On Nov 9, 2004, at 8:41 PM, David Brin wrote:
Meanwhile, look at the note there about an added correlation with DIVORCE RATE that sheds interesting light on "values."
There's apparently a pretty strong correlation between intense religiosity in the US and divorce:
<http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_dira.htm>
"Barna's results verified findings of earlier polls: that conservative Protestant Christians, on average, have the highest divorce rate, while mainline Christians have a much lower rate. They found some new information as well: that atheists and agnostics have the lowest divorce rate of all."
There's apparently a negative correlation between intelligence and increase in religion:
<http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-thinkingchristians.htm> <http://www.skepticfiles.org/atheist/religiq2.htm> <http://www.liberator.net/articles/TremblayFrancois/Gallup.html>
From the third one:
"For college graduates, 52% are religious and 25% are committed to church attendance, while the percentages are 70% and 33% for people who only completed primary school. These differences are also proven by the 1991 General Social Survey. A great number of surveys have also shown the negative correlation between intelligence and religiosity ("The Effect of Intelligence on Religious Faith", Free Inquiry, Spring 1986)."
I don't believe it's unfair to provisionally judge that an intensely religious person is more likely to undergo marital strife and suffer from less cognitive ability. The alleged table of state IQ is interesting but unverified, but based on the above not wholly improbable. (Not the least problem is that IQ tests are notoriously poor measures of "real" intelligence.)
-- Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books http://books.nightwares.com/ Current work in progress "The Seven-Year Mirror" http://www.nightwares.com/books/ockrassa/Flat_Out.pdf
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