John Knight wrote:
<snip>
> None of the polls or surveys report that atheists are more than 4% of the
> population.
Because not everyone publicizes their religious beliefs (or lack there of).
>Even the once-credible Gallup Poll reports that 96% of
> Americans pray,
I pray, meditate, and even cast the occasional spell. So praying alone doesn't make one a Christian.
>and unless you think atheists pray, that doesn't leave but
> 4% who are atheists.
Of course, I have heard of Christians who have stopped praying because they don't believe they are
being heard. Pretty sad, isn't it?
>> Not that Gallup is the final authority on anything, though.
No polling organization is, thats why there are so many.
>The following
> is an example of an incredibly biased Gallup Poll.
><snip useless poll results>
>>> To put it simply, this is not a true statement. In fact, it's a blatantly
> false concept even before you know Gallup's own poll results, or the polling
> methodology, or Gallup's agenda.
None of which actually matter.
>With no further investigation, it just
> makes no sense that both sexes would agree on which sex is the most
> "intelligent", "easy going", or "ambitious",
Assumptions are not made on investigation. They were polling what one gender thought of the other.
>particularly when Gallup has
> already admitted "that Americans have little difficulty associating specific
> personality characteristics with one gender or the other".
I do it all the time. Bad of me? Probably.
>But Gallup's
> very own poll results show the statement "Neither sex is most likely to be
> described by the terms "intelligent," "easy-going," and "ambitious" to be
> patently false.
Really? How so?
>> Why would Gallup make a patently false statement which their own poll
> results readily disputes?
*shrugs* To make people ask stupid questions?
>Do they hope that nobody will read any further
> than the first paragraph?
I didn't even read that.
>Or that the American education system has by now
> been sufficiently dumbed down that most Americans can't read a poll anyway?
I have a reading comprehension that was at least one to two grade levels above my peers.
> Or that just this part of their report will be quoted by mediots who will
> gladly ignore the actual facts?
Like you?
>> In any event, the fact is that Gallup's own data shows that men are 1.4
Okay.
> times more likely than women to believe that men are more ambitious, 1.2
> times more likely to believe that men are more easy-going, and twice as
> likely to believe that men are more intelligent.
An assumption only (remember, this is a poll of opinions).
>Conversely, women are just
> as biased towards their own sex, being 1.1 times more likely to believe that
> women are more easy-going, 1.3 times more likely that women are more
> ambitious, and 1.5 times more likely to believe that women are more
> intelligent.
Well how about that. It seems each gender thinks their gender is the best.
>> Is "intelligence" the "controversial" issue that Gallup hoped to avoid? Is
If it was, they needn't worry with you, then.
> political correctness so rampant that they would avoid at all costs the
> perception that they're accusing men that they're "sexist" because they were
> twice as likely as women to believe that men are more intelligent than
> women? Or that women are "sexist" because they're 40% more likely to
> believe that women are more intelligent );
Sexism is not something most people come to on their own, it's something that is taught by people
for various number of reasons (which I don't even want to fathom, I appreciate both sexes equally
'cause I do try to take people on a "Come as you are" individual basis).
>> This is the most significant of all the "gender differences", yet Gallup
> hoped to bury that fact.
What? That people are biased towards their own gender? Since there are only two genders, it's a
pretty big club to belong to.
>Why? There's a serious disconnect between their
> responsibility to accurately report the news and their destructive agenda.
Such as what you show us everyday?
> To be precise, we need to understand where American women get their
> information from that so many of them believe that women are more
> intelligent than men, and why Gallup assists so greatly in the propagation
> of that myth.
It's not propogating any myth. Only showing that women see themselves as being smarter then men.
Thats what polls do. They ask for peoples opinions on a series of questions, then report their results.
>> There isn't a single shred of statistical evidence to support this belief,
Oh? I'm sure the female members of bionet.neuroscience will have something to say about that.
> so where does it come from?
Why from the greatest myth of all!
>Every single standardized test, from coast to
> coast, country to country, race to race, and sex to sex, shows that men are
> significantly more intelligent than women.
Really? Thats why you're the one running this country?
>The brain size and brain cell
> count studies all show that men have a proportionately larger brain than
> women,
Bob, Shadow Dance, I've never heard of such a study, please point me to somewhere that ISN'T
christianparty.net?
>which is consistent with the differences in intelligence and test
> scores and incomes and earning capacity.
Of course dolphins and whales are smarter then people (as they have a language we have yet to
decipher, even though they seem to understand us fairly well).
>When charted by race and sex,
> there is a linear relationship between GRE scores and brain size (r-squared
> = .89). The measured differences in sports events like the Olympics show a
> Gaussian Distribution [read: a "bell curve"] that is identical to that for
> test scores, brain size, and incomes. Yet more than a quarter of men and
> almost a half of women still believe that women are more intelligent than
> men.
Okay, he lost me here.
>> These aren't the only categories in which the sexes had a significant
> difference of opinion about their own sex which Gallup failed to adequately
> report. Men were 1.2 times more likely to believe that men are more
> aggressive, but women were 1.4 times more likely to believe that women were
> more aggressive.
Whips and chains! woo! (and thats all I'm saying) :-P
>Men and women agreed with how emotional and talkative
> women are (90% and 78%, respectively),
*just nods, not that it means I agree*
>but men were twice as likely to
> believe that men were more emotional and 1.1 times as likely to believe that
> men were more talkative, than women.
I'd rather program then interact with people.
>Men were 1.4 times more likely to
> believe that men were more courageous, but women were 1.6 times more likely
> to believe their own sex was.
Well, it just depends on what they have seen for themselves as they grew up. Susan B. Anthony had to
have a real big set of balls to help lead the Womens Sufferage movement to victory.
>Same with patient: 1.5 times versus 1.1
I'm definitly NOT as patient as any of my lady friends.
> times. And creative: 3.9 vs. 1.4.
So I write poetry, like to draw, and role-playing games are the bomb. I know pleanty of women more
creative then most men I'll ever meet.
>Men and women don't even agree on which
> sex is the most affectionate, with women being twice as likely as men to
> believe that men are more affectionate, and 10% less likely to believe that
> women are.
Men, affectionate? I dunno. I don't like interacting with people. It's scarey.
>> With this obvious built-in bias in the way Gallup reports their data,
of course since the built-in bias is because of the way one was raised, Gallup can't really do
anything about that (unless you believe they are beaming cosmic ray's into peoples heads that are
telling them to raise their kids this way).
>it's
> hard to imagine that the pollsters were objective in the way they collected
> the data.
I dunno, random people at your local mall is pretty objective. Of course since it's an opinion poll
on how the different genders see themselves, I don't see how you can be subjective in the polling.
>But even if we accept that they were, this is a shocking sex
> difference. Why would women be half as likely as men to know or understand
> or accept the facts about the sex differences in intelligence?
Because they don't exist except in people's opinions?
>Or maybe
> more importantly, why would forty percent of both men and women believe that
> men and women are of equal intelligence?
>
Because they ARE? Aside from actual IQ's (which on average DROPS as you include more people in your
sample), intelligence is just not street or book smarts, but a combination of being able to deal in
a rational way with day to day adversities. Book smarts can be measured by standardized tests, but
book smarts alone won't get you the job. Book smarts alone won't win you the nobel prize. It takes
hard work, pesistance and a hand firmly rooted IN reality. Those are things that polls and
standarized tests can't measure. It's affects can't be measured directly, but only indirectly (sorta
like prayer and what not, it's affects are only felt by the results it produces).
The intelligence and qualities needed for a successful run in life are taught and learned. You can
combine Dr. Stephen Hawkings (poor guy) and Albert Einstein's brain combined and stuffed into your
skull, but it wouldn't make you half as successful as either of those men. Both of those great
scientists owe their discoveries to hard work, and even if you made them both women, those
discoveries would have STILL been made, those theories voiced, and our world changed. Look at Marie
Curie, one of the more famous female scientists of the 19th Century(?). Our present understanding of
X-rays is due to work she pioneered (and she was Polish to boot!).
<snip useless info>
