The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.
–Bertrand Russell
This post by Lion of the Blogosphere brought the above quote to mind. Mediocre minds have a habit of thinking themselves to be very smart, simply because they have internalized the assumptions of the cool crowd. In this case, he has been conditioned by his urban lifestyle to associate religiosity with intelligence. He clearly does not understand the topic, but it is a pose that makes him feel good so he is extra confident in it.
Anyway, it always bugs me when people talk about “believing” in evolution. You believe in things you don’t know or cannot know. One can believe in god, but you cannot prove the existence of god or the absence of god. You either believe or you don’t believe. Evolutionary biology is not a matter of belief. We have data from the fossil record. We have genetic data that is advancing every year. We have theories that explain the data and help in the search for new data. There are no leaps of faith involved.
As with all science, there’s a chance we have it all wrong. There’s no question we have some things wrong, as correction are common. The history of science, after all, is the history of bad ideas that were replaced with less bad ideas. This is especially true when it comes to natural science. People keep working a problem until the problem is solved and the solution joins the stock of axioms that form the foundation of science.
As far as whether accepting evolution is a sign of intelligence or not has always been one of those weird ticks of the Left. Years ago, they use to decorate their cars with Darwin fish, because they thought it tormented religious people. Now it is pretty clear that the Left is lurching into some very primitive thinking with regards to biology, as they embrace nonsense about human sexuality and race denial-ism. It’s pretty clear that the liberal embrace of evolution was always just a pose and nothing about science.
Anyway, the attempt to correlate belief and IQ is the sort of thing a supercilious person does when they want to appear clever. Belief is most certainly a biological human trait that probably co-evolved with language. The fact that all human groups have belief in the supernatural, buttressed with customs and rituals that frame out their culture, is what is generally called a clue. Belief, with religion being a subset, is most certainly something that has been selected for in human religion. We’re born to be true believers.
Of course, many high IQ people believe in very crazy stuff. Noam Comsky is very smart guy for sure. He also think it is a good idea to murder people who don’t get along with Castro. The Blaize Pascal was a brilliant mathematician and theorist. He also was a fanatical Christian. Many of the physicists who worked on the Manhattan project were communists. Newton was obsessed with alchemy. The highly intelligent tend to be highly curious and prone to believing a lot of very wacky things as a result.