Comments on: Fundamentalists have a smaller vocabulary

By: John Emerson

John Emerson — Sun, 23 May 2010 11:18:06 +0000

My friends were born 1946 and ~1960.

By: nebbish

nebbish — Sun, 23 May 2010 08:45:28 +0000

John Emerson,
How old are these friends? The divide between German Jews and East European Jews arguably still possessed some salience through the middle of the 20th century based on some comments my parents (East European Ashkenazim) have made about their youths. Maybe theirs is an old grudge. I can’t say that I’ve noticed much of a difference between my family and the few German Ashkenazim that I’ve met, but I admittedly don’t travel in the circle of Schiffs and Warburgs (many of whose current descendants don’t identify as Jewish).

By: John Emerson

John Emerson — Sat, 22 May 2010 19:16:54 +0000

“An American of Russian Jewish descent”. I totally garbled my point.

By: John Emerson

John Emerson — Sat, 22 May 2010 19:14:16 +0000

By the 21st century the distinction between German and Eastern European Jews is ancient history

Just yesterday a Russian Jew told me that that wasn’t true for him, and I’ve heard it before from another friend.

By: Larry, San Francisco

Larry, San Francisco — Sat, 22 May 2010 00:22:49 +0000

Historically there was an ethnic/class component to the reform/conservative split. Originally, Reform Judaism was derived from German immigrants from the 1840′s who often had secular educations and became very successful. Initially Reform Judaism was very liberal protestant (even as a kid in the 1960′s I was surprised how similar the Reformed services were to the services that my liberal protestant friends went to. My father told me that these services were much more conservative than when he was a kid, where the Reform temples did not even use Hebrew). Conservative Jews were generally the children of Eastern European Jews who were not Orthodox but did not feel entirely welcome in the Reform community. By the 21st century the distinction between German and Eastern European Jews is ancient history and is probably the reason Conservative Judaism is in serious decline. What is interesting to me is that Reform Judaism now is much closer to the Conservative Judaism of my youth (for example, much more Hebrew in services).

By: John Emerson

John Emerson — Fri, 21 May 2010 22:14:43 +0000

This popped into my head: maybe a fundamentalist atheist is one who says “Nothing in the Bible is any good”, a moderate says “There are many good things in the Bible”, and a liberal atheist says, presumably, “Even though nothing in the Bible is literally true, it’s still what I live by”. The last groups would still be pretty dumb, but not as bead as the atheist who believes that every word of the Bible is literally true.

By: Speech before Saturday « Simple Country Physicist

Speech before Saturday « Simple Country Physicist — Fri, 21 May 2010 12:26:59 +0000

[...] we discover [Link] that those who perceive they are closer to the deity know fewer words.and that by denomination [...]

By: mxh

mxh — Thu, 20 May 2010 18:16:04 +0000

In my experience fundamentalists tend to see the world in black and white, either things/people/actions are great or they are work of the devil. With that kind of thinking, who needs a big vocabulary.

btw, I kind of agree with Ian, it doesn’t make sense to have an atheist fundamentalist, but including atheists as a single group would be an interesting comparison. How different is a liberal protestant or jew from an atheist?

By: Razib Khan

Razib Khan — Thu, 20 May 2010 11:31:26 +0000

Why the focus on faith groups? Why exclude atheists?

what kind of retarded atheist believes that the bible is the literal inerrant word of god? there’s no need to look into the empirics, you know that such a creature is a moron a priori.

By: Ian

Ian — Thu, 20 May 2010 11:30:04 +0000

Why the focus on faith groups? Why exclude atheists?

By: Razib Khan

Razib Khan — Thu, 20 May 2010 10:21:38 +0000

What do you think of Half Sigma’s claim that the number of Jews in the U.S is typically under-estimated?

i think his is an overestimate. but he has a point. i don’t think someone who is 1/4 jewish and an evangelical christian, like kathy lee gifford, should count as much as someone who is 100% kosher and is frum.

By: Joshua Zelinsky

Joshua Zelinsky — Thu, 20 May 2010 03:28:33 +0000

TGGP, it depends how you are defining Jews. This matters a lot. If you are using an ethnic or racial identification then there are a lot more than those who identify as Jews in a religious sense. I’d actually be very interested in seeing how the different definitions impact overall intelligence levels. It could be very illuminating in regards to the Askenazi high IQ trend.

By: TGGP

TGGP — Thu, 20 May 2010 01:30:53 +0000

What do you think of Half Sigma’s claim that the number of Jews in the U.S is typically under-estimated?
http://www.halfsigma.com/2010/04/there-are-a-lot-more-jews-in-the-united-states-that-you-realize.html

By: Joshua Zelinsky

Joshua Zelinsky — Wed, 19 May 2010 22:19:29 +0000

Regarding educated fundamentalists not necessarily having much larger vocabs than people with less education, I have to wonder how much of this might be due to the parallel education system that Protestant fundamentalists have constructed in this society. Many of their institutions of higher learning are simply wretched. That could be reflected in the individuals not learning many words. (Presumably the other way of interpreting this is that this is part of the general issue that wordsum reflects intelligence and that intelligence is inversely correlated with fundamentalism).

By: Jason

Jason — Wed, 19 May 2010 22:15:34 +0000

Jewish readers can correct me if I’m wrong, but I am to understand that the gap between Conservative and Reform is actually not very large in terms of belief and practice today, as it may have been in earlier decades.

That’s probably the case in practice among individuals. Many individuals who self-identify as “conservative” are people who would otherwise be “reform” but prefer the conservative style of services, for example. Then there’s the issue of geography – west coast conservative is more liberal, while east coast conservative is more, well, conservative.

The official statements and whatnot of the official organizations of the movements are still pretty different.