What Sort of ‘God’ Would Want This?

Dear Religion,

Take note

This week I safely dropped a man from space while you shot a child in the head for wanting to go to school.

Regards

Science

I have done some searching and had a good read and of course have discovered that it is far from black and white. A good many scientists do not agree with the findings and many dispute that simple correlation maintaining that brain size alone is only one part of a complex model. There is disagreement over how the size of the brain is measured and how intelligence is measured. So I conclude that we will be reading a lot more on this over the coming years. It is nevertheless an interesting subject.

Thanks, I will do. I haven’t understood how they are measuring intelligence…

There has been lots of papers published on the subject – just look it up. Here’s one at random…
John C. Wickett1, Philip A. Vernon1, Donald H. Lee2
1 Department of Psychology, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario N6A 5C2, Canada
2 Diagnostic Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, University Hospital, London, Ontario N6A 5A5, Canada
Abstract
“The issue of the connection between brain size and intelligence has long been of interest to psychology. A review of past research using external head size measures as estimates of internal brain size indicates that head size-IQ correlations are typically in the order of r = 0.10 to 0.30(mean r = 0.194). Today, a more direct and accurate measure of brain size is afforded by the advent of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). In the present study the relationship between brain size (measured via MRI), head size, and intelligence was examined in a sample of 40 healthy, right-handed females (ages 20 to 30 years). Whereas head size correlated r = 0.109 (NS) with full scale IQ, brain size and IQ correlated r = 0.395 (P< 0.05). It is clearly indicated that there is a positive relationship between the size of the brain and intelligence.”

“There is a direct correlation between human brain size and intelligence….” I would be intertested to read the source research for this statement.

That is an absurd statement…

Unpalatable maybe, but not absurd. Obvious physiological differences between nations show up all the time – Ethiopians do very well in marathons, West Africans do very well in activities requiring short-duration explosive energy, like boxing and, say, the 100 metres.
Why should the brain be any different – or is that just not PC to actually say so?
Look at the problems your own UC Berkeley had when they introduced the SAT (IQ) test in 1967 as an elegibility requirement! Before the test, black and Hispanic students comprised the majority of the student numbers, then after the test was introduced they became the minority, their places being replaced by people of mainly Asian descent. Berkeley have had to juggle the figures and introduce new ‘diversity’ rulings ever since, to try to massage the statistics straight again.
There is a direct correlation between human brain size and intelligence, and these published official US Army statistics are typical of international findings…

fig4: Cranial capacity for a stratified random sample of 6,325 U.S. Army personnel. The data, grouped into six sex-by-race categories, are collapsed across military rank. (East Asian men, closed circles; White men, closed squares; Black men, closed triangles; East Asian women, open circles; White women, open squares; Black women, open triangles). They show that, across the 19 different analyses controlling for body size, men averaged larger cranial capacities than did women, and East Asians averaged larger than did Whites or Blacks. Analysis 1 presents the data unadjusted for body size showing no difference for East Asian and White men. (From Rushton, 1992a, p. 408, Figure 1. Copyright 1992 by Ablex Publishing Corp.

The population of that part of the world has amongst the highest mean IQs on Earth

That is an absurd statement. Innate intelligence is no higher in one part of the world than it is in another. The only difference between them, and the west, is that the majority of folks (with some exceptions of course) in that region have not been allowed to reach their potential through things like education, professional experience, etc…..whereas western culture (as well as others/asia/FSU/etc) have fostered that kind of growth. Then again, Adolph Hitler had similar views of his “people” (of which he actually was not, ethnically speaking).

It is indeed Kev, the same as Christianity as shown itself to be over the centuries.

I’m not religious but I have no beef with the tenets of Christianity/Islam etc of do unto others/look after your fellow man; it’s just that when nut jobs get a hold of the message and distort it that religion goes pear shaped.

I’m of the admittably uneducated opinion that most of the bile that you hear in the West about Islam isn’t actually about Islam but about cultures that are backwards that happen to be Islamic.

You can’t make a culture that has been feudal and mysoginistic for centuries into a forward thinking tree hugging society overnight.

I can’t remember now who said it, might have been an Iraqi diplomat but as he said; you want us to become democratic and liberal in a month when you have had centuries of strife to attain that, it’s not going to happen.

Yes, but put simply, this isn’t about Religion is it? It’s about one group of people (the Taleban) exerting power over the population to their own ends. It’s just persecution, extortion and oppression under the cloak of Islam.

Regards,

kev35

how insecure in their beliefs must they be if they are so frightened by a fourteen-year-old girl whose only ‘crime’ was to try to get an education?

Not insecure in their beliefs – after all they firmly believe this is the right course of action. If they were “insecure in their beliefs” they may not have questioned the need to do it?

But yes, they are “insecure” inasmuch that they believe that education may lead to women (and others) challenging some of the medieval patriarchal values they currently manage to maintain by force. Of course, what they cannot see is that education might help improve their whole way of life and standard of living…

The problem is they are taught (indoctrinated) that this way of fanatical thinking is correct by the preceding generation of equally narrow-minded fanatical “teachers”. They have been taught that education will lead to a decadent lifestyle in which “God” is likely to be ignored or dishonoured as materialistic greed takes over as the driving force behind their society. They are not taught that free thinking and education/learning are to be encouraged as a means to improve their world.

The advent of modern information technology is leading to many starting to question these antiquated values and beliefs, as they see other women around the planet enjoy a more liberal, and more fulfilling lifestyle.

The good news is that the modern “news web” also ensures that attrocities like this are now seen more widely round the globe, and other may see the that the “old ways” are no longer acceptable…but such a major change takes time (many generations?).

Don’t forget, it isn’t all that long ago (relatively speaking) that women in Britain had no right to vote, and even more recently that they were (theoretically at least) given truly equal rights to pay etc.

I agree such behaviour in the name of any “religion” is abhorrent, especially in the name of religion which is actually based on “respect” and “peace” towards others, but lets not forget we are only a few steps further on down the path to “equality” and “educational freedom”… 😮

I am sure these vile individuals would have an answer to your question in way of justification. And people really believe that negotiation with them is the answer to the problems in Afghanistan.

The population of that part of the world has amongst the highest mean IQs on Earth, which could reap such huge benefits to mankind.
But I suspect that intelligence and education would be fairly well stifled under these fundamentalist blinkered views.
Or maybe they just realise that women have brains like squirrels…