and there are less religous people in academia than in the general public. People tend to leave these types of faith based systems when they become more knowledgable.

As for the causes of this, some people have already pointed out a couple. IQ= genes + environment. From there it's pretty obvious.