I admit I only read your introduction, not the article.
To my understanding the IQ is measured against a normative sample of the population.
If this normative sample is well taken, then the average IQ in a country should be around 100.
So, to get to the results of the map some things needs to be done quite wrongly. Either they were all compared to a single normative sample or the samples were really not representative. Either way the results are skewed.
Also interested in the notion of a "top 3 UK university" when there are famously only two (Cambridge and Hull, Oxford being a complete dump - Melchett, 1989)
It's neither Cambridge nor Oxford. Perhaps I'm not very familiar with the ratings of universities in the UK. But if you could mention the top rated 5 Unis I could indicate if the one I had in mind is one of them?
I'm being a little bit silly - it just seems incongruous when historically there has been a complete duopoly that "top 3" seems contrived to a British ear. For most areas of study there will be another highly-rated institution almost invariably in London, often exceedingly high standard/competitiveness in international terms and overtaking Oxbridge in particular areas at postgraduate level.
And I wanted to do the joke from Blackadder, that was the main thing.
I smiled reading it. It immediately brings to mind many of such types that I have as friends and acquaintances. For this type, they see no contradiction in their worldviews whatsoever and I think the reason is because for them the rational-scientific worldview serves a function separate from the religious one which I kinda see the point. One gives them meaning and the other gives them a false sense of intellectual status, especially among their fellow religious in-group.
I was working in retail a couple of years ago, had a very sharp colleague from the Ivory Coast, in TV sales, who was well-versed in European history. He held a masters from a decent, Russell Group, British University, would talk about the origins of the Seven Years' War, the historical geostrategic importance of Crimea to Russia, the British Empire in West Africa. He has a gift for sparkling historical anecdote and analysis, deep thinker, and was definitely reasonably high IQ. But then he would start talk about faith healing and spirit mediums with no less conviction.
A Hausa customer came in one day, a visiting, published Academic, mathematician. Sold him a Google Pixel phone, before he started talking about the need to reverse colonise the Europeans. "They gave us Christianity, and it WORKED, it FIXED all of our problems, and now it is our turn to bring the gospel to YOU". I told him that I was Igbo (mixed, Igbo, Indian, English) and he appeared stunned for several seconds, dropped his received pronunciation accent and said "Ah you eva confused about what you ah?!"
The more I think of it I've encountered this "default setting" of primitive religious enthusiasm, that you describe in your brother, over and over again, even in high IQ Africans. I've never really thought too much of it: Africans are extremely religious, and much more candid and less rehearsed in their social interactions. It therefore never seemed particularly jarring.
This article was deeply challenging to my previously held beliefs. I'm going to have to process this for a while. Thanks for sharing.
I do have a few thoughts:
1. Perhaps a bit of hope can be taken in the many authors who have proposed that Christianity provided the West with the incubation conditions needed to fully embrace the scientific mindset. It encourages people to seek the truth, test the spirits, and doubt supernatural claims from other groups, which often winds up turning on itself. The rapid Christianization of Africa might be a pathway towards changing those deeply held characteristics that hold back the continent.
2. I don't think it's quite fair to completely disregard colonialism as a factor in the impovrishment of these countries. Starting their entrance to modernity by being conquered, subjugated, and extracted from before having to throw off their colonizers certainly exacerbated the problems you've pointed out, don't you think? And that's not even considering the effects that the world seed bank still has in extracting wealth from African agriculture towards the West by economic necessity.
3. My concern with the proposed Charter City solution is not that it wouldn't reduce poverty, it's a concern over the question: Should we be pursuing economic growth in a planet already overburdened by the demands of our economy? How many more major metropolitan cities can the earth sustain? According to the book *Limits to Growth*, we've already overshot Earth's economic capacity. To me, seeking economic justice and equality seems to be a better long term solution than continuing to ramrod ourselves into growing an economy that is poisoning our air and water, raising the global temperature rapidly, acidifying the oceans, and causing global wars. Do you agree?
To your first point: it isn't Christianity per se or Islam or the specific religion that's the problem. It's the religious mindset. It is the quality of the natural mind through which the specific religion is being expressed. A quality and sound mind can take the worst of ideologies and still make something palatable out of it. So, no, I don't share your optimism that Christianity or any religion whatsoever can reprise its (arguably dubious) historical potency in the hand and mind of Africans. If anything, it has further reinforced the worst elements in the cognitive architecture of black people. And I should add that I don't agree whatsoever with the very popular theory that it was Christianity that was largely responsible for the rise of the modern West. I believe today's Western culture would still have happened with or without Christianity. There's definitely a reason why the same west has largely superceded Christianity in their cosmology.
I genuinely sympathize with your second point. I think it has a strong but questionable merit. I think you, like many other well-meaning outsiders, are over-sympathizing with a people whose perpetual developmental stasis (relative to the rest of the world) has stubbornly resisted any and every attempt to demystify it. Nonetheless, your point about the role and historical timing of colonialism would earn more validity if you could assert that Africa's colonial experience has no historical parallel in other places.
I think I understand the concern behind your third point. But it's easy for me to guess that you've never properly lived in and among black Africans. I invite you to just pay a one month visit to Nigeria (if you could last that long) and see if you would still think that your alternative solutions of "economic justice and equality" is possible without a vehicle like a charter city or something of that mold.
I tend to agree with you on the first point, I think the Enlightenment, which was in many ways a rejection of the Christian past had more to do with the secularization of what were likely people of equal superstition at the time. I just figured people with more degrees than I had made that argument before and hoped you'd find it hopeful.
On the second point, there are historical parallels, and they have largely had the same problems that Africa has. India, South America, until recently China, and the many nations of Southeast Asia were all colonies that had to overcome colonialism and have had problems with mass wealth inequality and development. The exceptions are America, Canada, and Australia, but those former colonies became colonizers themselves and thus became prosperous.
On the third point, I would genuinely love to visit any part of Africa. And, to be clear, when I say economic justice, what I mean is things like western economies paying an actually fair market price for the resources generated there instead of the lowest price possible. This would cause wealth to move away from the West and into impovrished nations. I want less stuff. I feel like a slave to my stuff. We don't need this much stuff. And I especially don't want this much stuff if it means people elsewhere suffer so that I can have it.
I don't think it's a coincidence that what China and those "many nations of southeast Asia" that have been able to "overcome colonialism" have in common is one of the highest estimated average global national IQ. In addition, those nations appear to have a collective personality that's high in conscientiousness and public stewardship. India, on the other hand, isn't much better than say Nigeria both in estimated average IQ and the most dominant collective tendencies of her average citizens. What we observe in developmental patterns and which you've pointed out is that my hypothesis holds fast: there's a minimum average collective IQ and average behavioral tendencies that's needed in order to successfully shepherd a people out of a mindset that is anti-emancipation.
And regarding your clarification on economic justice and equality being delivered through reparations, I think it's still a naive though well-intentioned proposal. I don't think you have any idea of the profound and crass moral and spiritual rottenness of the African leadership class. Give them that reparative bounty and wash it all disappear into their pockets. The only way it could be judiciously used is if it's not handed directly to them and administered strictly through a trusted external institutional agent. If this was what you had in mind, then yes, I agree it's a good suggestion.
But in then end, this kind of restitutive handout does nothing to change the core problems at the heart of Africa's poverty. It does nothing to reeducate our mind or reorient our sociocultural attitude or reshape our natural tendencies or upgrade our collective standard in public accountability, etc. If anything, it reinforces and legitimizes our already endemic sense of victimhood which has been the most dominant narrative among educated Africans.
I’ve stumbled onto an *interesting* side of Substack. The best indicator of low intelligence is actually poverty and access to information. And the fact this guys brother is super religious despite being educated is hardly indicative of anything when u consider Europeans engaged in holy wars and mass atrocities, genocides and colonisation with religion as its greatest weapon.
Also true when u consider ur avg super religious type the world over. They would all believe homosexuality is a demon to be exorcised.
IQ tests have long been discredited and even out right debunked, and overall recognised as an incredibly inaccurate measurement of human intelligence, with the best indicator for doing well on a test being one’s education as I mentioned.
I’m sure Charlatan sees himself as the smartest Nigerian to live, ready to diagnose the reason Africa is a backwards society while casually brushing off centuries of oppression, brutalisation and neocolonialism under the guise of taking ownership. Unfortunately for him, deliberately not engaging with the real ongoing effects of history betrays a lot more abt his intelligence than he imagines.
I’d advise u to research ur own peoples history. Dive deep into ur history before colonialism and exploitation(remember the religiosity u critique so much did not exist in Africa before colonialism).
Thanks for your comment Merari. Like I stated in the opening statements to the essay, I don't expect many of my compatriots and other Africans to disagree with me. But the interesting thing about your disagreement is that it's exactly what the article predicted such disagreement would be based on. Externalized factors. For anyone who locate the most fundamental challenge of black people in externalized-historical factors, it's really difficult to make them revise that perspective because it's mostly being driven by an epistemic outlook that proceeds more from their individual psychology which is often characterized by a profound sense of hurt, frustration, and victimhood. Do externalized-historical factors have a role to play in the whole picture? Certainly yes. But they're more like adjuvants to the active ingredients driving black people's perpetual vulnerability.
And yes, religiousity has always existed in Africa and everywhere else, except you consider only the Abrahamic faiths the only legitimate religion.
PS: Your critique regarding the bit about my brother is a good one. But if you could take the trouble to go through that part of the essay, you'd also realize that the core point I was making wasn't really about his education and religiousity, but the fact that it's the only lens through which he interprets material reality. His epistemology, and those of others like him, isn't pluralistic nor is it being challenged by any other rival epistemology within Africa. It holds a monolithic sway everywhere on the subcontinent.
PSS: And you only need to take my pseudonym seriously to realize that I don't consider myself the way you supposed. But then again if you're a cynic, I believe you may think I'm being cheeky.
My disagreement isn’t because of external factors by the way, it is based on lack of access to education for vast swaths of the continental African population. As I mentioned that is actually the greatest indicator of low intelligence in a population, or an individual for that matter.
I mention ‘external factors’ like neocolonialism because that explains WHY an African might lack access to education. To you these external factors are simply the cherry on top of the low IQ African cake, but as I’ve mentioned already this is demonstrably false. And again like I said, deliberately failing to engage with these factors, while simultaneously trying to diagnose the supposed intelligence of over 1 billion people is genuinely stupid and erroneous by every standard and definition.
You are literally arguing a hypothesis, and in trying to prove said hypothesis, you don’t control for factor a. This is exactly how you get terrible IQ studies in the first place.
On religiosity, indeed when I say religion I’m really talking abt Christianity seeing as I recognise at least some of the pastors you mention as Christian pastors. I don’t see how this changes my point however. The issue here is you think your brother’s way of viewing the world is unique to the African brain, viewing the world through one lens when this is not true. This is a worldwide phenomenon.
Finally, in the interest of time and length, your assertion on your brother’s epistemology is again demonstrably false. Abrahamic religion and worldview might be dominant, but the idea it is not being challenged and other philosophical arguments and beliefs on engaging with and viewing Christianity etc is again, just false.
A different world view is as real as you perceive it to be. If you had more respect for the philosophers and academics of your continent, you would see vast swaths of work and ideologies rooted in pre colonial history and genuine pondering by the African mind. Instead you think all of them are victims because they don’t bother with IQ debates. The fact your brother sees the world through a rigid Christian lens is his own business. There’s a million examples of this happening in the west (anti-vaxxers!). A world wide phenomenon as I’ve already mentioned.
I appreciate the reply but my advice remains the same as before. Instead of seeing those around you as low IQ, gain some respect and pride for the group of people who produced someone with a mind like yours. If we want to be anecdotal, then at least you are proof that the African is not inherently low IQ, even if you are wasting your intelligence on a field that is seeking to undermine it at the same time.
I'm sure you've spoken for many others who don't agree with my take. And I think that's important. I had to caution myself against digging my feet in. Thanks for taking the time to critically engage the article.
I’m a Nigerian too, albeit Nigerian/American and I challenge the OP. He and I are likely from the same ethnic group. Nigeria has incredibly high religiosity, but the reason for that has more to do with culture than IQ.
A few large problems:
A) The country is very poor. And has poor drainage/ sewage/ ect. Most Nigerians constantly deal with malaria, hunger, and other parasitic illnesses. There is no way to be able to dream of great worlds or have great philosophical debates when you are going hungry. And of course, an IQ test on a kid who is hungry, or who is having malaria for the third time that month is not reflective of their overall ability.
B. )On an IQ test, Two aspects are vulnerable: one is vocabulary. The WAIS-V asks you what terpsichorean means. How many Nigerians have the time to read? Forget about if they were taught that word in Nigeria’s slowly failing secondary schools. Also many Nigerians speak a second language. Another portion of the IQ test is general knowledge, that asks questions such as: “ who was Martin Luther king?” This is a real question from the test. Many Nigerians would not know this. Finally you have Raven matrixes, which at least, are less vulnerable to culture effects and pattern matching. However, even those can be gamed or trained.
Any reasonable psychologist is aware of his or her limitations, that without norms you can’t be sure how accurate you are and also that you can miss the forest for the trees. When you measure IQ, you have to understand what you can and cannot measure and confront the reality of what is unknowable.
Anytime any African or person states he is sure of a nation’s IQ, you must distrust it in the extreme.
You have to ask him who was tested?
How?
With which test?
Which ethnic group?
How many years of schooling?
Were the children tested able to eat that day? Were those children sick that day?
How many parasites were those kids carrying?
You may laugh at that but Nigeria had a civil war in the 1960s, and over a million people starved to death. I was waiting for @Charlatan to mention that to you but he did not. I’m not sure why, maybe he has his own reasons.
B) Are people with over 120 IQs rare in Nigeria?
Correcting for Nigeria’s endemic poverty?
No, they aren’t rare. They just leave if they can. So there is a selection effect.
Next.
The bigger issue is more pernicious, and I think this is what bothers Western audiences more and bothered me more when I visited Nigeria. Our culture is very obsessed with Christianity. And not to our benefit. Every street had a church, not a library.
This is a recent turn in our elite preoccupations, in the time of Awolowo and MKO Abiola, elites competed to educate the people. Unfortunately, global Christianity has told our elites to chase heaven instead of focus on the realities on earth; so now they build churches and not universities. It is an utter shame and a disappointment. I wish Christians, of which I am one, would please be more considerate when they are teaching religion all over the world because often the interaction with religion and culture has bad side effects.
Another bigger issue is our elites are extractive. They claim to be Nigerian but their kids are in London and their mistresses are in Dubai or Italy. Nigeria is the place they extract wealth, and due to a global banking system that turns a blind eye, they place their money in Swiss bank where they can live wonderfully while everyone is immiserated.
There is much more, but suffice it to say, @Charlatan’s surety about the IQ of his fellow Nigerians is just questionable.
Unfortunately, cultures can regress and elites make terrible decisions at times.
“Any reasonable psychologist is aware of his or her limitations, that without norms you can’t be sure how accurate you are and also that you can miss the forest for the trees.” A simple question for you, Light: are you aware that a normed version of the Ravens test based on a Nigerian sample and conducted by Nigerian researchers exist? And it still estimated the average IQ at around (65-71). Not sure the exact number but definitely within that range though different for both genders.
Second, you made some fantastic points but I don't think I have much to disagree with because almost all your points ultimately support my argument - you've just chosen to follow a different roundabout route to the same destination.
Third, one mistake that most people who have been critical of the essay keep making is them missing a very glaring claim I made in the write-up: I was quite explicit in stating that I don't think IQ per se is the main problem. I was specific in identifying the dimensions of cognitive operation I believe is more problematic for black people and I wish critics would speak to that.
Also I wish more people would challenge the part of the essay where I implicate our collective personality (that is, our average behavioral, reactive, belief dispositions). I would really love to read anything that challenges this take because as far as I'm concerned I assign more causal weight to it than IQ per se.
I was not aware that the Ravens were created normed on Nigerians. But once again, ravens measures a fluid intelligence not all intelligences. The tradeoff would be one would then miss verbal intelligence. All the other criticisms I made about your measure of IQ: about starvation, illness still remain.
I say this bluntly: You do not know the average Nigerian IQ. And when environmental factors are so significant, the usefulness of IQ as a proxy for g (general intelligence breaks down). To some extent, this entire debate is based on a falsehood. This is my greatest critique of you.
I agree with you to the fact that the Nigerian culture in Nigeria has different cultural norms however I disagree with you that brilliant Nigerians are rare. They are not. There are a lot of Nigerian geniuses. Let us not lie to this nice white lady.
The other disagreement I have is that I don’t think our differences in culture are due to genetics. They are due to the fact that different cultures make different decisions. And they made different decisions at different points in time. I mean, look at the Europeans themselves, not very long ago, they were mired in witchcraft and other occult beliefs.
And our elites, not too long ago, did add value to our culture. Obafemi Awolowo, and others were amazing. They competed to build schools, build the country but something changed in the 1970s to 1980s. You have to explain what that was. Our genes didn’t change within ten years.
My third disagreement with you is your delineation of the causes is too simplistic. After all, subSaharan Africa also didn’t get a chance to mix with other cultures as well due to it’s location. The geography factor matters a great deal.
The fact that our elites can send money overseas and abroad, turns them from a group that is forced to invest in Nigeria into an extractive one. This is a problem.
The multiculturalness of Nigeria means that there is a lot of tribal and ethnic conflict means that it is hard for people to come together as a nation and have one standard.
All the other examples you chose; North Korea, Japan, Singapore, they were all dominated by one ethnic group. That really makes it easy to enforce values and norms, and also to have shared trust, because you can have a high trust society among people who are your kin.
The way human minds develop is based on the problem set that the mind is challenged with while it's developing. Two different cultures with radically different problem sets are going to develop brains that might not do as well on the opposite cultures tests, and that does not mean that the people of one culture, or the other, are "less smart".
Africa is not "much more genetically diverse than Europe". By all means - physical features, psychological features, etc. Europeans are by far more diverse. Africans have only one hair colour, one eye colour, don't have any of food adaptions white people have, and so on and so forth. Africans are much more underdeveloped, unevolved as people, that's why their genetics LOOK LIKE more diverse. And this is the real reason - IQ is hereditary, no matter what leftist wiki pages say, and the reason Africans have lower IQ is genetic. They didn't evolve the same way Europeans did. And, the simple reason why an African with IQ of 70 is not socially awkward in Africa is because OTHERS are also with the same IQ. When they come to Europe they are most definitely "awkward".
Genetic association studies have confirmed a century of quantitative genetic research showing that inherited DNA differences are responsible for substantial individual differences in intelligence test scores.
Thank you for citing evidence. I am aware that genetics are a driver of intelligence, but the paper is explicit that genetics account for ~50% of intelligence.
So it is important to consider the external factors that contribute to the remaining 50%. As such, 'IQ is hereditary, no matter what leftist wiki pages say, and the reason Africans have lower IQ is genetic.' seems like an incomplete conclusion to arrive at. It fails to reference the other contributing 50% entirely.
I was also quite surprised by 'Africa is not "much more genetically diverse than Europe". By all means - physical features, psychological features, etc. Europeans are by far more diverse. Africans have only one hair colour, one eye colour, don't have any of food adaptions white people have...'
Considering the paper you cited used GWAS to determine genetic associations to intelligence, I assume you trust GWAS as a technique. So I have attached below a paper which uses GWAS, and shows Africa as the most genetically diverse continent.
'Africans are much more underdeveloped, unevolved as people, that's why their genetics LOOK LIKE more diverse'
I would also appreciate if you could cite literature to support this as well. I'm very curious to learn more and would hate to dismiss such a fascinating claim unfairly.
Anyways, I do think it's a shame that you consider a request for evidence as a 'typical leftist attack'; asking questions and the pursuit of knowledge should not be tied to political affiliation.
Where is the literature that you cite to support gravity? Where is the literature to support iq as non-hereditary? 50% is HUGE. I am sorry, but you are leftist troll, and your claims are absurd. I don’t have a reason to defend my position to you. You can always choose to live in Cuba, Venezuela, Russia, etc, but you don’t. So, the case is closed. Leftists are incompetent evils
Arguing with morons is not productive. Besides, I conclusively proved my point: you were unable to cite any literature defending your point, nor even such a simple thing as gravity. So, by your logic, you should jump from somewhere high and see what happens. The world would be better. :))))
It is everywhere - from Wikipedia, through genetic books to scientific textbooks. All that is needed is a google search. Can you show me a literature where it’s disproven? Let me ask you a different question: can you cite me literature where gravity is proven? This is typical leftist attack, but I will give you the benefit of the doubt
Thanks for sharing this. Yes, I could easily see the epistemological parallels, different times, different natives, but same epistemological architecture.
It bizarrely anticipates some fundamental aspects of an article I'm working on regarding the uniquely black African phenomenon of money ritual. I'll be citing the piece in my own article to broaden and ground my argument that there's something common in the worldview that animates the thinking of most, if not all, black African societies.
Charlatan I'd like your thoughts on this. In the West the elite is currently espousing that in fact everything about Western culture since the Renaissance, including the Industrial Revoltion, Imperialism, science and what I would call "rational thought", is "racist". So we are told that the scientific method discriminates against non-white people. That mathematics, and statistics is discriminatory. That meritocracy is "racist". That all cultures are equal, and therefore having the expectation that a black or brown person turns up to work on time, and puts in a full days work, is discriminatory. That belief in any sort of religion, no matter how fringe or bizarre is accepted over a belief in science. This is now so prevalent that people who do not subscribe to this view are sacked, denied promotion, or simply not employed in the first place. Yet your thesis is that such beliefs are what is holding Africa back!
I think engaging with the first part of your question would be giving undue validation twice over: to those people who hold that the scientific worldview is racist (especially considering they've not rejected its dividends) and those who are so enraged by this claim that they seek to expose them for the fool they are. I think both sides don't deserve validation. I'd only say that the only people who have the moral right to hold the "racist" claim about science and technology are the Amish (and perhaps the Luddites) but they don't. Even though they may hold the version that replaces "racist" with "evil", I still think they have that moral right in as much as they eschew the benefits as well as refuse to participate in that very "evil".
As to your second question about my thesis being that the belief that faith trumps science is what is holding subSaharan nations back; the sum total of my argument isn't that it is this belief per se but a cultural propensity and an attitude of mind that tend to reflexively process complex reality through the lens of supernaturalism. Hence, Religious beliefs and attitudes are just one manifestation of this disposition.
And I don't see how my argument that it's part of the core problems limiting black Africa contradict the claim of those who assert that Western civilization (which is inextricable from the scientific worldview) is racist. To my mind, this denouncement of Western civilization achieves two goals for those who espouse it. First, a means to channel their anger (whatever the origin) at the dominance of the West and her ideals. Second, a means to diminish the fact that the multi-century dominance of the West is indeed merited while giving impetus to the belief often held by many once colonized countries that they're victims of Western hegemony and supremacy.
Non-belief in any idea that cannot be demonstrated by evidence is the default. Therefore atheism is defacto rational. The Cult of Openmindedness insists all ideas start on an equal playing field, which is absurd. Agnosticism is the tacit admission that deism and theism might make sense, but no version of god has ever been demonstrated to be possible, much less plausible, much less likely, much less actual. Therefore, to remain atheist, as all children are before exposed to such ideas, is inherently more rational than agnosticism. Giving the benefit of the doubt isn't appropriate when there's no real doubt because there's no real evidence.
I think I'd agree with this argument if Atheism is simply a reaction to the claim of the Theist philosophy as represented by most religions - that there is a literal anthropomorphic-like being who created and presides over the universe. Your argument would be sound and admissible based on logic.
But I think Agnosticism is reacting to something more nuanced and sensible: that there could very well be a supreme intelligence (whose nature is not yet known) that is behind the known universe. Of course, evolution doesn't count as it is largely not an intelligent force and too random to admit of logical breakdown. From the point of view of our current position in time and space, atheism may prove to be the correct attitude. But at a different point of view in time and space, say tens of thousand years from now and some remote part of the galaxy, would it still be as valid as it looks today?
God is a gap-filler, always unnecessary, always receding. All actual evidence points to a physical, causal universe with neither the need or ability of a god to provide explanation.
The greatest minds in western history were almost exclusively men of deep religious faith. The current malaise reflects a bovine atheism had has infected the academy and other pseudo-elites. Indeed the scientific world view could *only* have emerged in a Christian context.
That's not the greatest minds at all. That's the greatest minds that were tolerated by their society. And even so, most of the greatest minds must be atheist because that's by far the more rational position. Many of the recognised greatest minds were atheists in hiding.
I have long experience of working in Uganda with people that I would describe as possibly average in intelligence but extremely high in spirituality and capable of acting on their faith. Americans are street-smart but almost never really act on their faith…we Americans tend to write a check and pat ourselves on the back for’doing something good’.
This is a very necessary dialogue…and we should start by challenging the assumption that a scientific and logical IQ is the most desirable trait. Maybe the ability to surrender your life to Jesus is more important than the ability to fix every problem through intellect.
Well, the pattern seems to be that the more social problems you solve through collective intellect, the less need you have for Jesus to take the wheel. There's certainly a vital role for spirituality but not in the organization and promotion of a prosperous and progressive society.
I agree with you. The problem with such conservative religious groups is that the risk averse system they operate by isn't sustainable and is easily threatened by progress and progressive ideas. The challenge of such groups is how to balance the art of retaining those pro social and protective aspects of their community while accommodating progress. This is tough and I doubt can be achieved without deliberately letting go of or softening some of their longstanding traditions.
By "risk averse" I definitely do not mean a lack of imagination or adaptive intelligence. I used it to denote the over-sensitized resistance to anything that smacks of progress or qualitative change. And I'm not morally judging this attitude. I'm just describing it and the challenges it poses to any anti-modernizing culture. I'll never make the assertion that subcultures like those of Amish people would be better off joining the general flow.
But then it's somewhat a luxury that the America-sheltered Amish community can afford. It's relatively safer to practice their countercultural value system within a setting where they don't need to worry about the political and existential problem of physically defending themselves against external aggressors. My criticism is targeted more at third world cultures which are neither antimodern yet rigidly holding on to value systems that are not developmentally competitive. If such societies can't learn how to balance the evolution of their traditional values with the stability of their collective identity, they'll end up losing bearing in the emerging modern context.
I admit I only read your introduction, not the article.
To my understanding the IQ is measured against a normative sample of the population.
If this normative sample is well taken, then the average IQ in a country should be around 100.
So, to get to the results of the map some things needs to be done quite wrongly. Either they were all compared to a single normative sample or the samples were really not representative. Either way the results are skewed.
Intriguing article!
Also interested in the notion of a "top 3 UK university" when there are famously only two (Cambridge and Hull, Oxford being a complete dump - Melchett, 1989)
It's neither Cambridge nor Oxford. Perhaps I'm not very familiar with the ratings of universities in the UK. But if you could mention the top rated 5 Unis I could indicate if the one I had in mind is one of them?
I'm being a little bit silly - it just seems incongruous when historically there has been a complete duopoly that "top 3" seems contrived to a British ear. For most areas of study there will be another highly-rated institution almost invariably in London, often exceedingly high standard/competitiveness in international terms and overtaking Oxbridge in particular areas at postgraduate level.
And I wanted to do the joke from Blackadder, that was the main thing.
Thank you Jay for this comment.
I smiled reading it. It immediately brings to mind many of such types that I have as friends and acquaintances. For this type, they see no contradiction in their worldviews whatsoever and I think the reason is because for them the rational-scientific worldview serves a function separate from the religious one which I kinda see the point. One gives them meaning and the other gives them a false sense of intellectual status, especially among their fellow religious in-group.
I was working in retail a couple of years ago, had a very sharp colleague from the Ivory Coast, in TV sales, who was well-versed in European history. He held a masters from a decent, Russell Group, British University, would talk about the origins of the Seven Years' War, the historical geostrategic importance of Crimea to Russia, the British Empire in West Africa. He has a gift for sparkling historical anecdote and analysis, deep thinker, and was definitely reasonably high IQ. But then he would start talk about faith healing and spirit mediums with no less conviction.
A Hausa customer came in one day, a visiting, published Academic, mathematician. Sold him a Google Pixel phone, before he started talking about the need to reverse colonise the Europeans. "They gave us Christianity, and it WORKED, it FIXED all of our problems, and now it is our turn to bring the gospel to YOU". I told him that I was Igbo (mixed, Igbo, Indian, English) and he appeared stunned for several seconds, dropped his received pronunciation accent and said "Ah you eva confused about what you ah?!"
The more I think of it I've encountered this "default setting" of primitive religious enthusiasm, that you describe in your brother, over and over again, even in high IQ Africans. I've never really thought too much of it: Africans are extremely religious, and much more candid and less rehearsed in their social interactions. It therefore never seemed particularly jarring.
This article was deeply challenging to my previously held beliefs. I'm going to have to process this for a while. Thanks for sharing.
I do have a few thoughts:
1. Perhaps a bit of hope can be taken in the many authors who have proposed that Christianity provided the West with the incubation conditions needed to fully embrace the scientific mindset. It encourages people to seek the truth, test the spirits, and doubt supernatural claims from other groups, which often winds up turning on itself. The rapid Christianization of Africa might be a pathway towards changing those deeply held characteristics that hold back the continent.
2. I don't think it's quite fair to completely disregard colonialism as a factor in the impovrishment of these countries. Starting their entrance to modernity by being conquered, subjugated, and extracted from before having to throw off their colonizers certainly exacerbated the problems you've pointed out, don't you think? And that's not even considering the effects that the world seed bank still has in extracting wealth from African agriculture towards the West by economic necessity.
3. My concern with the proposed Charter City solution is not that it wouldn't reduce poverty, it's a concern over the question: Should we be pursuing economic growth in a planet already overburdened by the demands of our economy? How many more major metropolitan cities can the earth sustain? According to the book *Limits to Growth*, we've already overshot Earth's economic capacity. To me, seeking economic justice and equality seems to be a better long term solution than continuing to ramrod ourselves into growing an economy that is poisoning our air and water, raising the global temperature rapidly, acidifying the oceans, and causing global wars. Do you agree?
Thanks Cory for your very thoughtful comment.
To your first point: it isn't Christianity per se or Islam or the specific religion that's the problem. It's the religious mindset. It is the quality of the natural mind through which the specific religion is being expressed. A quality and sound mind can take the worst of ideologies and still make something palatable out of it. So, no, I don't share your optimism that Christianity or any religion whatsoever can reprise its (arguably dubious) historical potency in the hand and mind of Africans. If anything, it has further reinforced the worst elements in the cognitive architecture of black people. And I should add that I don't agree whatsoever with the very popular theory that it was Christianity that was largely responsible for the rise of the modern West. I believe today's Western culture would still have happened with or without Christianity. There's definitely a reason why the same west has largely superceded Christianity in their cosmology.
I genuinely sympathize with your second point. I think it has a strong but questionable merit. I think you, like many other well-meaning outsiders, are over-sympathizing with a people whose perpetual developmental stasis (relative to the rest of the world) has stubbornly resisted any and every attempt to demystify it. Nonetheless, your point about the role and historical timing of colonialism would earn more validity if you could assert that Africa's colonial experience has no historical parallel in other places.
I think I understand the concern behind your third point. But it's easy for me to guess that you've never properly lived in and among black Africans. I invite you to just pay a one month visit to Nigeria (if you could last that long) and see if you would still think that your alternative solutions of "economic justice and equality" is possible without a vehicle like a charter city or something of that mold.
Thanks for taking the time to respond.
I tend to agree with you on the first point, I think the Enlightenment, which was in many ways a rejection of the Christian past had more to do with the secularization of what were likely people of equal superstition at the time. I just figured people with more degrees than I had made that argument before and hoped you'd find it hopeful.
On the second point, there are historical parallels, and they have largely had the same problems that Africa has. India, South America, until recently China, and the many nations of Southeast Asia were all colonies that had to overcome colonialism and have had problems with mass wealth inequality and development. The exceptions are America, Canada, and Australia, but those former colonies became colonizers themselves and thus became prosperous.
On the third point, I would genuinely love to visit any part of Africa. And, to be clear, when I say economic justice, what I mean is things like western economies paying an actually fair market price for the resources generated there instead of the lowest price possible. This would cause wealth to move away from the West and into impovrished nations. I want less stuff. I feel like a slave to my stuff. We don't need this much stuff. And I especially don't want this much stuff if it means people elsewhere suffer so that I can have it.
I don't think it's a coincidence that what China and those "many nations of southeast Asia" that have been able to "overcome colonialism" have in common is one of the highest estimated average global national IQ. In addition, those nations appear to have a collective personality that's high in conscientiousness and public stewardship. India, on the other hand, isn't much better than say Nigeria both in estimated average IQ and the most dominant collective tendencies of her average citizens. What we observe in developmental patterns and which you've pointed out is that my hypothesis holds fast: there's a minimum average collective IQ and average behavioral tendencies that's needed in order to successfully shepherd a people out of a mindset that is anti-emancipation.
And regarding your clarification on economic justice and equality being delivered through reparations, I think it's still a naive though well-intentioned proposal. I don't think you have any idea of the profound and crass moral and spiritual rottenness of the African leadership class. Give them that reparative bounty and wash it all disappear into their pockets. The only way it could be judiciously used is if it's not handed directly to them and administered strictly through a trusted external institutional agent. If this was what you had in mind, then yes, I agree it's a good suggestion.
But in then end, this kind of restitutive handout does nothing to change the core problems at the heart of Africa's poverty. It does nothing to reeducate our mind or reorient our sociocultural attitude or reshape our natural tendencies or upgrade our collective standard in public accountability, etc. If anything, it reinforces and legitimizes our already endemic sense of victimhood which has been the most dominant narrative among educated Africans.
I’ve stumbled onto an *interesting* side of Substack. The best indicator of low intelligence is actually poverty and access to information. And the fact this guys brother is super religious despite being educated is hardly indicative of anything when u consider Europeans engaged in holy wars and mass atrocities, genocides and colonisation with religion as its greatest weapon.
Also true when u consider ur avg super religious type the world over. They would all believe homosexuality is a demon to be exorcised.
IQ tests have long been discredited and even out right debunked, and overall recognised as an incredibly inaccurate measurement of human intelligence, with the best indicator for doing well on a test being one’s education as I mentioned.
I’m sure Charlatan sees himself as the smartest Nigerian to live, ready to diagnose the reason Africa is a backwards society while casually brushing off centuries of oppression, brutalisation and neocolonialism under the guise of taking ownership. Unfortunately for him, deliberately not engaging with the real ongoing effects of history betrays a lot more abt his intelligence than he imagines.
I’d advise u to research ur own peoples history. Dive deep into ur history before colonialism and exploitation(remember the religiosity u critique so much did not exist in Africa before colonialism).
Thanks for your comment Merari. Like I stated in the opening statements to the essay, I don't expect many of my compatriots and other Africans to disagree with me. But the interesting thing about your disagreement is that it's exactly what the article predicted such disagreement would be based on. Externalized factors. For anyone who locate the most fundamental challenge of black people in externalized-historical factors, it's really difficult to make them revise that perspective because it's mostly being driven by an epistemic outlook that proceeds more from their individual psychology which is often characterized by a profound sense of hurt, frustration, and victimhood. Do externalized-historical factors have a role to play in the whole picture? Certainly yes. But they're more like adjuvants to the active ingredients driving black people's perpetual vulnerability.
And yes, religiousity has always existed in Africa and everywhere else, except you consider only the Abrahamic faiths the only legitimate religion.
PS: Your critique regarding the bit about my brother is a good one. But if you could take the trouble to go through that part of the essay, you'd also realize that the core point I was making wasn't really about his education and religiousity, but the fact that it's the only lens through which he interprets material reality. His epistemology, and those of others like him, isn't pluralistic nor is it being challenged by any other rival epistemology within Africa. It holds a monolithic sway everywhere on the subcontinent.
PSS: And you only need to take my pseudonym seriously to realize that I don't consider myself the way you supposed. But then again if you're a cynic, I believe you may think I'm being cheeky.
My disagreement isn’t because of external factors by the way, it is based on lack of access to education for vast swaths of the continental African population. As I mentioned that is actually the greatest indicator of low intelligence in a population, or an individual for that matter.
I mention ‘external factors’ like neocolonialism because that explains WHY an African might lack access to education. To you these external factors are simply the cherry on top of the low IQ African cake, but as I’ve mentioned already this is demonstrably false. And again like I said, deliberately failing to engage with these factors, while simultaneously trying to diagnose the supposed intelligence of over 1 billion people is genuinely stupid and erroneous by every standard and definition.
You are literally arguing a hypothesis, and in trying to prove said hypothesis, you don’t control for factor a. This is exactly how you get terrible IQ studies in the first place.
On religiosity, indeed when I say religion I’m really talking abt Christianity seeing as I recognise at least some of the pastors you mention as Christian pastors. I don’t see how this changes my point however. The issue here is you think your brother’s way of viewing the world is unique to the African brain, viewing the world through one lens when this is not true. This is a worldwide phenomenon.
Finally, in the interest of time and length, your assertion on your brother’s epistemology is again demonstrably false. Abrahamic religion and worldview might be dominant, but the idea it is not being challenged and other philosophical arguments and beliefs on engaging with and viewing Christianity etc is again, just false.
A different world view is as real as you perceive it to be. If you had more respect for the philosophers and academics of your continent, you would see vast swaths of work and ideologies rooted in pre colonial history and genuine pondering by the African mind. Instead you think all of them are victims because they don’t bother with IQ debates. The fact your brother sees the world through a rigid Christian lens is his own business. There’s a million examples of this happening in the west (anti-vaxxers!). A world wide phenomenon as I’ve already mentioned.
I appreciate the reply but my advice remains the same as before. Instead of seeing those around you as low IQ, gain some respect and pride for the group of people who produced someone with a mind like yours. If we want to be anecdotal, then at least you are proof that the African is not inherently low IQ, even if you are wasting your intelligence on a field that is seeking to undermine it at the same time.
I'm sure you've spoken for many others who don't agree with my take. And I think that's important. I had to caution myself against digging my feet in. Thanks for taking the time to critically engage the article.
Edit: *..., I don't expect many of my compatriots and other Africans to agree with me.
It's good that we have non-Africans who can enlighten Africans about their history.
@Tove K
I’m a Nigerian too, albeit Nigerian/American and I challenge the OP. He and I are likely from the same ethnic group. Nigeria has incredibly high religiosity, but the reason for that has more to do with culture than IQ.
A few large problems:
A) The country is very poor. And has poor drainage/ sewage/ ect. Most Nigerians constantly deal with malaria, hunger, and other parasitic illnesses. There is no way to be able to dream of great worlds or have great philosophical debates when you are going hungry. And of course, an IQ test on a kid who is hungry, or who is having malaria for the third time that month is not reflective of their overall ability.
B. )On an IQ test, Two aspects are vulnerable: one is vocabulary. The WAIS-V asks you what terpsichorean means. How many Nigerians have the time to read? Forget about if they were taught that word in Nigeria’s slowly failing secondary schools. Also many Nigerians speak a second language. Another portion of the IQ test is general knowledge, that asks questions such as: “ who was Martin Luther king?” This is a real question from the test. Many Nigerians would not know this. Finally you have Raven matrixes, which at least, are less vulnerable to culture effects and pattern matching. However, even those can be gamed or trained.
Any reasonable psychologist is aware of his or her limitations, that without norms you can’t be sure how accurate you are and also that you can miss the forest for the trees. When you measure IQ, you have to understand what you can and cannot measure and confront the reality of what is unknowable.
Anytime any African or person states he is sure of a nation’s IQ, you must distrust it in the extreme.
You have to ask him who was tested?
How?
With which test?
Which ethnic group?
How many years of schooling?
Were the children tested able to eat that day? Were those children sick that day?
How many parasites were those kids carrying?
You may laugh at that but Nigeria had a civil war in the 1960s, and over a million people starved to death. I was waiting for @Charlatan to mention that to you but he did not. I’m not sure why, maybe he has his own reasons.
B) Are people with over 120 IQs rare in Nigeria?
Correcting for Nigeria’s endemic poverty?
No, they aren’t rare. They just leave if they can. So there is a selection effect.
Next.
The bigger issue is more pernicious, and I think this is what bothers Western audiences more and bothered me more when I visited Nigeria. Our culture is very obsessed with Christianity. And not to our benefit. Every street had a church, not a library.
This is a recent turn in our elite preoccupations, in the time of Awolowo and MKO Abiola, elites competed to educate the people. Unfortunately, global Christianity has told our elites to chase heaven instead of focus on the realities on earth; so now they build churches and not universities. It is an utter shame and a disappointment. I wish Christians, of which I am one, would please be more considerate when they are teaching religion all over the world because often the interaction with religion and culture has bad side effects.
Another bigger issue is our elites are extractive. They claim to be Nigerian but their kids are in London and their mistresses are in Dubai or Italy. Nigeria is the place they extract wealth, and due to a global banking system that turns a blind eye, they place their money in Swiss bank where they can live wonderfully while everyone is immiserated.
There is much more, but suffice it to say, @Charlatan’s surety about the IQ of his fellow Nigerians is just questionable.
Unfortunately, cultures can regress and elites make terrible decisions at times.
“Any reasonable psychologist is aware of his or her limitations, that without norms you can’t be sure how accurate you are and also that you can miss the forest for the trees.” A simple question for you, Light: are you aware that a normed version of the Ravens test based on a Nigerian sample and conducted by Nigerian researchers exist? And it still estimated the average IQ at around (65-71). Not sure the exact number but definitely within that range though different for both genders.
Second, you made some fantastic points but I don't think I have much to disagree with because almost all your points ultimately support my argument - you've just chosen to follow a different roundabout route to the same destination.
Third, one mistake that most people who have been critical of the essay keep making is them missing a very glaring claim I made in the write-up: I was quite explicit in stating that I don't think IQ per se is the main problem. I was specific in identifying the dimensions of cognitive operation I believe is more problematic for black people and I wish critics would speak to that.
Also I wish more people would challenge the part of the essay where I implicate our collective personality (that is, our average behavioral, reactive, belief dispositions). I would really love to read anything that challenges this take because as far as I'm concerned I assign more causal weight to it than IQ per se.
I was not aware that the Ravens were created normed on Nigerians. But once again, ravens measures a fluid intelligence not all intelligences. The tradeoff would be one would then miss verbal intelligence. All the other criticisms I made about your measure of IQ: about starvation, illness still remain.
I say this bluntly: You do not know the average Nigerian IQ. And when environmental factors are so significant, the usefulness of IQ as a proxy for g (general intelligence breaks down). To some extent, this entire debate is based on a falsehood. This is my greatest critique of you.
I agree with you to the fact that the Nigerian culture in Nigeria has different cultural norms however I disagree with you that brilliant Nigerians are rare. They are not. There are a lot of Nigerian geniuses. Let us not lie to this nice white lady.
The other disagreement I have is that I don’t think our differences in culture are due to genetics. They are due to the fact that different cultures make different decisions. And they made different decisions at different points in time. I mean, look at the Europeans themselves, not very long ago, they were mired in witchcraft and other occult beliefs.
And our elites, not too long ago, did add value to our culture. Obafemi Awolowo, and others were amazing. They competed to build schools, build the country but something changed in the 1970s to 1980s. You have to explain what that was. Our genes didn’t change within ten years.
My third disagreement with you is your delineation of the causes is too simplistic. After all, subSaharan Africa also didn’t get a chance to mix with other cultures as well due to it’s location. The geography factor matters a great deal.
The fact that our elites can send money overseas and abroad, turns them from a group that is forced to invest in Nigeria into an extractive one. This is a problem.
The multiculturalness of Nigeria means that there is a lot of tribal and ethnic conflict means that it is hard for people to come together as a nation and have one standard.
All the other examples you chose; North Korea, Japan, Singapore, they were all dominated by one ethnic group. That really makes it easy to enforce values and norms, and also to have shared trust, because you can have a high trust society among people who are your kin.
Edited for spelling
I’m African. Try again!
I won't! I will leave those discussions to Africans and historians, who knows more than me on the matter.
Good idea
This feels just like the man with a hammer
What is an African psychologist supposed to do, if not thinking about the psychology of Africans?
The way human minds develop is based on the problem set that the mind is challenged with while it's developing. Two different cultures with radically different problem sets are going to develop brains that might not do as well on the opposite cultures tests, and that does not mean that the people of one culture, or the other, are "less smart".
Yes. And that is why I asked an African psychologist, who is familiar with both African and Western culture, to give his opinion on the matter.
Your source is a guy named charlatan?
Not only my source: The very author of this article. But he has a real name to. Charlatan is just his pen name, under which he writes his blog.
Africa is not "much more genetically diverse than Europe". By all means - physical features, psychological features, etc. Europeans are by far more diverse. Africans have only one hair colour, one eye colour, don't have any of food adaptions white people have, and so on and so forth. Africans are much more underdeveloped, unevolved as people, that's why their genetics LOOK LIKE more diverse. And this is the real reason - IQ is hereditary, no matter what leftist wiki pages say, and the reason Africans have lower IQ is genetic. They didn't evolve the same way Europeans did. And, the simple reason why an African with IQ of 70 is not socially awkward in Africa is because OTHERS are also with the same IQ. When they come to Europe they are most definitely "awkward".
Fascinating comment Victor. Could you cite literature to support your point that IQ is hereditary. I’ve not yet come across any conclusive evidence
Genetic association studies have confirmed a century of quantitative genetic research showing that inherited DNA differences are responsible for substantial individual differences in intelligence test scores.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5985927/
Thank you for citing evidence. I am aware that genetics are a driver of intelligence, but the paper is explicit that genetics account for ~50% of intelligence.
So it is important to consider the external factors that contribute to the remaining 50%. As such, 'IQ is hereditary, no matter what leftist wiki pages say, and the reason Africans have lower IQ is genetic.' seems like an incomplete conclusion to arrive at. It fails to reference the other contributing 50% entirely.
I was also quite surprised by 'Africa is not "much more genetically diverse than Europe". By all means - physical features, psychological features, etc. Europeans are by far more diverse. Africans have only one hair colour, one eye colour, don't have any of food adaptions white people have...'
Considering the paper you cited used GWAS to determine genetic associations to intelligence, I assume you trust GWAS as a technique. So I have attached below a paper which uses GWAS, and shows Africa as the most genetically diverse continent.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002929722003172?via%3Dihub
'Africans are much more underdeveloped, unevolved as people, that's why their genetics LOOK LIKE more diverse'
I would also appreciate if you could cite literature to support this as well. I'm very curious to learn more and would hate to dismiss such a fascinating claim unfairly.
Anyways, I do think it's a shame that you consider a request for evidence as a 'typical leftist attack'; asking questions and the pursuit of knowledge should not be tied to political affiliation.
Where is the literature that you cite to support gravity? Where is the literature to support iq as non-hereditary? 50% is HUGE. I am sorry, but you are leftist troll, and your claims are absurd. I don’t have a reason to defend my position to you. You can always choose to live in Cuba, Venezuela, Russia, etc, but you don’t. So, the case is closed. Leftists are incompetent evils
Victor, you seem upset. Is it too intellectually challenging for you to defend your position? Is it that the 50% you inherited failed you?
'Africans are much more underdeveloped, unevolved as people, that's why their genetics LOOK LIKE more diverse'
If you cannot find evidence to support your claim, then I think it is you that is incompetent.
Perhaps, Victor, you are the leftist.
Arguing with morons is not productive. Besides, I conclusively proved my point: you were unable to cite any literature defending your point, nor even such a simple thing as gravity. So, by your logic, you should jump from somewhere high and see what happens. The world would be better. :))))
It is everywhere - from Wikipedia, through genetic books to scientific textbooks. All that is needed is a google search. Can you show me a literature where it’s disproven? Let me ask you a different question: can you cite me literature where gravity is proven? This is typical leftist attack, but I will give you the benefit of the doubt
I just read this summary of the cargo cult of New Guinea and it reminded me of this text. https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-road-belong-cargo-by-peter
Thanks for sharing this. Yes, I could easily see the epistemological parallels, different times, different natives, but same epistemological architecture.
It bizarrely anticipates some fundamental aspects of an article I'm working on regarding the uniquely black African phenomenon of money ritual. I'll be citing the piece in my own article to broaden and ground my argument that there's something common in the worldview that animates the thinking of most, if not all, black African societies.
Charlatan I'd like your thoughts on this. In the West the elite is currently espousing that in fact everything about Western culture since the Renaissance, including the Industrial Revoltion, Imperialism, science and what I would call "rational thought", is "racist". So we are told that the scientific method discriminates against non-white people. That mathematics, and statistics is discriminatory. That meritocracy is "racist". That all cultures are equal, and therefore having the expectation that a black or brown person turns up to work on time, and puts in a full days work, is discriminatory. That belief in any sort of religion, no matter how fringe or bizarre is accepted over a belief in science. This is now so prevalent that people who do not subscribe to this view are sacked, denied promotion, or simply not employed in the first place. Yet your thesis is that such beliefs are what is holding Africa back!
I think engaging with the first part of your question would be giving undue validation twice over: to those people who hold that the scientific worldview is racist (especially considering they've not rejected its dividends) and those who are so enraged by this claim that they seek to expose them for the fool they are. I think both sides don't deserve validation. I'd only say that the only people who have the moral right to hold the "racist" claim about science and technology are the Amish (and perhaps the Luddites) but they don't. Even though they may hold the version that replaces "racist" with "evil", I still think they have that moral right in as much as they eschew the benefits as well as refuse to participate in that very "evil".
As to your second question about my thesis being that the belief that faith trumps science is what is holding subSaharan nations back; the sum total of my argument isn't that it is this belief per se but a cultural propensity and an attitude of mind that tend to reflexively process complex reality through the lens of supernaturalism. Hence, Religious beliefs and attitudes are just one manifestation of this disposition.
And I don't see how my argument that it's part of the core problems limiting black Africa contradict the claim of those who assert that Western civilization (which is inextricable from the scientific worldview) is racist. To my mind, this denouncement of Western civilization achieves two goals for those who espouse it. First, a means to channel their anger (whatever the origin) at the dominance of the West and her ideals. Second, a means to diminish the fact that the multi-century dominance of the West is indeed merited while giving impetus to the belief often held by many once colonized countries that they're victims of Western hegemony and supremacy.
Thank you. A well thought out answer. I look forward to reading more of your writing.
I disagree, which we can hash out if you like, but igtheism subsumes both.
Isn't Atheism a mere mirror image of Theism? One certitude replacing another.
Non-belief in any idea that cannot be demonstrated by evidence is the default. Therefore atheism is defacto rational. The Cult of Openmindedness insists all ideas start on an equal playing field, which is absurd. Agnosticism is the tacit admission that deism and theism might make sense, but no version of god has ever been demonstrated to be possible, much less plausible, much less likely, much less actual. Therefore, to remain atheist, as all children are before exposed to such ideas, is inherently more rational than agnosticism. Giving the benefit of the doubt isn't appropriate when there's no real doubt because there's no real evidence.
I think I'd agree with this argument if Atheism is simply a reaction to the claim of the Theist philosophy as represented by most religions - that there is a literal anthropomorphic-like being who created and presides over the universe. Your argument would be sound and admissible based on logic.
But I think Agnosticism is reacting to something more nuanced and sensible: that there could very well be a supreme intelligence (whose nature is not yet known) that is behind the known universe. Of course, evolution doesn't count as it is largely not an intelligent force and too random to admit of logical breakdown. From the point of view of our current position in time and space, atheism may prove to be the correct attitude. But at a different point of view in time and space, say tens of thousand years from now and some remote part of the galaxy, would it still be as valid as it looks today?
God is a gap-filler, always unnecessary, always receding. All actual evidence points to a physical, causal universe with neither the need or ability of a god to provide explanation.
Yes there is “intelligent life” in Africa. There are elephants, for example.
The greatest minds in western history were almost exclusively men of deep religious faith. The current malaise reflects a bovine atheism had has infected the academy and other pseudo-elites. Indeed the scientific world view could *only* have emerged in a Christian context.
That's not the greatest minds at all. That's the greatest minds that were tolerated by their society. And even so, most of the greatest minds must be atheist because that's by far the more rational position. Many of the recognised greatest minds were atheists in hiding.
Though I'd say agnosticism rather than atheism is the more rational attitude.
I have long experience of working in Uganda with people that I would describe as possibly average in intelligence but extremely high in spirituality and capable of acting on their faith. Americans are street-smart but almost never really act on their faith…we Americans tend to write a check and pat ourselves on the back for’doing something good’.
This is a very necessary dialogue…and we should start by challenging the assumption that a scientific and logical IQ is the most desirable trait. Maybe the ability to surrender your life to Jesus is more important than the ability to fix every problem through intellect.
Well, the pattern seems to be that the more social problems you solve through collective intellect, the less need you have for Jesus to take the wheel. There's certainly a vital role for spirituality but not in the organization and promotion of a prosperous and progressive society.
I agree with you. The problem with such conservative religious groups is that the risk averse system they operate by isn't sustainable and is easily threatened by progress and progressive ideas. The challenge of such groups is how to balance the art of retaining those pro social and protective aspects of their community while accommodating progress. This is tough and I doubt can be achieved without deliberately letting go of or softening some of their longstanding traditions.
By "risk averse" I definitely do not mean a lack of imagination or adaptive intelligence. I used it to denote the over-sensitized resistance to anything that smacks of progress or qualitative change. And I'm not morally judging this attitude. I'm just describing it and the challenges it poses to any anti-modernizing culture. I'll never make the assertion that subcultures like those of Amish people would be better off joining the general flow.
But then it's somewhat a luxury that the America-sheltered Amish community can afford. It's relatively safer to practice their countercultural value system within a setting where they don't need to worry about the political and existential problem of physically defending themselves against external aggressors. My criticism is targeted more at third world cultures which are neither antimodern yet rigidly holding on to value systems that are not developmentally competitive. If such societies can't learn how to balance the evolution of their traditional values with the stability of their collective identity, they'll end up losing bearing in the emerging modern context.