Communion

[maggiebee]

Just home from our Communion Service. Found it very uplifting and it was great to have visitors from Zimbabwe with us. They sang unaccompanied and their voices were just wonderful. I'm always amazed that when some churches in the UK struggle, the churches in many African countries have congregations in the high hundreds.

[jomifl]

Naomi, it is a puzzle isn't it? for someone to dismiss the results of UNESCO surveys as being selected to support a point of view and then to make assertions based on fictional characters. There seems to be a disconnection here. Not sure whether it is logical or neurological.

[naomi24]

A veritable conundrum.

[jourdain2]

mikey.... :o) x

[Khandro]

jomifl; //As you said...fictional, we know the principles it seems that the proof of you assertions is lacking//
Along with the proof of your intelligence perhaps?

[naomi24]

Oh dear.

[Khandro]

n "Oh dear" what? It was you that brought unnecessarily into here (Sun. 17:22) lack of education, and jomifl (Mon. 17:17) went even further linking it to 'statistics' from UNESCO "many surveys (the result of which can be found on the unesco website) show that Religiosity correlates with low IQ..........."
I ask how did UNESCO measured the low IQ's in the first place and then relate it to 'religiosity'?

[naomi24]

Ask them.

[jomifl]

Hi Khandro, just back from holiday...Correlation does not necessarily imply a causal link ...it could be that religiosity lowers the IQ by inhibiting the development of the ability to reason..

[Khandro]

jomifl; Bienvenue! I thought the lacuna was due to you researching how UNESCO had been measuring the intelligence of the religious and the irreligious.
It sounds like a dodgy dossier to me and I thought a man of your calibre would dismiss it out of hand.

[jomifl]

/It sounds like a dodgy dossier to me /.. given the lack of any data to the contrary I see no reason to dismiss UNESCO reports out of hand. Indeed they are based on a compilation of data from peer revued sources so are at least better than guesswork and wishful thinking.

[jomifl]

This is how it works Khandro ..Hypothetical country 'A' has 95% of population believing in god, an average IQ of 90 and a lifespan of 40 years country 'B' has 5% of population believing in god, an average IQ of 110, and a lifespan of 80 years. Perhaps living longer make you more intelligent or more sceptical?

[Khandro]

jomifl;//Hypothetical country 'A' has 95% of population believing in god, an average IQ of 90//
So, you believe that using the now challenged and seriously flawed IQ test system, in order to find the average 'IQ' of country 'A', UNESCO would have to test everyone, or at least a very large percentage of the population?

[jomifl]

khandro, If your sampling is randomised then 1000 people would probably be enough but a statistician would be the best person to ask, not me.

[Khandro]

'Some scientists dispute IQ entirely. In The Mismeasure of Man (1996), paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould criticized IQ tests and argued that they were used for scientific racism. He argued that g was a mathematical artifact and criticized:
...the abstraction of intelligence as a single entity, its location within the brain, its quantification as one number for each individual, and the use of these numbers to rank people in a single series of worthiness, invariably to find that oppressed and disadvantaged groups—races, classes, or sexes—are innately inferior and deserve their status.(pp. 24–25)'
Also please see;

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/9755929/IQ-tests-do-not-reflect-intelligence.html