What kind of atheist are you?

I just thought the article was fun!

Mind you, I remember the time I stopped going to Sunday school. It was a Baptist chapel - I was sent there for no other reason than it was the nearest church or chapel to home. I think my parents enjoyed the peace and quiet when I was there. They were atheists themselves, but didn't want to impose their own ideas on me. At around 15, I was told by the Sunday School superintendent I had to get baptised, even though I had been christened C of E (which was also at the nearest church in our previous address). They said I had to do it, and I had to have absolute faith.

I didn't want the ultimate embarrassment of total immersion baptism at the font under the floor near the altar, and I knew there were no absolutes from my science lessons at school. So I thought about it all, and decided it was all a load of weird ideas with no basis in provable facts.

I said 'No' and stopped going to Sunday School.

No-one bothered to check up on me. And I never gave religion a second thought for years. I did try churchgoing later in life, but it never took. Logic always got in the way.

Not sure about the IQ thing - is it really measurable? I had mine tested when I was around 20 in Austria. The married couple, scientists, I was staying with had got hold of testing kits and wanted to give it a go. My German wasn't up to much, but I managed, and got 128.

I think, from my more difficult jobs, that intelligence varies from hour to hour. I used to save my most complicated work for mornings, and easy stuff for afternoons, because of this variation.

Oh, I should confess that never felt religious in my dumber times of day either!!

Without getting into other facets of this notion, the author mixes data sets from way back in time (all the way to 1928) from very different places, with different gender compositions, very different sample sizes etc. it's a basic stats fail.

But - it may or may not be the case that atheists are more 'intelligent' as measured by dubious IQ tests, than those of us who believe in God. What's the point of this study? Given that such a conclusion does not actually tell us anything about the truth or falsehood of religion or atheism, then, so what?

Joan ...you've made my day.

Good post, mishap. The notion that aheists are not deep thinkers, either, is raised in the comments below the article. It would be easy to take umbrage from either side, which I imagine is why the article was published.

I am not a Christian myself, but have many highly educated and intelligent friends who are. I admit it baffles me, but accept that it is a different quality of phenomenon, unrelated to intelligence.

The implication that those who are more intelligent and better educated have more control over their lives and therefore no need of religion is interesting. None of us have ultimate control - it is a dream, a figment of our hopes and fantasies. Those with religious beliefs seek an explanation for that absence of control outside of the world; and those with no beliefs accept it all as the way of the world and just get on with life.

Joan I saw that article when reading the online papers ths morning, and thought....'should I post it?' Then, I chickened out! So, I guess that makes me a scaredy cat atheist! Ha ha!!

What kind of atheist am I?

This kind - I hope:

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2395972/Atheists-higher-IQs-Their-intelligence-makes-likely-dismiss-religion-irrational-unscientific.html?ico=news^headlines

(Research shows atheists have higher IQs)

Perhaps these mathematicians could get 100% and be awarded a special bow tie for elegant answers.

I have added a comment on very good papers, where all the answers were not only correct but well expressed, to that effect, but I would still no give a mark of over 100%.

She did more than expected in the time and got them all right. She's quite bright and now teaches science in an academy in Cheltenham.
Her daughter, my dgd is now 2 and seems to be following her mother!

I have a degree in maths and I don't understand how anybody can be awarded more than 100%, which is perfection!

It wouldn't show very good energy rationing. Doing all the questions. And I don't think they would give you any more than a hundred per cent.

Bags, I've always had a problem with maths. But I never realised until now just how much I really didn't understand!

Does that mean that if a person answered well, but didn't get everything perfect in an exam, the examiners would award 100%, but if they answered succinctly and perfectly to other mathematicians they would get 115%?

If so, why not award 100% for the very clever succinct answers, and say, 80% or 95% for correct but inelegant answers?

Remember, I'm an historian and don't get these things.

If, for instance, you take a maths problem into new investigative realms, you could, mice. Or, more probably, if you answered all the questions on a paper (and got good marks for them all) when you were only required to do some of them. It probably isn't possible to do something like that with a subject requiring a lot of writing, but maths wizards have been known to manage it by using extremely succinct but perfectly clear (to other mathematicians!) maths notation.

I've worked it out about the quiz percentages.

They are the amount of each type of atheist you show yourself to be in your answers.

You are not just one very oversized person.

Galen "a couple of years ago"

How?

You can always score more than 100% on maths exams, but I think maths is unique that way. It might include subjects like astro-physics though...

Bags when I was a girl guide (a couple of years ago) I had to promise to 'do my duty to God and the Queen'.

J08 I Leah's thought percentages of a whole should add up to 100% until DD managed to score 115% in a maths exam at Southampton university

The Scout Assoc discriminated against me, and many others, lily. That's why I became a bit of an activist (writing letters and taking part in their own survey last year).

Thanks for the link, MiceElf. I was struck by the same section as Bags but my thought was that life in the USA is very different from life in the UK! I suppose it must be the case that, globally, non-believers are discriminated against but I wouldn't have thought they were in this country.

Morning Greatnan. I still can't get my head round how someone can be 70 pc one kind of an atheist, 60 pc another kind, 40 pc another kind, etc etc.

Better not spend any more time on it though.

I think that using the term 'old fogey' of some of the people in the upper echelons of the Scout Association is one of the things that got them to wake up a little to the modern secular approach to scouting and to, reluctantly, begin to accept it as rational.

Jingle - what principles do you imagine Christians hold that are not held by atheists?
Percentages only have to total 100 if the categories are discrete. (As opposed to discreet!).