http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2011/HowManyPeopleHaveEverLivedonEarth.aspx And semi-scientific it must be, because there are, of course, absolutely no demographic data available for 99 percent of the span of the human stay on Earth. Still, with some speculation concerning prehistoric populations, we can at least approach a guesstimate of this elusive number.
what ever the true number, (and I was just kidding when I posted that) the fault is not on God..he has given us all free will..he has sent out the invites and if they are refused..well, thats on those who choose to not attend..
My friend is much smarter than I am (not saying much TBH) and he is extremely religious. People have their own reasons for choosing faith.
This seems like one of those, "Well, duh", kind of studies. I would fully expect that atheists by nature are pretty intelligent. They tend to be analytic, well educated, and think deeply about their place in nature. Whereas the "religious" group includes a full spectrum of IQs and education within the general population, atheists are typically drawn from the upper level of education. Naturally, the median IQ of a general population is going to be lower than the IQ of a group that tends to be drawn from the upper strata of education and intelligence. A more interesting question would be what percentages of a group selected to be within the same intelligence and education level identify themselves as atheist or religious.
The original post seems to be lacking in intelligence, since the 'study' was more observational than empirical.
^^THIS^^ I post this as a non-religious agnostic. The uber-intelligent atheists patting themselves on the back for this study in this thread didn't even read the details of the study, which is clearly biased and is completely unscientific. That is ironic. Denny, take notes on the irony.
Any intelligent atheist should read the disparity of the population pool and see it was not random at all, and simply move on, rather than accepting a flawed study that confirms their belief structure.
I won't even get into the discussion that Atheism, in and of itself, is a belief system that isn't based on much more than faith.
You would think a group claiming they are more intelligent would see such a blatant observation. Instead they took it as empirical and look like fools when called out. The ones that ignored the study and saw it for what it was; I pat their back. At least Denny saw it for that. He explained the demographic problem in the study. But then again, Denny is not an atheist. He's an agnostic; whom I believe are the most analytical group of thinkers. Atheists are about as dogmatic as the theists.
There may or may not be a difference in intelligence, but either way I think it's a very bad road to go down. No matter what group we are in, there is a natural tendency to look at those outside our group as inferior in some way. In some cases those reasons might be supportable and others not, but either way it really solidifies the us vs them mentality that has been the real root cause of most evil done in this world from how the Native Americans were treated to how the Nazi's treated their "others". And Hitler certainly used his bullshit version of science as an excuse for his actions. I think it's fine to think you as an individual is smarter than some other individual, or to think your philosophy/religion/atheism is a more intelligent outlook, but don't get confused in thinking that just because the outlook is smarter that the people who subscribe to the outlook are smarter. I admit, I have fallen into this trap on many occasions, it's an easy trap to fall into because it makes you feel valuable. But it's very dangerous to really start believing this.
Why are only 3.6% of Mensa members atheist? How many of this forums abundant atheist set qualified to be a Mensa member? http://mwm.us.mensa.org/faq/people.html
