Westergaard; I think you are partly right. The jews were severley persecuted and hunted, and only the "smartest fox survived" for 1000's of years and that has had a beneficial effect on jews as a racial entity. The celibacy of priests in only recent, as some of the early Popes were notorious breeders, as were the assorted priests. Monasteries were more highly celibate, but not exclusively so. Many monasteries had excess population grown from the nafarious monks(like rasputin, monks did get around a bit).
However you miss the point when you single out genetic factors. The Jewish social structure has done well to make jews effectively smarter. The food laws minimzie many ailments carried by certain foods, and surprise they are embedded in the religion, and get carried along and implemented. What gives a smarter kid better than a well fed mother during pregnancy? No trichinosis, less milk carried diseases.(in the old days with no refrigeration milk would go bad rapidly, especially if meat germs got into that optimal culture medium). Do not eat the scavengers from the rivers meant few looked in swamps for food where the snails carried assorted worms and flukes, that were not present in active free swimming fish. So the food laws keep jews healthier. And the third factor is the tendency towards knowledge and business ownership brough about by land ownership interdictions that made the jews either open a store or practise a profession to survive. These three have served the jews very well. A far higher % of jews goes to college than gentiles, because they want to go and work towards it. If the gentiles did the same thing, they would also excell above the hoi polloi. Why do they not do so? Lazyness, lack of scholarship, lack of guidance from the peer group to get into college at all costs. The gentile peer group in high school steals cars, the black peer group drops out early and eschews "whitey"traits. The Jewish peer group does not do this because their parents guide them better, their religion more activelt interdicts such behavious, and so it goes. If we want to complain about the dark, better we turn on a light. We do not need to attack the jews for any activity they perform. We should 'turn on the light', and do well ourselves, jews have no royal road, they work hard. In college I found the jewsih students did the most work, and paid the most attention, and on average did better than the rest. The only group to beat them is the Chinese. The Chinese students would study every break, and at night, and all day Sunday and Saturday, and would do as well as the Jewsih students, but with far more study time. On that basis I would rate the Jewish students as more intelligent than the Chinese. The gentiles did not study as much and did not do as well as either the Jewish or Chinese students, but I rated them as smart as the Jewish students on the basis of their response to questions that had never been seen before. When I set tests and exams I always drew about 60% of the test questions from the book examples, and 40% were sky blue queries requring extrapolative thinking, based on the material taught. In the 60% area the Chinese were near perfect, as they had the books down cold, and they did better than the Gentiles or Jewish students. However the Jewish students and gentiles did better on the other 40%. If I marked only on the 60% the Chinese would be the class leaders, and if only on the 40% they would be at the bottom with the Jewsih and gentiles students mixed near the top.
The composite gave a good gradation with no racial/religious group dominant.
From this I conclude that there is no really "smarter" Jewish race, but there is a smarter Jewish way of doing things that the gentiles and Chinese would be wise to emulate.
And so I think you are wrong in stating that 1200 years has bred dumb Christians and smart Jews. That time frame is not enough to concentrate the genome in any one area, especailly when many dummies survive and many smwrat people got killed during that time period in the Jewsih and other groupd, thus dissipating any 'upbreeding' with and equal 'smartkill'.
A also did not think you were correct about the 100 MPH in Paris. What would you have them do, just tolerate the continual intrusion? Even smart people will run from innocent bees to their destruction. This regrettable incident would not happen to me as I would not be spooked. But what if 7 bikers came after me and my family and I had a fast car, should I run and get hurt, or run away. There are always the assassin possibilities with papparazzi, so it is a gray area.
You might do the same? What if one had a gun and showed it?, but no one can say now. There is one lone survivor who might shed some light, but he might well have traumatic amnesia(muggers know that if they are seen, and they hit the person three or four times on the head(not killing blows) hard enough to cause some trauma, the short terms memories are destroyed, and so we may never know the truth even if he lives to speak.
Bill |
