Another Virgin Mary Sighting

[Skyrad 0]

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Religion offends me to no end. Do you have a problem with that? How dare you offend me with your beliefs.

Hey Cocheese,

Whether or not religion offends you to no end, how about having some respect for your fellow dz.commers. There are quite a few posters here who hold the Virgin Mary in very high regard.

I've never had a problem with you or Walt and I hope I still don't. Just understand that this thread is highly offensive to me and others.

Thanks for your understanding,
Chris

Yea, I mean its not like they're Muslims or something!

(I also found the Clit reference offensive though)

When an author is too meticulous about his style, you may presume that his mind is frivolous and his content flimsy.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

[Skyrad 0]

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i'm taking your comments as somewhat tongue-in-cheeck, and i sincerely hope that was your intent. still, for catholics, such comments as yours can easily be very offensive to others.

The world doesn't care if Catholics get offended dude....haven't you heard. Unless you're Muslim, Jewish, or a Scientologist, the world won't demand apologies for relgious insensitivies.

Maybe the Church of Rome should go back to burning people at the stake for heresy then.

When an author is too meticulous about his style, you may presume that his mind is frivolous and his content flimsy.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

[micro 0]

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Not if I see you 1st Sinker

I'll tell ya what... If I see you first, the drinks are on me... if you see first, they're on you, deal?

I miss Lee.
And JP.
And Chris. And...

[Squeak 17]

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Not if I see you 1st Sinker

I'll tell ya what... If I see you first, the drinks are on me... if you see first, they're on you, deal?

That's not fair I dont drink so you get of cheap

You are not now, nor will you ever be, good enough to not die in this sport (Sparky)
My Life ROCKS!
How's yours doing?

[micro 0]

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Not if I see you 1st Sinker

I'll tell ya what... If I see you first, the drinks are on me... if you see first, they're on you, deal?

That's not fair I dont drink so you get of cheap

well then, you get the drink AND entree of your choice!

edit... no wonder your IQ is so high, you don't kill your brain cells w/ ETOH!

I miss Lee.
And JP.
And Chris. And...

[MattM 0]

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becasue me and my IQ which incidently sits about 2 standard deviations above the mean, must be really reading you so wrong

Was grammar included in that IQ test?

Comments like those above make you look like a prick by the way.

Thank you for you well thought out comments And try not to confuse an IQ score with academic learning (as so many other people do) tthey are so different from each other

Yea, I know... I should not have posted something so obvious. Don't flatter yourself, it didn't take much time or effort to post- but I'm glad you appreciate it.

And try not to confuse my sarcastic statements.

Matt

[jakee 1,545]

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w/ a score of 137, which is a bit more than 2 SDs above the mean, you'd be above more than 95% of all the population in intelligence... quite a rarity indeed.

A rarity? Surely 1 in every 20 people is above 95% of the population in intelligence. There are 55,440 registered usernames on DZ.com, assuming each is an individual user and the intelligence distribution is perfect then DZ.com would have 2,772 users who are more intelligent than the other 95%.

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A closing statement on intelligence and the bell curve in general... things that have a normative distribution, such as intelligence, the corresponding "bell curve" is known to be very robust and not easily skewed. Studies on intelligence, from what I can recall, that have occurred across races, ethnicities, religions and other demographies have shown that intelligence is, in fact, distributed on a normative basis. Egro, being Christian is not ipso facto a predictor of being less intelligent.

Take 100 civil engineers and 100 bricklayers and see if the same intelligence distribution occurs in each group.

To a degree (family and societal pressure counts a lot IMO) religiosity is something you 'opt into,' in which case intelligence may have something to do with whether a person chooses to be religious and thus affects the intelligence distribution of the religious group as a whole.

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[micro 0]

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Take 100 civil engineers and 100 bricklayers and see if the same intelligence distribution occurs in each group

actually, you will see a bell curve, a normative distribution for intelligence for the 100 CEs and 100 bricklayers you spoke of.

again, intelligence, like heighth, is naturally distributed that way, even among homogenious groups such as in your example. Now, the group of 100 CEs or 100 bricklayers will not be as widely dispersed (i.e. the standard deviation will be smaller), but you'll still get a bell shaped curve.

I miss Lee.
And JP.
And Chris. And...

[pirana 0]

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. . . there are some topics that just shouldn't be the source of an attempt at "humor."

Wrong. Nothing is beyond humor. There is the decency of timing - I wouldn't stand up in church and tell Jesus-on-the-cross jokes, or hit people up with abortion or dead baby jokes as they emerge from the clinic - but to say that some topic or another should just flat out not be a source of humor is in the same boat as censorship and political correctness.

" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

[pirana 0]

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Virgin my ass. She just didn't want to get in trouble. " I swear, we were just heavy pettting."

And so... a religion was born from a girl who lied. Unfuckingbelievable so to speak.

My thoughts exactly. If they thought their mothers would buy that tripe, every single pregnant teenager would be using that line. Of note is that it worked for her. Her mom must have been a real dufus.

If that is blasphemy and I am evil, then God strike me down right here, right now.

Still waiting.

How about now?

Still here.

(Humming while waiting for lightning bolt).

Gotta go, work to do. Strike me down later. Not during rush hour though, don't want to take out any innocents.

" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

[pirana 0]

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Just remember how intelligence is distributed. Recall the bell curve? Contrary to what the modern day cultural elitists lead you to believe, IQ has a normative distribution even among (GASP!) Christians and does not discriminate based on religious belief. There will be dumb ones in the lower tail, the majority will be in the middle, and there will be brilliant ones in the other tail.

And yes, I see those of you who have a disdain for Christians rolling your eyes and having a little chuckle over this, thinking that intelligence in the Christian community is, on the other hand a skewed distribution w/ everyone lumped around a very low mean. May Our Lady of the Chocolate Bunny (or whatever it was) smite you!

There are direct correlations between IQ and many character traits. Don't want to argue about it, but don't fool yourself into thinking that all people from all of the possible categories you could create (such as religious fundamentalists) are all perfectly distributed on the IQ curve. NOTE: This is a statement of correlation, not causality.

But yes, even highly intelligent people believe some pretty absurd stuff. A good read on this is Shermer's Why People Believe Wierd Things, or something like that. In fact, the last chapter is titled Why Intelligent People Believe Wierd Things.

" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

[pirana 0]

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What we're talking about is YOUR extreme lack of decorum in a public forum. Just b/c something offends your delicate sensibilities (the faith of Catholics) should not give you license to slew venomous garbage about a highly revered person in the faith of over a billion people.

Last time I looked you do not need a license to slew venomous garbage in Speakers Corner. In fact, to complain about lack of decorum here is humorous in itself. For Christ's sake, it seems in some threads half the posts start out with "What the fuck?"

I would think all the sensitive people have already gone elsewhere.

" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

[pirana 0]

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Just understand that this thread is highly offensive to me and others.

Thanks for your understanding,
Chris

Then why keep reading it?

" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

[micro 0]

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What we're talking about is YOUR extreme lack of decorum in a public forum. Just b/c something offends your delicate sensibilities (the faith of Catholics) should not give you license to slew venomous garbage about a highly revered person in the faith of over a billion people.

Last time I looked you do not need a license to slew venomous garbage in Speakers Corner. In fact, to complain about lack of decorum here is humorous in itself. For Christ's sake, it seems in some threads half the posts start out with "What the fuck?"

I would think all the sensitive people have already gone elsewhere.

Well pardon me for thinking it a worthy cause to expect people to actually at human.

I'll try to remember to not waste any energy encouraging people like yourself to make this place any less rancorous.

I miss Lee.
And JP.
And Chris. And...

[micro 0]

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Just understand that this thread is highly offensive to me and others.

Thanks for your understanding,
Chris

Then why keep reading it?

Because the TOPIC is important. Give me a break man, are you decerebrate?

I miss Lee.
And JP.
And Chris. And...

[pirana 0]

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Pity the atheist who is grateful but has no one to thank.

Pity the religious man who can't cope with reality.

Pity the non-religious who don't realize that God IS reality.

Pity the uh, . . . the uh, . . . . Rats! Can't come up with anything cutesy at the moment.

So I'll just ask why anyone would think a grateful atheist doesn't have anyone to thank.

" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

[Zenister 0]

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decerebrate

+10 for obscure word usage

____________________________________
Those who fail to learn from the past are simply Doomed.

[micro 0]

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decerebrate

+10 for obscure word usage

thank you thank you very much

I miss Lee.
And JP.
And Chris. And...

[pirana 0]

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Science and critical thinking are my realities, and yes I'm an atheist.

And this object looks like the Maltese Falcon to me .

Most religions, and certainly all the big organized ones, do not allow for critical thinking about their beliefs. They used to burn people for it, or at least jail them for life. They do not do that anymore, but it still pisses them off that a disciplined approach to discovering the true nature of the Universe came along after they had already posted all the answers; and has largely relegated them to matters of faith (which is where they should have stayed to begin with).

Quite the coincidence you mention one of my favorites of all time. I was just reading about Bogey this morning.

Is that a Miracle?

" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

[pirana 0]

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you know "white anglo saxon'.. just like the blue eyed christ you see on velvet

Oh, now that gives me a great idea. The world's Greatest Black Velvet Painting (that will be it's official title):

Jesus, Elvis, and a bunch of dogs playing poker, . . and Jesus is cheating!

" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

[pirana 0]

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Well, if the last one was the R, no wonder you tested so high... you were tested on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for CHILDREN (Revised)

And another thing, Einstein, the mean for most intelligence assessments is 100, w/ a standard deviation of either 10, 15 or 16 ( as in the case of the locus classicus, the Stanford Benet). Two standard deviations above the mean would never be more than 132, which would place you above 95% of the population in terms of intelligence (highly unlikely, IMO). If you scored a 150 in any of true intelligence tests, you've either cheated or you're smarter than Einstein himself. Either that or the test you took was an IQ test out of Cosmo.

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As that one kid on the Simpson's would say:

"HA HA!"

Also, I'm pretty certain 132 puts a person right at the bottom edge of the 98th percentile, as it is precisely the score a person must achieve to qualify for Mensa. Anything 132 or above puts you in the top 2%. I think a 150 makes you a 1 in 10,000 or so.

" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

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[pirana 0]

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Just remember how intelligence is distributed. Recall the bell curve? Contrary to what the modern day cultural elitists lead you to believe, IQ has a normative distribution even among (GASP!)

I'd like to know where you're getting your data, as mine indicates that this isn't the case.

Burnham P. Beckwit, in his article "The Effect of Intelligence on Religious Faith" (1986) summarized the major studies done on religiousity and IQ. All but four of the forty-three polls listed support the conclusion that native intelligence varies inversely with degree of religious faith; i.e., that, other factors being equal, the more intelligent a person is, the less religious he/she is.

His summary:

Sixteen studies of the correlation between individual measures of student intelligence and religiosity, all but three of which reported an inverse correlation. Five studies reporting that student bodies with high average IQ and/or SAT scores are far less religious than lower-scoring student bodies. Three studies reporting that geniuses (IQ 3+ standard deviations above average) are much less religious than the general public. Seven studies reporting that highly successful persons are much less religious in belief than are others; and eight old and four new Gallup polls revealing that college alumni (average IQ about one standard deviation above average) are much less religious in belief than are grade-school pollees.

Other studies:
A 1959 study of a group with IQs over 140 found that of men, 10 percent held strong religious belief, of women 18 percent (Terman). Sixty-two percent of men and 57 percent of women claimed "little religious inclination" while 28 percent of the men and 23 percent of the women claimed it was "not at all important."

A 1968 study (Southern and Plant) of Mensa members found that they had fewer religious beliefs than the typical American college alumnus or adult.

A survey (Larson and Witham, 1998) of the 517 members of the United States National Academy of Sciences showed that 72.2% of the members expressed "personal disbelief" in a personal God while 20.8% expressed "doubt or agnosticism" and only 7.0% expressed "personal belief".

I was going to post a much stronger opinion of Micros claim, but didn't feel like digging up the numbers. Thanks for digging and posting.

" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

[pirana 0]

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A closing statement on intelligence and the bell curve in general... things that have a normative distribution, such as intelligence, the corresponding "bell curve" is known to be very robust and not easily skewed. Studies on intelligence, from what I can recall, that have occurred across races, ethnicities, religions and other demographies have shown that intelligence is, in fact, distributed on a normative basis. Egro, being Christian is not ipso facto a predictor of being less intelligent.

I'm quite confident that if you took a truly representative sampling (the key word being TRULY!) of Christians, the faith in question here, I'm sure you'd see that their range of intelligence is quite similar to that of the general population. Most are lumped somewhere in the middle, with fewer and fewer being very smart and very "dumb."

There you go again with hope and desire meaning more than facts and evidence. So all the studies are flawed because you don't like the results?

" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

[pirana 0]

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I'm quite confident that if you took a truly representative sampling (the key word being TRULY!) of Christians, the faith in question here, I'm sure you'd see that their range of intelligence is quite similar to that of the general population.

ahh - the achilles heel of polling statistics. How do you tell if the sample is biased from the start?

It usually is. And when it's not, the pollster is and he hides the interactions (such as he only polled low income families on the religious side while collecting all the 'non-religious' data from the college debate team, etc)

collinearity is a bitch -

But NGale's post said 'religious' not just Christian, so easier to just reference that as well.

(I agree with you, there likely no statistical difference int he IQ disties from an unbiased sampling of christians vs a similarly collected sample of non-religious types - all other things like income, education, location, etc tracked and correctly accounted for in the analysis.)

Wrong. These studies have been going on for decades, and with very good controls in place. The results are very credible. None of the things you mentioned (income, education, location, religion) are evenly distributed on a curve of IQ. Again, speaking strictly of correlation, not causation.

" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

[billvon 3,044]

>Studies on intelligence, from what I can recall, that have occurred
>across races, ethnicities, religions and other demographies have shown
>that intelligence is, in fact, distributed on a normative basis.

That is definitely true. However, the center of all those bell curves are not necessarily the same, even if they all have a similar distribution.

> Egro, being Christian is not ipso facto a predictor of being less intelligent.

See above.

That being said, I don't know if it really matters all that much. Knowing that blacks score half an IQ point lower than whites, or that asians score a point higher, or that christians score a point lower than average - so what? It's a small difference, and the vast majority are still very close to each other in intelligence.