I Am Not Crazy or Stupid

A sign of intelligence is an awareness of one's own ignorance. -- Unknown

Here's the thing, if someone gives you some information and asks you to read it and consider it because it might give you a better understanding of the person you are dealing with. Do you read it? Do you take the time to try and understand your partner better or do you dismiss it and return to your standard stance of "It's not me, it's you"?

Because I would tend to lean towards actually wanting to learn how to make things better.

But that's the difference between intellect and ignorance. The intelligent person is keenly aware of how little they really do know whereas the ignorant person holds on to those beliefs like a life preserver without regard to new and contradictory information. The ignorant person has no choice but to stubbornly cling to what "knowledge" they have despite it being incomplete or outright wrong.

There's more to this, of course, there always is. There's a confirmation bias across all strata of intellect, that is, we all tend to think we are smarter than we really are but, as the level of intelligence rises, the margin of thinking we are smarter than we are comes down. Another way, the dumber a person is the more likely they are to overestimate their intelligence. The smarter a person is, the more likely they will be to be able to recognize that they don't know something.

Here's some more reading on the subject if you are so inclined (which is actually a sign that you're on the upper end of the spectrum because intellectual curiosity requires, you know, intellect). Incompetent People Too Ignorant to Know It.

God Dumbed

** Warning, religious smackdown ahead, veer off if you're going to get peeved. **

We atheists (or cynical agnostics on a good day) have long thought that believing in God is an indicator of IQ. That those who fervently believe are, generally and across populations, not as intelligent as those who do not believe. Part of the reasoning for this is because more intelligent people tend to be better educated and more likely to question faith.

Anecdotal evidence is everywhere. George Bush loves to thump the Bible (and has claimed that it is his guiding manual above the Constitution and Bill of Rights which he's SWORN to uphold) and he's an absolute fucking idiot.

Not to say that all people who have strong religious beliefs are sub-par intelligences. That would be rather stupid to presume. But, as London Metropolitan University's Dr. David Hardman says "...there is evidence from other domains that higher levels of intelligence are associated with a greater ability - or perhaps willingness - to question and overturn strongly felt intuitions."

In short, the stupid don't question, they believe. The intelligent question and, sometimes, discard religious thought as unnecessary foofery that explains nothing that can't be explained by science. It is still debatable about the tangental effects of strong beliefs, does a religious person have a more rigid moral code, a richer spiritual understanding of the universe

The problem in all of this is that it is hard to argue with a religious nut because, in addition to their foam-flecked faith, they're usually dumb. Not all but usually the loudest and most devout.