A Study About Liberal Elitism- This is good

Liberalism, atheism, male sexual exclusivity linked to IQ

(CNN) -- Political, religious and sexual behaviors may be reflections of intelligence, a new study finds.

Evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa at the the London School of Economics and Political Science correlated data on these behaviors with IQ from a large national U.S. sample and found that, on average, people who identified as liberal and atheist had higher IQs. This applied also to sexual exclusivity in men, but not in women. The findings will be published in the March 2010 issue of Social Psychology Quarterly.

The IQ differences, while statistically significant, are not stunning -- on the order of 6 to 11 points -- and the data should not be used to stereotype or make assumptions about people, experts say. But they show how certain patterns of identifying with particular ideologies develop, and how some people's behaviors come to be.

Continued... (definitely read it if you're interested in the findings.)

It doesn't slam liberals for being elitist or slam conservatives for being not as intelligent. Of course there are exceptions.

The study was done by a couple of guys (one conservative and one libertarian) who are probably pretty intelligent and obviously well educated. They do believe in evolution.

The study showed that atheists and liberals had higher IQ's than conservatives and religionists.

The development of religion helped early humans to be "paranoid" as the authors put it because they looked out for danger (and of course, blamed it all on god). On the other hand, atheists, according to one of the authors "allows someone to move forward and speculate on life without any concern for the dogmatic structure of a religion." I believe that's a good thing as well.

Check out this part:

The study takes the American view of liberal vs. conservative. It defines "liberal" in terms of concern for genetically nonrelated people and support for private resources that help those people. It does not look at other factors that play into American political beliefs, such as abortion, gun control and gay rights.

"Liberals are more likely to be concerned about total strangers; conservatives are likely to be concerned with people they associate with," he said.

Given that human ancestors had a keen interest in the survival of their offspring and nearest kin, the conservative approach -- looking out for the people around you first -- fits with the evolutionary picture more than liberalism, Kanazawa said. "It's unnatural for humans to be concerned about total strangers." he said.

See, this is the part that always baffled me when I spoke to conservative christians and I know lots of them. I would always ask them how they could reconcile being christian specifically and being politically and socially conservative at the same time. After all, Jesus Christ taught us to be what we would call "liberal" and to look out for each other more than anything else. If you ripped out all the pages of your New Testament that pertained to helping the poor and outcast, you would be left with a couple of pages. This is true. Try it.

The study says that evolutionarily speaking it's more natural for humans to embrace conservativism and I'll buy that since it was expedient in ancient times to pay more attention to your own kin and neighbors... you certainly couldn't walk away from your family leaving them in danger in order to worry about people in other tribes. (Dinosaurs might attack them. I kid.)

Religiously speaking, if you actually heed what it says in the New Testament, The parable of the Good Samaritan really drives home the message of loving and caring for those you don't know and especially those you even hate. The Jews absolutely hated Samaritans, so this parable was considered shocking at the time it was handed down. Matthew 25:31-46 (whatsoever you to for the least of my brothers, you do unto me) also reiterates that when you do for others, you are doing for Jesus... simply doing for those who you know doesn't count in the grand scheme of things. Jesus' message was absolutely radical for Jews at that time... and it is a radical message today for those who embrace their conservative values and are trying to be christian.

So Christianity, if you truly believe in the message of Jesus Christ, the reason for the whole Christian religion in the first place, actually goes against human nature. I believe that St Paul also reiterated that. So conservatives are being true to their human nature evolutionarily speaking but if they want to be or need to be labeled as "christian", they are not being true to their religion.

Being regressive, conservative and un-compassionate does not allow someone to truly embrace the message of Jesus. It cannot be reconciled if you use logic. What happens is that you have to check your brains at the door when you turn your sights toward conservative christianity, only pay attention to those parts of the bible that your conservative christian pastor tells you to look at and willfully disregard the rest. Otherwise your brain would explode.

Try to reconcile Jesus Christ's message with Rush Limbaugh's message. You can't. It's impossible. One is a message of love and forgiveness, the other is a message of intolerance and hatred.

Here's the weird part: My Catholic education (K-12) actually made me more liberal than I probably would have been otherwise. Perhaps it was because the particular brand of Catholicism that I was taught paid particular attention to the message of Jesus Christ. It was all the crazy man made anti-woman stuff that the Catholic patriarchy came up with that pissed me off and caused me to walk away from the religion but I didn't abandon the message of Jesus Christ which was that we should look out for each other and to do with less so that others don't suffer. (Oh dear, that sounds like something our president mentioned which drove conservative christians insane) Furthermore, if you really read the gospels, you would see that Jesus was a feminist.

Interestingly, Catholics who are educated in Catholic schools are not taught to distrust science at all. They really didn't teach us how to reconcile science and the bible except to say that we shouldn't take the bible literally if the passage goes against sound scientific evidence or even logic... the important thing is to find the message of a passage and understand that the bible was written by ancient humans who pretty much blamed everything that they didn't understand on God. I could buy that.

Personally I don't believe that you have to be well educated to be intelligent nor do I believe that all intelligent people are automatically smart or liberal. There are very motivated individuals who choose to work hard at being smart and may score higher on academic tests than those with high IQ's who don't try very hard. Not sure you have to be smart to be compassionate either. I do openly admit that the more educated I became in my life, the more tolerant and liberal I became. I don't believe that my education outside of catholic schools indoctrinated me towards being more liberal at all... I used critical thinking skills and my guts to determine my values.

This article on the study was very interesting for me to read and think about.

How about you? What stood out?