“Liberalism, atheism, male sexual exclusivity linked to IQ By Elizabeth Landau, CNN

(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.

Religion, the current theory goes, did not help people survive or reproduce necessarily, but goes along the lines of helping people to be paranoid, Kanazawa said.”

so tempted to go ‘nah nah nah nah nah’.

You’re right, of course. Methinks I’m getting too jaded about what people do and don’t take seriously.

I was always dismissive of Pascal’s Wager, because it never cuts in all directions. If you point out that the Wager applies to Zeus, they just say something like: “But everyone knows Zeus isn’t real!”

So I’ve always been inclined to interpret its use negatively. Now that you point it out, I’ll admit I’ve been wrong to do so.

Carry on. ^_^

For my two cents:

Aside from the problem that the Wager applies to Brahma just as much as it does to Yahweh, there’s another issue to consider:

Hedging your bets isn’t the same as actually believing something. If someone really believes in God, they shouldn’t need the Wager to help convince them.

So if the current reader is both a believer and considers the Wager to be a good reason to believe… Consider the true nature of your beliefs more closely. Do you believe, or do you just go through the motions of belief and hope nobody notices? Pretending to yourself that you believe isn’t the same as actually believing.

On the off chance that God does exist, I doubt He’d be any more impressed with the quality of your ‘belief’ than I am.

It’s worth some reflection.

Just starve him of attention.