Monday, July 21, 2014

Teaching via Mockery

Religious apologists often confuse the word objective with words like absolute, transcendent, and universal--especially when talking about morality. To illustrate what objective means, I will now insult these people.

They are stupid...at least in the subjective sense, which is a judgement I'm making influenced by personal feelings and opinions. However, in the recent past, I could test these people and state objectively that they are morons, imbeciles and idiots--each of these labels corresponding with an IQ score of 51–70, 21–50, and IQ of 0–20 respectively. A metric, like an IQ score, means that feelings and opinions can't factor in. Your IQ is your IQ regardless of what I personally think of you, and therefore objective.

4 comments:

  1. Cute way to illustrate the point.
    As you know, however, IQ is a loaded test with all sorts of bias. It also looks at intelligence in a highly mistaken way.
    So people who use it tend to be morons -- wait, what would you call a person with an IQ from 70-100?
    :-)

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    1. It is a loaded test, but if everyone takes the same loaded test, it does produce objective results. While I don't know that IQ really means anything, and I say that as someone with a high IQ, I find it sad that we stopped using it, or really any objective test, not because it means nothing, but because it might make some people feel bad. Reality doesn't change just because it makes some people depressed.

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  2. I know that's why it's not really used anymore. Still, the results of standardized tests are objective and makes the point I was trying to make. I'm not advocating using IQ tests again, just making an analogy.

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  3. Let's imagine a test of drawing a straight line -- I make everyone write with their right hand and then a computer evaluates how straight the lines are. The test is used to decide who is eligible for jobs.

    Objective test and biased. Results: worthless
    Well, unless you are right-handed, then you will find it sad that the test is stopped.

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