
Intelligent people 'less likely to believe in God' - nreece
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2111174/Intelligent-people-less-likely-to-believe-in-God.html
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josefresco
I would add that intelligent _and successful_ people maintain a public
religious affiliation even if privately they think it's all a bunch of hooey.
If the community/customers believe you believe in a higher power, your are
considered "one of them" and they simply trust you more. Knowing someone has
the "fear of god" sits better with religious folk than someone who simply
answers to their own morals and principles.

/ducks

~~~
kirse
_than someone who simply answers to their own morals and principles._

So let me understand this correctly -- it's okay to lie and be two-faced with
both yourself and others for the sake of gaining trust (on false premises)
from others?

Nice system of morals you have there.

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mechanical_fish
Without going into the issue of whether or not it's okay to lie... there's
nothing "false" about the trust it gains you. If I ask you to _tell a lie that
I specify_ in order to prove your loyalty to me, and you do it, I gain _more_
trust in you than if I'd just asked you to tell the truth.

What does your loyalty to rational truth tell me? Only that you're smart, and
paying attention, and that you don't necessarily care what I think. Your
willingness to conform to _my_ arbitrary set of "lies", on the other hand,
speaks volumes about your loyalty to _me_.

That's why hazing rituals tend to involve pain, embarrassment, lawbreaking, or
all of the above.

~~~
kirse
I would agree that the trust is not "false" and is authentic, but all this
other malarky about "loyalty" still ignores the underlying issue - and that is
a complete failure in this system of "intelligent" morality that rationalizes
being two-faced for the sake of winning over more people.

I know my system of morality values establishing trust in relationships by
telling the truth, not through deception. If a little less success and loyalty
is the result, I am more than willing to be "less successful".

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reazalun
"A decline in religious observance over the last century was directly linked
to a rise in average intelligence."

This is a correlation, not causation. If you study the period of Islamic
Golden Age (comparable to the European Renaissance), you'll find people at
that time were highly religious; more religious than the Muslims from this
era.

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dazzawazza
Interesting but during both the Renaissance and 'Golden Age' non belief was
punishable by death or at best imprisonment so 'everyone' was essentially
religious. Of course, your point still stands, correlation not causation.

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gills
The funniest outcome of research like this is the wannabes...who pick their
position on religion not based on their own reflections and intellect, but in
an attempt to be perceived as more intelligent by choosing atheism.

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vizard
Let me remind you that converse is not true. Being an atheist doesnt make you
smart.

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davidw
Could y'all go back to reddit? Please?

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ObieJazz
Funny: After I visited the page and then clicked 'Back', I was expecting to
see Reddit -- I had forgotten the link came from Hacker News.

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msluyter
Trying to keep things slightly on topic for hacker news: out of curiosity,
what is the believer/non-believer ratio in the software community compared to
the population at large? My totally unscientific guess is that it's much lower
than the US average, but I was curious what others thought.

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pxlpshr
It took a study to figure this out? Seems to me that it's been a growing trend
since the late 90s and early 00's.

