Jews are geniuses, says controversial author (1 Viewer)

YankeeChica

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Jews are geniuses, says controversial author

April 10, 2007 12:00am

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  • Jews' average IQ higher than gentiles, author says
  • Anti-semitism blamed for modesty about achievements
  • Critics say author's logic, statistics all wrong
JEWS are an exceptionally accomplished group with an IQ between seven and 15 points above average and a startling record of achievement in the arts and sciences, according to social theorist Charles Murray.
"Jewish genius", Dr Murray says, is a topic so sensitive that Jews rarely address it.
Writing in Commentary, a neoconservative journal, he argues that anti-semitism makes it easy to understand the reasons for that reluctance, but Jewish accomplishment is an important story.

Dr Murray showed his flair for generating heat as the theorist of the "underclass", and created outrage with his 1994 book The Bell Curve, which addressed what he saw as black under-achievement.
As a "Scots-Irish gentile from Iowa", he feels no inhibitions about tackling such a politically incorrect subject as high Jewish IQs.

From the birth of monotheism to the medieval philosopher Maimonides, the 17th-century rationalist Spinoza, and the scientists, artists and intellectuals of the modern world, Jews have shown a rare affinity with scholarship, Dr Murray argues.

Centuries of discrimination masked the extent of the Jews' success, he says. But in the second half of the 20th century, Jews received 29 Nobel prizes.
Recipients included physicist Albert Einstein, writer Boris Pasternak and economist Milton Friedman.

"Jews constitute about two-tenths of 1 per cent of the world's population," Dr Murray says. "You do the maths."

IQ test scores show Jews have a mean of between 107 and 115, compared with the mean for the population as a whole of 100.

Analysis indicates Jewish people have extremely high verbal and reasoning skills.
'It's genetic'

Critics complain Dr Murray is once again "racialising" intelligence by claiming some groups are genetically more intelligent than others - the charge levelled against him when The Bell Curve was published.

"This issue is much simpler than the issue of blacks versus whites," he says.

"There are all kinds of environmental reasons, such as oppression and slavery, that explain lower IQ scores for blacks. In the case of the Jews ... this has got to be genetic because they've also experienced oppression."

Some ascribe the intellectual accomplishment of Jews to winnowing by persecution and the tradition of marrying socially desirable scholars and their children, but Dr Murray believes there are more compelling explanations at work for the trend.

In 64AD, Jewish high priest Joshua ben Gamla issued an edict mandating universal schooling, at the same time as the Jewish religion became more centred on prayer and scholarship.

A substantial majority of the Jewish population were farmers then, but by 1000AD only a small minority were still tilling the land.

Dr Murray believes increased literacy encouraged Jews to drop out of farming. Those who did not may have dropped out of Judaism, which requires study.

And Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian ruler who conquered Jerusalem and drove the Jews into exile in 586BC, may have had a hand in creating Jewish scholarship.
According to the Bible, he carried away "all the officers and fighting men and all the craftsmen and artisans", leaving only the "poorest people" behind - people who were absorbed into other religions.

Tony Judt, a British historian based at New York University, is scathing about Dr Murray's theory.

"My own statistically naive impression these days is that intelligence ... is distributed among Jews in proportions comparable to their presence in society as a whole," he says.
- The Sunday Times
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,21531266-663,00.html
 

_dhj_

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I wouldn't be surprised if this was true. Jews are also overrepresented in the arts, commerce, law, government - basically in all the important professions.
 
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volition

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Yeah I remember reading something about this before as well, it could very well be true. I certainly wouldn't be surprised if it were.
 

nichhhole

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_dhj_ said:
I wouldn't be surprised if this was true. Jews are also overrepresented in the arts, commerce, law, government - basically in all the important professions.
I'm sure the Jewish 'Survivor guilt' as its been penned, has alot to do with it too...
the idea that those Jewish Holocaust survivors etc, have been ableto survive while so manyother of their own hadnt been able to..so thus they feel they should achieve and excel in life, for themselves and for those who aren't able to.

All the books i was browsing for info on Mein Kampf, argued that Jew's weren't a race...??
 

_dhj_

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nichhhole said:
I'm sure the Jewish 'Survivor guilt' as its been penned, has alot to do with it too...
the idea that those Jewish Holocaust survivors etc, have been ableto survive while so manyother of their own hadnt been able to..so thus they feel they should achieve and excel in life, for themselves and for those who aren't able to.

All the books i was browsing for info on Mein Kampf, argued that Jew's weren't a race...??
It's not really a post-holocaust thing.

I mean the holocaust took place partly because jews were in all the important positions - e.g. 80% of department stores were Jewish owned and many lawyers and doctors were Jewish at that time in Germany.
 

onebytwo

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"There are all kinds of environmental reasons, such as oppression and slavery, that explain lower IQ scores for blacks. In the case of the Jews ... this has got to be genetic because they've also experienced oppression."
so.....blacks oppressed, not smart .....jews oppressed, smart...therefore genetic?
 

nichhhole

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something tells me that this genetic superiority thing will eventually lead to some form of social-darwinist type thing...:confused:
 

wafflesnsorbet

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Well, these findings have some ground:

- Religious dominance: Fine. It isn't the traditional religion, but the bastardised form is rampant/widespread and has effectively conquered the world

- Political dominance: Who doesn't know the Jewish are running the United States of America? Well... now you know...

- Wealth: Um... you don't see many Jewish beggars? Um... it is a socially known fact that most Jewish people are fairly well off? (After all, wasn't the Holocaust near-entirely based on this fact? That, and the fact that Germany was run by a bunch of crazies in this period of time...)

(cough) The above being based on social presumptions and are not entirely reliable.

The headline is silly though. While the Jewish may or may not be intellectually superior to the general populace, this can't account for every single Jewish person. After all, every so often, unfortunate things happy during the pregnancy process and so-on-so forth. Every culture has its duds.
 

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