Oustanding post, John. I hereby nominate you for Tipster of the week................... although I have gotten a lot of pleasure sending this article to my right wing friends.
Ed Edward I. Pollak, Ph.D. Department of Psychology West Chester University of Pennsylvania ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Husband, father, grandfather, biopsychologist, & bluegrass fiddler...... in approximate order of importance. Re: [tips] Why Liberals and Atheists Are More Intelligent John Kulig Fri, 26 Feb 2010 12:58:05 -0800 Well .... it's an intriguing hypothesis, and though I usually have knee-jerk 'yes' responses to anything evolutionary, could it simply be that more intelligent people think more, therefore more likely to have thoughts out of the main-stream? Also, it's quite a stretch to associate conservative with religion over even a short time and space. Religion & liberalism are often tied together - in Australia, for instance, where the % of religious people is very low, but those who are religious are into social justice. Know a visitor from Australia who was puzzled by the religion-conservative link in the US. Perhaps being "religious" there is a "novel idea". There is so much diversity under the terms "conservative" and "religious" as to make the claims superficial. Just a few examples: What passes for conservative today in the US (very ideological) bears little resemblance to what "conservative" was to the founder of modern conservatism (Edmund Burke) whose "conservatism" took the form of criticizing mob rule after the French Revolution (as well as its ideological thinking) (no doubt HE was intelligent and was simply going against the zeitgeist?). The same can be said of religion, to lump the tremendous variety, from orthodox liturgical practices to the highly individualistic practices of some christian churches, not to mention the interesting practice of lumping wild sex into religious practices (Rasputin tied his spiritual/ Russian Orthodox beliefs to some great parties I hear). Religiously conservative black churches in the US are sometimes hot beds of social liberal activism. And Catholic 'liberation theology' is radically left and socialistic. What is the common thread between all these things? Having a solid operational definition of these terms would help (there are some, not sure they are universally accepted). I suspect it is easier operationalizing spirituality that religiosity and atheism. No doubt we can empirically get "average" data for these terms, but statisticians sometimes remind us that averages can be applied inappropriately, as when we correctly say that the average American has one testicle and one ovary :-) --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: arch...@jab.org. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=937 or send a blank email to leave-937-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
