I watched a documentary recently titled "RACE and INTELLIGENCE", and I must confess it really got me thinking, so I decided to bring this topic to the house for everyone to deliberate.

Considering the current situation of the globe, IS HUMAN INTELLIGENCE DETERMINED BY RACE,GENES or ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS?

I await your response.

Let's put it this way. The environment may encourage or restrain the application of intelligence.

If you place two equally intelligent people - one in a temperate cool room, and another in a boiling oven, you might find that there could be differences in the results of their work.

That's not necessarily a difference in intelligence, but a difference in what the environment will condition.

P.S: What's this doing in the Religion Section?

Oh, please let's leave it in the religion section.

What do we mean by intelligence anyway? I've found that even amongst professional experts (psychologists) the definition of intelligence is vague at best.

In discussions I usually prefer a definition that says Intelligence is the ability to acquire and store information. The information may be acquired by direct perception or it may be acquired by deduction from perceived information. We are surrounded by information and everyone is individually tuned into a certain type of information. An artist might be better adept at processing colours and shapes and lines, while a geologist might be better at acquiring information about the terrain. A meteorologist might be able to extract a lot of information by just looking at the sky, but unlike the geologist the terrain is a closed book to him, he is not even interested in looking at the earth. etc

We need to know what we mean by intelligence. Is IQ test result truly a representation of the intelligence of a person? All of this has serious consequences for religion.

@poster

You already knew the answer before you asked this delusional question.

Pastor AIO:

Oh, please let's leave it in the religion section.

What do we mean by intelligence anyway? I've found that even amongst professional experts (psychologists) the definition of intelligence is vague at best.

In discussions I usually prefer a definition that says Intelligence is the ability to acquire and store information. The information may be acquired by direct perception or it may be acquired by deduction from perceived information. We are surrounded by information and everyone is individually tuned into a certain type of information. An artist might be better adept at processing colours and shapes and lines, while a geologist might be better at acquiring information about the terrain. A meteorologist might be able to extract a lot of information by just looking at the sky, but unlike the geologist the terrain is a closed book to him, he is not even interested in looking at the earth. etc

We need to know what we mean by intelligence. Is IQ test result truly a representation of the intelligence of a person? All of this has serious consequences for religion.

Pastor, i think what you have defined is more in the realm of knowledge and memory than intelligence. Intelligence has to do with the function or capacity to resolve problems, be they mathematical, deductive or otherwise.

Here are some of your atheistic and evolutionist heroes theories on race and intelligence. I hope you African evolutionists are still proud of your theories.

“The Negroid stock is even more ancient than the Caucasian and Mongolians, as may be proved by an examination not only of the brain, of the hair, of the bodily characteristics , but of the instincts, the intelligence. The standard of intelligence of the average adult Negro is similar to that of the eleven-year-old-youth of the species Homo sapiens.” -- Henry Fairfield Osborn

“No rational man, cognizant of the facts, believes that the average negro is the equal, still less the superior, of the white man. And if this be true, it is simply incredible that, when all his disabilities are removed, and our prognathous relative has a fair field and no favor, as well as no oppressor, he will be able to compete successfully with his bigger-brained and smaller-jawed rival, in a contest which is to be carried on by thoughts and not by bites.” -- Thomas Huxley

“At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes … will no doubt be exterminated. The break will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.” -- Charles Darwin

Deep Sight:

Pastor, i think what you have  defined is more in the realm of knowledge and memory than intelligence. Intelligence has to do with the function or capacity to resolve problems, be they mathematical, deductive or otherwise.

I hear you.  But here are the distinctions that I make.  

Memory -  The storage of information already acquired

Knowledge - A form that information takes when it is recorded, especially in the conscious mind.  

Your definition of Intelligence presupposes a purposeful entity.  The purpose is to resolve the problem, whatever that is.  

Let us say that the Purpose is to get to the market for 3pm.   If a man with this purpose meets an impassable roadblock on the way what does he do.  He may use his knowledge of the area to navigate the roads around the block and find another route to the market.  He would have used his intelligence in this case.  

Consider another man:  This time instead of seeking alternatives he just keeps ramming into the barricade over and over again.  He won't stop insisting that he must pass through the barricade in spite of its impassibility.   Such a fellow would be demonstrating a lack of intelligence  because he is not absorbing the information around him.  He is just following a fixed pattern.  

I started a thread a while back called ona kan o woja (There's more than one way to the market) and its relationship to intelligence but the thread didn't really get off the ground.  

I with you on your definition of intelligence but I'm only going stricter and more rigorous by separating the purpose from the intelligence that is used to achieve that purpose.