Why are geeks often atheists?

CutsieMarie89 said:
I think geeks/nerds tend to be atheist because they tend to be very logical and linear thinkers. Skills like this is what makes them exceptional in the fields of math and the physical sciences. If you do not think in a strictly logical fashion these subjects probably will not make as much sense to you. When one logically questions the existance of God or any other deity it does not logically fit. God like Santa Clause or a 6 foot tall talking cookie does not make logical sense, but that does not mean that they don't exist.
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Pretty much that's what I think...
 
What Is Intelligence, Anyway?
Isaac Asimov

What is intelligence, anyway? When I was in the army, I received the kind of aptitude test that all soldiers took and, against a normal of 100, scored 160. No one at the base had ever seen a figure like that, and for two hours they made a big fuss over me. (It didn't mean anything. The next day I was still a buck private with KP - kitchen police - as my highest duty.)

All my life I've been registering scores like that, so that I have the complacent feeling that I'm highly intelligent, and I expect other people to think so too. Actually, though, don't such scores simply mean that I am very good at answering the type of academic questions that are considered worthy of answers by people who make up the intelligence tests - people with intellectual bents similar to mine?

For instance, I had an auto-repair man once, who, on these intelligence tests, could not possibly have scored more than 80, by my estimate. I always took it for granted that I was far more intelligent than he was. Yet, when anything went wrong with my car I hastened to him with it, watched him anxiously as he explored its vitals, and listened to his pronouncements as though they were divine oracles - and he always fixed my car.

Well, then, suppose my auto-repair man devised questions for an intelligence test. Or suppose a carpenter did, or a farmer, or, indeed, almost anyone but an academician. By every one of those tests, I'd prove myself a moron, and I'd be a moron, too. In a world where I could not use my academic training and my verbal talents but had to do something intricate or hard, working with my hands, I would do poorly. My intelligence, then, is not absolute but is a function of the society I live in and of the fact that a small subsection of that society has managed to foist itself on the rest as an arbiter of such matters.

Consider my auto-repair man, again. He had a habit of telling me jokes whenever he saw me. One time he raised his head from under the automobile hood to say: "Doc, a deaf-and-mute guy went into a hardware store to ask for some nails. He put two fingers together on the counter and made hammering motions with the other hand. The clerk brought him a hammer. He shook his head and pointed to the two fingers he was hammering. The clerk brought him nails. He picked out the sizes he wanted, and left. Well, doc, the next guy who came in was a blind man. He wanted scissors. How do you suppose he asked for them?"

Indulgently, I lifted by right hand and made scissoring motions with my first two fingers. Whereupon my auto-repair man laughed raucously and said, "Why, you dumb jerk, He used his voice and asked for them." Then he said smugly, "I've been trying that on all my customers today." "Did you catch many?" I asked. "Quite a few," he said, "but I knew for sure I'd catch you." "Why is that?" I asked. "Because you're so goddamned educated, doc, I knew you couldn't be very smart."

And I have an uneasy feeling he had something there.
 
S.A.M. said:
What Is Intelligence, Anyway?
Isaac Asimov

What is intelligence, anyway? When I was in the army, I received the kind of aptitude test that all soldiers took and, against a normal of 100, scored 160. No one at the base had ever seen a figure like that, and for two hours they made a big fuss over me. (It didn't mean anything. The next day I was still a buck private with KP - kitchen police - as my highest duty.)

All my life I've been registering scores like that, so that I have the complacent feeling that I'm highly intelligent, and I expect other people to think so too. Actually, though, don't such scores simply mean that I am very good at answering the type of academic questions that are considered worthy of answers by people who make up the intelligence tests - people with intellectual bents similar to mine?

For instance, I had an auto-repair man once, who, on these intelligence tests, could not possibly have scored more than 80, by my estimate. I always took it for granted that I was far more intelligent than he was. Yet, when anything went wrong with my car I hastened to him with it, watched him anxiously as he explored its vitals, and listened to his pronouncements as though they were divine oracles - and he always fixed my car.

Well, then, suppose my auto-repair man devised questions for an intelligence test. Or suppose a carpenter did, or a farmer, or, indeed, almost anyone but an academician. By every one of those tests, I'd prove myself a moron, and I'd be a moron, too. In a world where I could not use my academic training and my verbal talents but had to do something intricate or hard, working with my hands, I would do poorly. My intelligence, then, is not absolute but is a function of the society I live in and of the fact that a small subsection of that society has managed to foist itself on the rest as an arbiter of such matters.

Consider my auto-repair man, again. He had a habit of telling me jokes whenever he saw me. One time he raised his head from under the automobile hood to say: "Doc, a deaf-and-mute guy went into a hardware store to ask for some nails. He put two fingers together on the counter and made hammering motions with the other hand. The clerk brought him a hammer. He shook his head and pointed to the two fingers he was hammering. The clerk brought him nails. He picked out the sizes he wanted, and left. Well, doc, the next guy who came in was a blind man. He wanted scissors. How do you suppose he asked for them?"

Indulgently, I lifted by right hand and made scissoring motions with my first two fingers. Whereupon my auto-repair man laughed raucously and said, "Why, you dumb jerk, He used his voice and asked for them." Then he said smugly, "I've been trying that on all my customers today." "Did you catch many?" I asked. "Quite a few," he said, "but I knew for sure I'd catch you." "Why is that?" I asked. "Because you're so goddamned educated, doc, I knew you couldn't be very smart."

And I have an uneasy feeling he had something there.
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Meh, I think his example was flawed, though obviously there is some truth. But what is the point?

My intelligence, then, is not absolute but is a function of the society I live in and of the fact that a small subsection of that society has managed to foist itself on the rest as an arbiter of such matters.
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Isn't that a good thing that society is like that?

I think the self-deprecating part at the end was a style of his in his non-fiction to avoid seeming too full of himself. I have suspicions that he rightly thinks himself smarter than that vulgar mechanic of his ;p Too bad he died before blogging.
 
One flaw is in the presumption that what is known as "common sense" is prevalent among the barely educated.
In reality, the mechanic was more likely to sneer inwardly and charge Asimov for replacing several parts that did not require replacement, and joke about his gullibility to his mates down the pub afterwards, never giving any thought to the machine in his workshop which makes his job ten times easier by dint of automating diagnostic functions.

People like to think of the working classes in much the same way they idealise the "Noble Savage", but the reality of the situation is often somewhat different. John Steinbeck, for example, was certainly guilty of this, but then he was writing about a different generation, and a different time.

Which is not to say the story does not have a point, nor that this particular mechanic does not exist.
 
SAM said:
And discriminate against them. I'm sure you're familiar with Watsons views on the Black.

I wonder how many athiests (with the HiQ) hold similar views.
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Few. They are disreputable, sneered at by those with pretensions. Watson himself does not hold them - he has long since repudiated the implications of earlier statements he made, on both technical and personal grounds, and publicly admitted embarrassment over the intellectual and theoretical baselessness of those implications as well as their offensive nature.

Apology for error is something else we don't see much of from hardcore theists.


john99 said:
And it is a fact that more and more scientists are questioning evolution as it relates to an all encompassing methodology.
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But not as it relates to the origin oand development of the forms of life on this planet. But you knew that, right - because you have educated yourself further since your last series of uninformed questions, and now you understand the basics of the standard theory of evolution and what kinds of evidence support it ?

Meanwhile, "more and more" scientists are employing the basic theories of evolution for a wide variety of seemingly unrelated investigations and technologies - as an insight into the emergence of orgainzed complexity without design input, it is turning out to be generally enlightening and useful.

As far as geeks being atheist - most geeks, like most people, were raised theist; anything that makes most people independent from their upbringing will tend to increase the likelihood of their becoming atheist compared with other people, just by that fact. High intelligence and specialized technical interests both do that. But in the long run most geeks are theist if they were raised theist, and most likely in the general form in which they were raised. Early childhood conditioning is powerful stuff, and most geeks specialize in technical fields easily adaptable to the major theistic religions.

As far as eugenicists being disproportionately atheistic - probably true in the West, especially England and the US (and formerly in Germany and central Europe generally) as simply understanding genetics and evolution puts one in direct intellectual and ethical conflict with a large proportion of the theists of one's childhood community in the West. It's probably easier to throw out the baby if the bathwater is deep and noxious.

In the East, I've noticed a deep eugenicist strain in hardcore theists - regarding the "Jewish race" and other such genetically inferior subgroups, for example.
 
phlogistician said:
'Geeks' aren't sheep. Sheep follow fashion, and religious leaders too easily.

Although I don't think the generalisation holds. I geeks are likely to be athiests, but atheists not generally geeks, it's not a bijection.

Myself and all of my friends are atheists, and certainly not geeks, for instance. We prefer red wine over caffeine, and dangerous sports over Unix. I do have Garth-esque long hair, however.
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Most people are sheep, or at least are closer to being sheep than the are to being the free thinking intelligent creatures that we people like to pretend that we are.

Geeks are not an exception. They are sheep, but a different kind of sheep. Throw a white lab coat on a guy and geeks will believe whatever he says even if he is talking nonsense. Geeks turn the look and style of objectivity into their religion. The average geek is only a little more logical than the average religious fanatic but the geeks like to appear logical. Being an atheist helps the geek to convince himself that he is more logical and therefore superior.

Each subset of sheep has a different opinion of what it means to be superior. For Geeks inteligence and objectivity = superiority.
 
spidergoat said:
Part of John's problem can be illustrated this way. For legal purposes, you are either a minor or an adult. If you look at the population, no one is transitional between minor and adult, you are either one or the other. In reality, we know the growth towards adulthood happens gradually. In the same way, taxonomists like to classify something as belonging to one species or the other. This means no fossil is ever in transition from one species to another. But this says nothing about the real world, only about our classification systems.

In fact, there are numerous transitional fossils between the larger taxonomical groups.
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Transitional fossils, the lack of or perception of them is not that important, at least to me. One reason is they will always be open to interpretation. I think you are more aware of what i am saying and where this is heading than you are leading on.
 
iceaura said:
Few. They are disreputable, sneered at by those with pretensions. Watson himself does not hold them - he has long since repudiated the implications of earlier statements he made, on both technical and personal grounds, and publicly admitted embarrassment over the intellectual and theoretical baselessness of those implications as well as their offensive nature.

Apology for error is something else we don't see much of from hardcore theists.
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Boy are you mistaken!

Look up his history in CSHL. This was not a one off.
 
John99 said:
Transitional fossils, the lack of or perception of them is not that important, at least to me. One reason is they will always be open to interpretation. I think you are more aware of what i am saying and where this is heading than you are leading on.
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I'm not. Please help me. Where is this heading???
 
SAM said:
Boy are you mistaken!

Look up his history in CSHL. This was not a one off.
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CSHL? I keep running into this kind of stuff in my sources:
Dr Watson arrived in Britain on Thursday ready to visit five different venues. That evening, he said he had been “mortified” by the response to the interview. “To all those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologise unreservedly,” he said.

“That is not what I meant. More importantly, there is no scientific basis for such a belief.” He went on: “I cannot understand how I could have said what I am quoted as having said. I can certainly understand why people reading those words have reacted in the ways they have.”
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There have been and are many atheistic eugenicists and atheistic "racial" supremacists, such as the famous Shockley, though. So if your point is made by example consider it made, whatever it is.
 
You have got to be kidding , have any of you read what your saying . O ne would have to sit down and talk to Charles Manson to gain the insight to all of mankind that you all have.Until the secrets of the universe are unlocked, and they never will be,that is unless, as Im sure you might think, you have the key, man will just go on. Intelligent design? you cannot create something from nothing. As man has always done, look to the sky, there is something, but what?
 
iceaura said:
CSHL? I keep running into this kind of stuff in my sources:

There have been and are many atheistic eugenicists and atheistic "racial" supremacists, such as the famous Shockley, though. So if your point is made by example consider it made, whatever it is.
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Almost everyone agrees on some form of eugenics, I think that the rationally inclined are simply slower to dismiss other notions of eugenics. Similarly, I don't know of any atheists who are racist because they are not religious, I simply suspect that they are slower to dismiss the notion that there could be other differences associated with variations in human genetics. Moreover, there have been and are numerous deeply racist religious individuals. One could even make a good argument that this is encouraged by some holy texts.
 
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