Restating My "Religion Does Good" Post More Explicitly

[madnak]

[ QUOTE ]
Childhood indoctrination, I already agreed, can make a difference in close cases like politics. It can also make a big difference when it comes to choosing between religions.
But it can't be the only factor when the choice is between religion and no religion (and the person has a 130 IQ.) Their upringing wouldn't sway them to believe in astrology or alien abductions would it?

[/ QUOTE ]

Uh, yes it would. In at least 98% of cases.

This is a difficult issue because it involves extrapolating from a wide variety of observations, but there is no question that parental and societal influence are mostly responsible for beliefs and values. Everything else combined is small in comparison. The number of different types of evidence that back this up is staggering, from studies in behaviorism to analysis of cultures to twin studies to neurology and statistics and everything. The correlation is, in any case, almost perfect, and while this becomes less true at higher levels of intellect, it is definitely still true after two standard deviations (130 IQ on the Wechsler).