Will the Flynn effect make religion go way of the Dodo?

[Itse]

Originally Posted by Fighting Banana Slug

I doubt it ever goes away. A more important question perhaps, is whether it will hold outsized political power in society. As an atheist, religion can exist in its current own little world so long as it isn’t dictating policy to the larger society.

Historically speaking this seems unlikely. Religion has almost always been a major part of politics.

Religions are (among other things), grand narratives that help people explain/understand the world. People will always have a need for grand narratives, and grand narratives are always extremely important in politics.

Religions are never going to be completely gone as long as there's things we still recognize as human, and religions will never become insignificant in politics as long as there's things we still recognize as societies.

[Dunnyberg]

IQs are actually dropping in most Western countries. Likely due to demographic change and feminism. France is losing 4 points per decade.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by Dunnyberg

IQs are actually dropping in most Western countries. Likely due to demographic change and feminism. France is losing 4 points per decade.

[btimbit]

Well, the avatar checks out on that one

[DownInFlames]

I know I often fall for troll bait, but I'm not biting on this one. Yeesh.

[Dunnyberg]

I believe it's well established that feminism lowers a nation's fertility rate. I think having our best and brightest women spend the majority of their twenties in schooling, and then another 5-10 years establishing careers could be bad for IQ rates.
But I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

[Matata]

Despite all their highly vocal back patting, I'm generally unimpressed with the overall intellectual prowess of atheists and ive noticed an increasingly zealotrous commitment to their belief system. I don't see an improvement, just annoying people picking up a different mantle that fits the modern paradigm better. If you really want to think of yourself as an intellectual, eventually they need to develop a sense of humility and wonder and upgrade yourself to an agnostic. Being an atheist is cool for like 2 years in your early twenties, after that it's just sad, neckbeard nihilism.

[Reggie Dunlop]

Education lowers IQs?

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by Dunnyberg

I believe it's well established that feminism lowers a nation's fertility rate. I think having our best and brightest women spend the majority of their twenties in schooling, and then another 5-10 years establishing careers could be bad for IQ rates.
But I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

Pregnant and barefoot in the kitchen. Got it. Uhm, except your point is that by educating more women(and thus more of the population) IQ rates drop? How does that math work out?

[Wormius]

Originally Posted by Matata

Despite all their highly vocal back patting, I'm generally unimpressed with the overall intellectual prowess of atheists and ive noticed an increasingly zealotrous commitment to their belief system. I don't see an improvement, just annoying people picking up a different mantle that fits the modern paradigm better. If you really want to think of yourself as an intellectual, eventually they need to develop a sense of humility and wonder and upgrade yourself to an agnostic. Being an atheist is cool for like 2 years in your early twenties, after that it's just sad, neckbeard nihilism.

I think you are confusing regular non-believers (because, honestly, if you weren’t indoctrinated through life then believing in supernatural beings and miracles should seem absurd) with the annoying, overly-zealous in nature, philosopher debaters.

Like, really nobody like those guys either. Atheism doesn’t need spokespeople.

[Wormius]

Originally Posted by Dunnyberg

I believe it's well established that feminism lowers a nation's fertility rate. I think having our best and brightest women spend the majority of their twenties in schooling, and then another 5-10 years establishing careers could be bad for IQ rates.
But I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

Is your argument that too many dumb people are having too many children?

[afc wimbledon]

Originally Posted by Dunnyberg

I believe it's well established that feminism lowers a nation's fertility rate. I think having our best and brightest women spend the majority of their twenties in schooling, and then another 5-10 years establishing careers could be bad for IQ rates.
But I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

Less babies doesnt lower IQ, a nations IQ is per capita not aggregate, we dont add all the IQ points together.

What better educated richer mothers does mean is better fed, better educated children, better pre natal outcomes, ie slowly rising IQ

[Geraldsh]

Originally Posted by Reggie Dunlop

Education lowers IQs?

Yes, we all become Artificially Intelligent.

[Reggie Dunlop]

White Christians, the majority for most of American history, now constitute only ~2/5 of US adult population & only ~1/4 of young adults per @PRRIpoll

The conservative end of that group is racing to lock into law their preferences and views in a society evolving away from them.

[Reggie Dunlop]

Religion cannot compete in the free marketplace of ideas and therefore must resort to authoritarian measures. That is the noise we are hearing.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Dunnyberg

I believe it's well established that feminism lowers a nation's fertility rate. I think having our best and brightest women spend the majority of their twenties in schooling, and then another 5-10 years establishing careers could be bad for IQ rates.
But I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

What’s the mechanism you are proposing here?

Older parent age reduces IQ of children?
Demographic shift to an aging population results in a lower average IQ

Why do you state feminism as the cause as opposed to access to birth control and less religiosity as the drivers?

Also I’d be interested in reading whatever sources you have for this information because this seems like one of these statements that could be technically true linking studies and statistics together in a poor manner and forgetting that correlation does not equal causation.

[GreenLantern2814]

Originally Posted by Wormius

I think you are confusing regular non-believers (because, honestly, if you weren’t indoctrinated through life then believing in supernatural beings and miracles should seem absurd with the annoying, overly-zealous in nature, philosopher debaters.

Like, really nobody like those guys either. Atheism doesn’t need spokespeople.

The existence of life on this planet, never mind our particularly exceptional form of life, is the most miraculous event in the observable universe.

Virtually every achievement or characteristic attributed to a God could be attributed to the sun - can you credibly argue the sun is not a supernatural being?

There are more ways to look at things than the most reductive, most pedantic, most awful ones. People are allowed to be wrong, and probably are wrong, about all sorts of interpretations of God, but that doesn’t make them wrong about the greater value of knowledge, philosophy and tradition that has endured for thousands and thousands of years.

You can use religion to justify your own ####ty behaviour- protesting funerals of dead soldiers, flying planes into buildings, pick an atrocity. That’s easy.

It’s harder to read the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in 2023 and understand what it’s actually about. You’ll have that coloured by all the stupid anti-gay trolls who cite it like it’s some clear injunction against all the colours of the rainbow (it’s not - it’d be like thinking the story of Hansel and Gretel is a warning against the use of gingerbread as a building material).

Ten righteous men can save your city - that’s the moral of Sodom and Gomorrah.

You only need to count how many votes prevented Donald Trump from being impeached and convicted after January 6 to understand the timeless quality inherent to these stories.

[Monahammer]

Originally Posted by GreenLantern2814

The existence of life on this planet, never mind our particularly exceptional form of life, is the most miraculous event in the observable universe.

This post is 99% drivel, but I want to just comment that even your basic assumption at the beginning is extremely debateable. There are plenty of miraculous events in the universe. I am not even sure that life's emergence is the most statistically unlikely. If you were going to attack this vector, you should stick to the notion that the physical laws and fundamental forces of the universe are finely attuned to such a degree that even minute deviations would make chemistry or even atomic nuclei impossible as we know them. Of course, this itself is defeated by the anthropic principle... We are here, so of course we are seeing conditions that would allow us to be here. Hell, even the existence of our moon is a somewhat miraculous and seemingly impossible reality.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by Snuffleupagus

For those who don't know the Flynn effect is essentially that thru evolution humans are on average gaining roughly 3% in IQ every decade, the average person today would have been considered a genius 100 years ago.

Many studies have found that, on average belief in God is associated with lower scores on IQ tests, so if this 3% increase continues will we finally be able to say goodbye to the really bad idea called religion?

The Flynn Effect doesn't actually mean intelligence is increasing - just that there is probably more of a general familiarity with the types of questions asked on IQ tests due to culture, education, and the tests being a fairly common facet of society since the early 20th century.

And no, the average person today would *maybe* be as good at answering questions on an IQ test as a genius 100 years ago, but they would by no means be as smart.

Flynn's work on the inflation of IQ test scores has done more to undermine the concept of the actual tests and "general intelligence" than anything else.

[peter12]

It's hilarious to read almost all of these posts. IQ is just a number that supposedly correlates to some general concept of an individual's intelligence, but a lot of statistical research has shown that that varies among individuals considerably outside of the actual pristine conditions of testing.

In real life, these tests were designed to measure disabilities, which they do seem to do reasonably well. They were never intended as a general measure for intelligence, but here we are.