Why is this forum entitled Science/Math/Philosophy

[bunny]

I find that, even though the arguments often grind to a halt or twist off into uninteresting tangents, they raise problems with the way I think that never occurred to me (or which I dismissed without fully considering their merits). SMP is full of smart people with weird ideas who arent shy about defending them. I think there's value in hearing intelligent wackos justify positions you'd never give a moment's thought to.

It's easy enough to determine which threads hold no interest for you and just skip over them.

[knowledgeORbust]

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Oh, and I think of it as target practice, too. Sharpening debate skills for future debates that might matter.


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I don't post much because I typically have not thought about the issues enough to offer a reasonable, thought-out opinion. But I feel 10000000% more comfortable in discussing serious topics in the real world now. It really does keep your conversation + debate skills sharp if you're just reading conversations on SMP (or most places on 2+2) all day.

[Praxising]

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And yet, most of the posts are concerning religion? What is it about religion and religious debate in general that people find so captivating?
It seems that in a lot of these posts, people are wasting their time trying to use evidence to convince people who do not rely on evidence to form their understanding of the world; and vice versa, with the religious minded relying on faith based reasoning. These appear to be two completely orthogonal mindsets; how can constructive debate ever occur?

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It appears to me that a lot of people are just trying to prove they are smart and other people are dumb. I believe I've seen it twice in the last week, an atheist asserting that theists have lower IQs or some such nonsense.

My question is, why should there be any debate instead of dialogue? As Christian, paleoanthropolgist, teacher of genetic theory, I have no problem at all with any part of my belief system.

The real explanation is the list owner, our own poker author extraordinaire, David Sklansky, keeps pouring gasoline on the fires he lights himself. He likes these little contretemps.

And as far as someone saying the Christians are in here trying to evangelize the board, you are kidding right? The Christians are definitely the underdogs around here. Where are all these threads about Jesus? (Hey, maybe I'll start one....) [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

[Duke]

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I totally agree. The only problem is a real meaningful discussion of these topics is not well suited to a message board format, IMO. I think it would dissolve into a swap of links, which happens here -- finding a respected article online >>> Joe Schmo's opinion on these subjects.

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That's why I tried to start that "ideas without faces" thread. There is a lot that could come from openly talking about various topics with people who have no clue as to what the current theories are saying. Links to articles from experts are definite discussion killers, but if even 1/100 of those "stupid" ideas that ignore the intellectual consensus provided any insight (possibly because it takes a completely new perspective on the issue), then we have value.

Once I was in NYC with my girlfriend and I got the idea for this hat that attaches to a jacket so you wouldn't have to carry the hat around. She says: "Oh, you mean a hood?" Then I got the lecture on how my idea was as dumb as some guy on American Inventor that apparently "invented" sleeves. That killed the discussion, but that's OK because it pointed out something that I was obviously missing and recreating.

When an idea gets killed via link to expert opinion, a lot of times it involves data interpretation that admittedly the expert would be better at. A fresh perspective, however, could provide an insight that the experts overlook based on their biases. Look no further than the Luminiferous Ether for that sort of thing. There is absolutely no reason why the dumbest guy on 2+2 couldn't offer up a contrarian view that spawns a slightly smarter but harder working guy to put the work into making a cohesive theory from the initial spark.

[Poker monkey]

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It appears to me that a lot of people are just trying to prove they are smart and other people are dumb. I believe I've seen it twice in the last week, an atheist asserting that theists have lower IQs or some such nonsense.


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Unfortunately though, it's not nonsense: it's actually true that there's an inverse correlation between religious belief and intelligence.


STUDIES OF STUDENTS

1. Thomas Howells, 1927
Study of 461 students showed religiously conservative students "are, in general, relatively inferior in intellectual ability."

2. Hilding Carlsojn, 1933
Study of 215 students showed that "there is a tendency for the more intelligent undergraduate to be sympathetic toward… atheism."

3. Abraham Franzblau, 1934
Confirming Howells and Carlson, tested 354 Jewish children, aged 10-16. Found a negative correlation between religiosity and IQ as measured by the Terman intelligence test.

4. Thomas Symington, 1935
Tested 400 young people in colleges and church groups. He reported, "There is a constant positive relation in all the groups between liberal religious thinking and mental ability… There is also a constant positive relation between liberal scores and intelligence…"

5. Vernon Jones, 1938
Tested 381 students, concluding "a slight tendency for intelligence and liberal attitudes to go together."

6. A. R. Gilliland, 1940
At variance with all other studies, found "little or no relationship between intelligence and attitude toward god."

7. Donald Gragg, 1942
Reported an inverse correlation between 100 ACE freshman test scores and Thurstone "reality of god" scores.

8. Brown and Love, 1951
At the University of Denver, tested 613 male and female students. The mean test scores of non-believers was 119 points, and for believers it was 100. The non-believers ranked in the 80th percentile, and believers in the 50th. Their findings "strongly corroborate those of Howells."

9. Michael Argyle, 1958
Concluded that "although intelligent children grasp religious concepts earlier, they are also the first to doubt the truth of religion, and intelligent students are much less likely to accept orthodox beliefs."

10. Jeffrey Hadden, 1963
Found no correlation between intelligence and grades. This was an anomalous finding, since GPA corresponds closely with intelligence. Other factors may have influenced the results at the University of Wisconsin.

11. Young, Dustin and Holtzman, 1966
Average religiosity decreased as GPA rose.

12. James Trent, 1967
Polled 1400 college seniors. Found little difference, but high-ability students in his sample group were over-represented.

13. C. Plant and E. Minium, 1967
The more intelligent students were less religious, both before entering college and after 2 years of college.

14. Robert Wuthnow, 1978
Of 532 students, 37 percent of Christians, 58 percent of apostates, and 53 percent of non-religious scored above average on SATs.

15. Hastings and Hoge, 1967, 1974
Polled 200 college students and found no significant correlations.

16. Norman Poythress, 1975
Mean SATs for strongly anti-
religious (1148), moderately anti-religious (1119), slightly anti-religious (1108), and religious (1022).

17. Wiebe and Fleck, 1980
Studied 158 male and female Canadian university students. They reported "nonreligious S's tended to be strongly intelligent" and "more intelligent than religious S's."


STUDENT BODY COMPARISONS

1. Rose Goldsen, 1952
Percentage of students who believe in a divine god: Harvard 30; UCLA 32; Dartmouth 35; Yale 36; Cornell 42; Wayne 43; Weslyan 43; Michigan 45; Fisk 60; Texas 62; North Carolina 68.

2. National Review Study, 1970
Percentage of students who believe in a Spirit or Divine God: Reed 15; Brandeis 25; Sarah Lawrence 28; Williams 36; Stanford 41; Boston U. 41; Yale 42; Howard 47; Indiana 57; Davidson 59; S. Carolina 65; Marquette 77.

3. Caplovitz and Sherrow, 1977
Apostasy rates rose continuously from 5 percent in "low" ranked schools to 17 percent in "high" ranked schools.

4. Niemi, Ross, and Alexander, 1978
In elite schools, organized religion was judged important by only 26 percent of their students, compared with 44 percent of all students.

[vhawk01]

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Kaj,

I agree that discussion of a well defined concept, such as a Laplace Transform will fizzle out within a few posts, but there are still huge areas that aren't fully nailed down within the fields of physics (and bordering philosophy) such as differing interpretations of QM, problems with current theories, formation of new theories, etc. (and this is only within physics.)

As far as the discussion being for the sake of the audience reading these threads; do you really think that people are going out of their way; linking scripture pages, wikipedia entries, scientific data; as well as typing out page long rebuttals for the people not engaged in the discussion?


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I occasionally get PMs from posters I've never seen post before on some topic that we discussed in SMP. Sometimes they are even positive!

[vhawk01]

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It's the mental equivalent of the hamster running on the wheel. People apparently enjoy boring, repetitive arguments that go nowhere.

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I find it to be educational. I listen, read, try to understand, form a position, and then jump in and try to argue it. It gets torn to shred by opponents and those smarter than me, and hopefully I learn a few weakness and misunderstandings in my position. Then, I revise, and try it again. When I can come up with an argument that every single SMPer instantly agrees with and is overwhelmed by the beauty and simplicity of my insight, I will have won the internet. Luckily I'm still young, so I have time.

[vhawk01]

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And yet, most of the posts are concerning religion? What is it about religion and religious debate in general that people find so captivating?
It seems that in a lot of these posts, people are wasting their time trying to use evidence to convince people who do not rely on evidence to form their understanding of the world; and vice versa, with the religious minded relying on faith based reasoning. These appear to be two completely orthogonal mindsets; how can constructive debate ever occur?

[/ QUOTE ]

It appears to me that a lot of people are just trying to prove they are smart and other people are dumb. I believe I've seen it twice in the last week, an atheist asserting that theists have lower IQs or some such nonsense.

My question is, why should there be any debate instead of dialogue? As Christian, paleoanthropolgist, teacher of genetic theory, I have no problem at all with any part of my belief system.

The real explanation is the list owner, our own poker author extraordinaire, David Sklansky, keeps pouring gasoline on the fires he lights himself. He likes these little contretemps.

And as far as someone saying the Christians are in here trying to evangelize the board, you are kidding right? The Christians are definitely the underdogs around here. Where are all these threads about Jesus? (Hey, maybe I'll start one....) [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

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Its less the case now, since txag apparently took a break, but it is far from unheard of.

[flipdeadshot22]

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Kaj,

I agree that discussion of a well defined concept, such as a Laplace Transform will fizzle out within a few posts, but there are still huge areas that aren't fully nailed down within the fields of physics (and bordering philosophy) such as differing interpretations of QM, problems with current theories, formation of new theories, etc. (and this is only within physics.)

As far as the discussion being for the sake of the audience reading these threads; do you really think that people are going out of their way; linking scripture pages, wikipedia entries, scientific data; as well as typing out page long rebuttals for the people not engaged in the discussion?


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I occasionally get PMs from posters I've never seen post before on some topic that we discussed in SMP. Sometimes they are even positive!

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Vhawk,

What exactly do you mean by this? I felt my speech was rather ambiguous as to which side i'm on. Please dont troll this thread, as i'm already aware of your incredible intellect, and would be honored to hear your true opinion. Thank You.

[flipdeadshot22]

edit: to above post, i'm rather drunk right now ant cannot dissiminate fact from fiction, please beeleev