Are Atheists Mentally Ill?

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/seanthomas/100231060/are-atheists-mentally-ill/

This article, aptly titled "Are atheists mentally ill", informs us that, while nonbelievers are more intelligent than believers on average, they're also leading miserable, short lives spent in agony and depression. The article culminates in the claim that atheism is a form of mental illness, the implied conclusion being that one should start believing.

Now, like many commenters to that article, I sincerely do hope that the article is meant as satire. After all, the same site also features a rather clever article explaining why you can't use statistics to show that one individual person is more or less intelligent than one specific other person.

There is a lot to say about why such statistics are extremely dubious, my main contention being, as I've mentioned before, the suspicious absence of the standard deviation. There is also the issue of isolating one variable - faith vs non-faith - from all the others: In a culture where faith is accepted but atheism is not, of course atheists have good reason to be less happy than their religious friends; if you're more intelligent, it might imply that you see more clearly the evils in the world, therefore being unhappy, while at the same time intelligence might correlate with atheism (but not necessarily imply it); etc. etc.

And of course, every time someone mentions "a vast body of research", the dirty smell of a fish market on speed rises to the heavens.

The absolutely hilarious twist, though, is this: if you ask the question whether god exists, then "faith makes you happier" does not answer that question. If we were living in the matrix, controlled by machines, and the real world was a gehenna of destruction and chaos, then my belief in the illusory world created by the matrix does not change that fact. God either exists, objectively, or he doesn't. I I want to know the answer either way, both in case of the matrix and regarding god, even if the truth might make me extremely unhappy. Because, you know, if I don't know it I can do nothing about it.

No, faith is not a virtue, and trying to align one's worldview with actual reality is not "a tragic deficiency". It's merely an attempt to be honest. It's a form of humility strangely missing in those who place so much emphasis on following that most humble of godsons.

I don't get how people can believe that arguments like those are convincing.

It's not even about me defeding atheism against da evulz christians. I'd have exactly the same contentions with statistics biased in favour of atheism. (Only, somehow those rarely ever show up on my tiny screen. Probably because atheism really is inferior. Or because atheists are not stupid enough to even try...).

As I said, I hope that the article is satire. But I'm fairly certain it's not. And even if it were, for every Poe  there are a hundred people subscribing to such b.s. in sanctimonious, ernest sincerety. And that is just sad.

What's Wrong With Statistics (at least the ones you read in the news)

On the web or in newspapers, you can read excellent articles such as this. In it, you can read how the male brain is 10% larger on average, but the female brain has more connections. Men think more with the left side of the brain and are therefore more logical. But women have more nerve connections and a bigger corpus callosum (that's the part of the brain that connects the left and right halves), so they use both hemispheres of their brain more in-sync and are therefore better at intuition, communication... basically, women are better at everything that really matters, while men are good for the workforce, as cannon fodder, and for fixing your PC.

Well, the latter isn't even true anymore, now that the majority of 'puters are tablets that cannot be fixed if you don't have a contract with Apple(TM). D'uh.

Sounds about right, doesn't it?

Well... it doesn't. I often had this vague feeling that those claims were somehow wrong. Regardless of whether statistics were used to prove that men were superior (which is rarely the case nowadays) or (much, much more often!) that women are the epitome of goodness; or to show that immigrants are criminals; or that religious people live longer than atheists; or even when the statistics seemed to support my prejudices, showing that the roman catholic clergy are more prone to become child molesters than the rest of us. Something was... off.

Maybe it's just because I was brought up on the firm idea that stereotypes are bad, period. Or it's because I'm a Jewish Studies minor. At any rate, I tend to mistrust generalizations over large groups of people. The pharisees are hypocrites? Really? Every single last one of them did nothing all day except feigning learnedness and empathy, while really clinging to an absurd law and forcing it on others? None of them had families to support? None of them earned their living with hard work? They didn't build schools for the poor and unprivileged? Look up the facts and be surprised.

I'm getting off topic, yeah.

So, basically, I read all those statistical facts, had a hard time believing them, but never could I pinpoint exactly what was wrong.

Then, some fine day, I talked to a friend who knows her way around maths. I mentioned one of those suspicious statistics. One about men and women, probably. And, with a conspiratorial smile, after she had blown out the candle and looked around the room lest anyone should overhear what secrets she had to tell, she whispered the following words into my ear: "Standard deviation, my friend, standard deviation!"

This came as a huge revelation, which I am glad to pass on to you now.

Here's the deal:

Let's say you are trying to score a goal from the penalty spot. Let's also say that you're not exactly the greatest soccer player never to have roamed the field of the Allianz Arena. You shoot 10 times. 5 times, you shoot 10 meters to the left of the goal. The other 5 times, you shoot 10 meters to the right. Not counting those times when you didn't even manage to hit the ball.

So on average, you have hit the goal exactly 10 times. Right in the middle. That's a 100% success rate, right there.

And that's exactly what's wrong with the article quoted above. And that's exactly what's wrong with about 95% of all articles that quote statistics. They all tell you the average, but not the standard deviation. That's about as useful as telling you that the boiling point of water is 75.5°C.

It's not exactly relevant whether women have a, say, 10% larger corpus callosum on average, if the standard deviation is 2 times larger than that. It won't mean that any specific woman you meet will top any specific man in any one area with any reliability. It doesn't help us much to know that the female sexual partners of circumcised men run a slightly lower risk of cervical cancer (they don't, by the way). Not if sexual faithfulness, personal hygiene and the average time between sexual encounters are much more indicative factors.

So... don't believe me, I implore. But the next time you read your newspaper, look out for that standard deviation. I bet you won't find it.

By the way, the boiling point of water is 75.5°C, according to Wikipedia. At 8000 meters above sea level, of course.