Hi Ryan,

This is not a topic I wanted to discuss in public. I think Elon Musk is an idiot. He supposedly has an IQ of 150. Mine is a lot higher than that. Also, in tests, I am told that fitted every single rare category they tested me for. I am a systems thinker, and one of the comments on the report said that I had the rare ability to arrive at the right answer without having all the facts.

However, despite my IQ, I got caught in the Christian fundamentalist movement for 10 years, and I believed a helluve lot of stupid things, despite my intelligence, and I believe them because I was ignorant and I had been taught a lot of rubbish. One can be incredible smart, but no matter how smart one is, if one has an erroneous foundation, one will reason incorrectly. I’ll get back to that shortly.

So let’s go back to what I said in my article – I said an education was required. I stated that a qualification was not an education. I doubt Ted Cruz has an education. He has a number of qualifications. An education is a lot more than a qualification. And it’s impossible to be educated and believe in Christianity, or in any god for that matter. You can certainly be highly qualified, but you cannot be educated. Education demands that you are fluent in multiple disciples, including the sciences, several languages, geography, history, etc. Only then does one have broad enough view in order to use that intelligence sufficiently well. Any solid education, combined with high intelligence, will wipe out any belief in God. There is a reason that something like 92% of ‘distinguished scientists’ are atheists.

https://evolution-outreach.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1936-6434-6-33

Neither an education without intelligence nor intelligence without an education work well. That is why I listed both as necessary. This is very much a case of the sum of two are greater than the two parts.

I would agree with your statement “High intelligence, when combined with hubris, lack of perspectives and privilege is a dangerous combination,” but that is not what I said. I said that an education was necessary, and I described what an education was.

You also said, “I don’t care if you have an IQ of 300. You can have perfect grammar and logical reasoning abilities, but if your vocabulary is limited you will never be able to express or process the nuance and complexity necessary for higher order thinking.’ And, again, I said that the person must be educated. Without an education accompanying the IQ, the IQ is useless.

What I am curious about is why you took my mention of intelligence out of context? I very clearly gave a list of vital components. Intelligence is one of them. Education is another. Compassion is a third. Someone with an IQ of 119, no matter how well educated and informed, simply does not have the kind of complex reasoning at a high level to make the kind of decisions that are necessary in our current situation.