Jesus’ IQ?

[mikbone]

How intelligent do you think he was?

I’m betting at least 300 IQ.

Likely learned egyptian listening to it as a baby, Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic.  But had gift of tongues so fluent in all languages.

At age 12 he astounded the priests at the temple.  Knew that Elohim was his father.  Likely recollection of the pre-existence.

I’m fairly certain he could read minds.

[laronius]

18 minutes ago, mikbone said:

How intelligent do you think he was?

I’m betting at least 300 IQ.

Likely learned egyptian listening to it as a baby, Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic.  But had gift of tongues so fluent in all languages.

At age 12 he astounded the priests at the temple.  Knew that Elohim was his father.  Likely recollection of the pre-existence.

I’m fairly certain he could read minds.

Under the influence of the Father he had access to all knowledge, as needed. So I think it would be hard to judge what was him personally and what was external divine influence. 

[LDSGator]

58 minutes ago, mikbone said:

Likely learned egyptian listening to it as a baby, Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic.  But had gift of tongues so fluent in all language

I’ve always wondered that as well! I think there are passages about Him learning in the bible. What did He learn? What did He need to learn?

[mikbone]

10 minutes ago, LDSGator said:

I’ve always wondered that as well! I think there are passages about Him learning in the bible. What did He learn? What did He need to learn?

Not sure what he learned.

More like, “Oh yeah I recall saying that to Moses.”

[mikbone]

Luke 2:52 And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.

My wife taught herself how to read by age 2.  She is the 3rd born child in her family and their mother read them stories @ night.  She never had a reading lesson.  Just started reading the stories over her shoulder, cereal boxes, labels, etc.

[Vort]

IQ stands for "intelligence quotient". IQ as such fails to have much (any) meaning past about 170.

What does it mean to have an IQ of 300? Technically, at least originally (things might have changed), it meant that an adult with an IQ of 300 was three times the "intellectual age" of the average adult. By definition, all "adults" are 18 years old, and again by definition, the mean performance of a large group of randomly selected adults on a test of IQ is set at 100 using the formula

IQ = (intellectual age based on test performance) / (chronological age) * 100

The 100 multiple is to give a number between about 50 and 150 instead of some fractional number between about 0.5 and 1.5. So a person who performs exactly as expected for his/her (adult) age will score an 18 (the chronological age of adulthood), and 18 / 18 * 100 = 100—the average IQ.

Now the trick becomes, How does one assign an "intellectual age" to a person based on his/her score on some test? When we have a very large group of people who (we assume) will fall along a normal distribution, we can use statistical methods to figure out what score on what test indicates what IQ. So we just take the results of many, many iterations of the tests with various test-takers, and we "normalize" the scores such that the mean is 100 and the standard deviation is 15 IQ points. That gives us a table for each test that reveals the IQ (or at least the IQ score for that test on that day) for the individual who took the test.

But up around an IQ of 150 or 160, how do you reliably distinguish between individual performances? You can't just keep making the questions harder and harder. The idea of "intelligence" has been that it is a fixed quantity with which a person is born, and it does not/cannot increase with practice (though it can decrease with disease, age, injury, and lack of performance). (You can see immediately why this whole approach to measuring a supposedly inborn and invariant quantity is doomed from the start.) Maybe you include some questions requiring an understanding of, I don't know, differential equations or particle physics or spectral analysis or Old English literature. But are you now testing that person's native capabilities, or his education? Because the two are very different quantities, though they are also very intimately related and even intertwined. By the time you get to measuring an IQ of 190 or so, the tests don't really mean anything. We do not have the ability to discriminate between someone with an IQ of 190 and someone else with an IQ of 210, much less between someone with an IQ of 190 and someone with an IQ of 192. So saying that So-and-so has an IQ of 300 doesn't actually mean anything, as far as I can tell.

There are many who say that IQ tests are stupid and meaningless. For the record, I am not one of those people; they are wrong. IQ tests are not stupid, and they most certainly are not meaningless. IQ tests are the most reliable psychometric tests ever created, the most reproducible, absolutely solid statistical indicators of people's general ability to perform across a very wide variety of tasks. They are very meaningful, robust, and reliable as real-world performance indicators.

But instead of "intelligence quotient", I think they would be better characterized as an "intellectual performance quotient" or something of the sort. Intelligence is not what psychologists of 110 years ago thought it was, nor is it what today's researchers think it is. Defining "intelligence" is probably not something that modern science can do in a useful way, except in a very narrow sense. The best definition is given by scripture: Intelligence is the light of truth. Science as such cannot touch this definition, because it's not useful to science. But it is most useful to human beings.

Edited March 28 by Vort

[LDSGator]

24 minutes ago, Vort said:

But instead of "intelligence quotient", I think they would be better characterized as an "intellectual performance quotient" or something of the sort. Intelligence is not what psychologists of 110 years ago thought it was, nor is it what today's researchers think it is. Defining "intelligence" is probably not something that modern science can do in a useful way, except in a very narrow sense

Well said  

[JohnsonJones]

Hmmm, well, when I was younger I was tested with an IQ normally around 155 (IQ can vary in tests given dependent on day, time, personal feelings that day, etc).  Normally it was right about that range and with most tests I took in earlier years I was normally in the 99% so I suppose that would match.

One of my daughters is much smarter than me, usually having an IQ around the 160 range.  On the otherhand, I had a son who always felt somewhat left behind her, even though he constantly wanted to prove himself in smarts.  He had an IQ of around 110.  What I noticed though was that he turned out to be a MUCH HARDER WORKER than she was.  He was much more dedicated to what he did, and in that way turned out much more successful.  I also had a daughter who had a much lower IQ, but was extremely charismatic.  She dazzled everyone and had boys falling out of the woodwork to try to ask her out when she was younger. 

In that light, I'm not sure IQ is much more of a way of measuring how fast we catch onto things and how good we are at taking tests.  Perhaps there are other forms of ability (IQ of other sorts such as work ethic, people skills, etc) that are just as important but that we don't regularly test for or design tests for.  In that way, each of us may be geniuses in different areas.  While I may have the "IQ" smarts on paper, I may be the equal of a low IQ individual in the area of computers or mechanics.  Fixing cars is definitely not my forte, but there are those who it comes as easy as eating a piece of pie. 

it is possible that the Lord was talented in ALL of those areas, not just how we measure "IQ" but in personal skills he was a genius, relating to others he was a genius, and many other areas that are just as important, if not more important, in his ministry. 

How do you rate those?  Normally we don't and so I'm not sure how important it really is to give out a number.  I may have stated a number above regarding how I have tested in the past, but in real life it has no real bearing to how successful I am or how much of a good person I am (and how good you are is really what TRULY matters at the end of the day/life).  In the important areas of life that number is meaningless.  It doesn't actually represent anything meaningful, or that has true impact.

In that way, I'm not sure if we could measure all the ways the Lord was a genius, but I'm not sure it matters either.  What really matters would be that he KNOWS each and everyone one of us, knows what and how we think and WHY we think that way, loves us, and through him and his atonement we can be cleansed of our sins, raised from death and resurrected in perfect form through faith in him and doing the things he has asked us to do to show that faith. 

[mikbone]

49 minutes ago, JohnsonJones said:

In that way, I'm not sure if we could measure all the ways the Lord was a genius, but I'm not sure it matters either.  What really matters would be that he KNOWS each and everyone one of us, knows what and how we think and WHY we think that way, loves us, and through him and his atonement we can be cleansed of our sins, raised from death and resurrected in perfect form through faith in him and doing the things he has asked us to do to show that faith. 

Thanks for the response.  

This point of view is kinda why I made this post.  

The new evangelical Christ marketing catch phrase, “He gets us.”  Absolutely drives me nuts.

Yup, He gets us.  But so does Satan.

Do we get him?  When we take the Sacrament we commit to witness him.  How can you witness him if you don’t know him.  Isn’t it imperative to know who He is?  

Joseph Smith - “It is the first principle of the Gospel to know (with) a certainty the character of God, and to know that we (can) converse with Him as one man converses with another."

Edited March 28 by mikbone