Tea Party people are very conservative. They also claim to be very religious. The question I have is whether they are very intelligent. Several of the Republican candidates for president, including Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann, reject the Darwinian theory of evolution. They do this primarily on religious grounds. They tend toward the creationist theory that God created all living things just as they are. Also, despite the overwehlming weight of scientific evidence, they reject the current theory of global warming. It is kind of scary to think that one of these ignoramuses could become president of the United States.
The distinguished British biologist and author, Richard Dawkins, wrote about the ignorance of Rick Perry as follows:
"There is nothing unusual about Governor Rick Perry. Uneducated fools can be found in every country and every period of history, and they are not unknown
in high office. What is unusual about today’s Republican party (I disavow
the ridiculous ‘GOP’ nickname, because the party of Lincoln and Theodore
Roosevelt has lately forfeited all claim to be considered ‘grand’) is this:
In any other party and in any other country, an individual may occasionally
rise to the top in spite of being an uneducated ignoramus. In today’s
Republican Party ‘in spite of’ is not the phrase we need. Ignorance and lack
of education are positive qualifications, bordering on obligatory.
Intellect, knowledge and linguistic mastery are mistrusted by Republican
voters, who, when choosing a president, would apparently prefer someone like
themselves over someone actually qualified for the job."
The advent of "Uneducated fools" in the ranks of the Republican Party is explained by the general level of ignorance to be found in its Tea Party base. The people who make up the Tea Party fanatics are, for the most part, a highly uneducated group who resent the high education of President Obama and those around him. The fact is that Liberals and athiests are better educated and brighter than conservatives and religious believers.
It seems from all the studies done of the relative intelligence of conservatives and liberals, and of religious believers and atheists, that on the average liberals are more intelligent than conservatives, (George Will may or may not be an exception to the rule), and atheists are more intelligent than religious believers. Aside from the overwhelming weight of intelligence studies, the difference in intelligence between these groups is encountered on a daily basis. Have you ever noticed that the most educated people you know and meet are usually liberal and non-religious? The corollary of this is that the most conservative and religious people you know and meet are usually less well educated. One need only look at the high percentage of liberals and atheists among scientists, collage professors, and members of other educated professions.
I will not waste a lot of time defining the terms liberal, conservative, and atheist. But when I speak of somebody being “religious,” I am not talking about being spiritual, holy, or pious. By the term “religious” I mean the Tea Party type of people such as “Born-Again” Christians, Evangelicals, Pentecostals, and outspoken bible-thumping members of the so-called Religious Right who claim to be religious.
There have been a number of studies looking at whether liberals and atheists are more intelligent than conservatives and religious types. One is the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (or Add Health). The other is the General Social Survey (GSS). Both studies demonstrated that liberals are more intelligent than conservatives. The Add Health study shows that the mean IQ of adolescents who identify themselves as "very liberal" is 106, compared with a mean IQ of 95 for those calling themselves "very conservative." The Add Health study also found that there was a correlation between religion and intelligence. Non-religious people tended to be more intelligent than religious believers. The Add Health study is statistically significant because more than 20,000 young people were surveyed.
Researcher, Satoshi Kanazawa, of the London School of Economics and Political Science, has written a paper in which he quotes from the Add Health Survey along with other sources. He finds that more-intelligent people are more likely to describe themselves as liberal and non-religious. In another study, a British team found that young people with higher intelligence scores were more likely to grow into adults who vote for Liberal Democrats.
In 2008, intelligence researcher Helmuth Nyborg examined whether IQ relates to religion, using representative data from the Add Health and other studies. His results, published in the scientific journal "Intelligence," demonstrated that on average, Atheists scored 5.89 IQ points higher than religious types. These findings are supported by many other studies including the study by Lazar Stankova of the National Institute of Education in Singapore, the 1975 study by Norman Poythress, using SAT scores as a measure of intelligence, and others.
You need only look at the levels of education for media conservatives like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity, and compare them with those for liberals like Anderson Cooper, Keith Olberman, Bill Maher, and Rachel Maddow. Whereas Limbaugh, Beck, and Hannity never graduated from college (Limbaugh flunked-out), Anderson Cooper graduated from Yale, Keith Olberman and Bill Maher both graduated from Cornell, and Rachel Maddow obtained a doctoral degree from Oxford University in England.
The question is: Does this make any difference? I say yes. We obviously want our political leaders to be highly intelligent and well-educated. We have a president who graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School. He is surrounded by some of the most brilliant and highly educated people ever to work in the White House. Some of his Republican Tea Party opponents, however, seem to occupy the opposite end of the educational spectrum. Rick Perry of Texas, who graduated from Texas A&M with a 2.22 GPA in Animal Science, has been described as “intellectually challenged.” One Republican strategist says that Perry “benefits from an uncluttered mind.” Look at the educational credentials of Sarah Palin, the Right-Wing’s poster girl for dimwittedness. Michele Bachmann, who graduated from that distinguished center of learning, Winona State University, and got a Law degree at Oral Roberts University, displays her lack of knowledge with repeated and sometimes hilarious gaffs.
Liberals tend to be far more accepting of the findings of science than Tea Party types. Liberals accept the firmly established Darwinian theory of evolution, the science of global warming, and the burgeoning developments of stem cell research. Tea Party people embrace the pseudo-science of Creationism, deny the overwhelming evidence of global warming, and would stop stem-cell research in its tracks.
But even if liberals and atheists are smarter, are they any better people than Tea Party conservatives and religious believers? I say yes. Despite their claim for patriotism, piety, and purity, Tea Party types are often narrow, bigoted, hypocritical, and mean-spirited. They tend to despise minorities, poor people, gays, immigrants, non-Christians, and others. Liberals and Atheists tend to be more open-minded about the differences between people, and more accepting.
Theoretically, religion is supposed to make people better, kinder toward their fellow man, full of love and generosity. This is just not the case with Tea Party types. They tend to be small-minded, envious, and angry. While Christ spoke of charity toward the poor, Tea Party people deeply resent the aid that government gives poor and minority people. They are very judgmental toward poor people, asserting that such people are lazy parasites on the state. Instead of Christian charity, they seem to have a coldness if not repugnance toward the less fortunate.
The following by Paul Krugman is also very pertinent to this issue:
"Within the G.O.P., willful ignorance has become a litmus test for candidates...So it’s now highly likely that the presidential candidate of one of our two major political parties will either be a man who believes what he wants to believe, even in the teeth of scientific evidence, or a man who pretends to believe whatever he thinks the party’s base wants him to believe. And the deepening anti-intellectualism of the political right, both within and beyond the G.O.P., extends far beyond the issue of climate change."
I believe that when all things are added up, liberals and atheists are not only smarter than Tea Party types, but also better, more decent people. In many ways, they follow the teachings of Jesus better than the Tea Partiers.
Saturday, August 27, 2011
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