Are believers less intelligent than Atheists? Discuss

[wynn]

Actually I am speaking about the BG. If someone wants to speak about doing something on the strength of some other authority (be it a religious idea or a notion of transport on public roads) it behooves them to cite it. If someone is talking about how "anything goes", its difficult to see how they could do that on the authority of BG.

If someone insists on being helpless and being capable of doing nothing but sitting on their brains, then I guess one is already at the end of rational discernment so all further discussions become pointless.

Excellent. Just play dumb and just blame me.

 

[wynn]

I dispute their motivation based on historical evidence for people using theology in a twisted way that is LOGICALLY inconsistent.

So what if it is logically inconsistent?

If the bible says, don't kill, and the pope says "go kill infidels because God wants you to", and the reason why is that God told some jews to kill some infidels long ago, I have a problem with that.

You may have a problem with that, but God apparently doesn't, given that He allowed it to happen.

War is a necessary evil sometimes, it isn't God's work.

If not even a blade of grass moves without God's will, then war - and everything else - is God's work.

 

[Quantum Quack]

Many people who've read a book, a religious or an atheist one, simply became convinced by what it said while reading it.
I've never had that experience with any book or or any other text.

you may or may not be surprised just whow many people rely on anothers "Authority" on a given subject to the point of blindness...
Is it little wonder that an author can act in ways that abuse their position of authority?
Is it also any wonder that people can and do tell them to "bugger off" when they try to inspire blind allegiance?

I guess people tend to forget that the "hand of man" is fallible?

 

[Quantum Quack]

You may have a problem with that, but God apparently doesn't, given that He allowed it to happen.

If you subscribe to a certain definition of what God is which is a definition rendered by man and not by God.
Maybe asking God [ the universe ] to define himself/itself rather than projecting our own definitions upon it might be useful.
A more scientific approach yes?

 

[cole grey]

From the Crusaders' point of view, the motive wasn't that God told some jews to kill some infidels, but rather, Turkish aggression against European Christianity. After perhaps 200 years of attacks on bands of pilgrims the aggression peaked.

well, i was just pointing out a possibly used rationalization for killing in cases that go beyond defending oneself. But that is an interesting point.

There was even a belief that the Turks or Saracens would circumcise pilgrims and sprinkle their blood on the altars.

propaganda can be quite effective.
there was also a large economic push for these crusades from what i understand.

So what if it is logically inconsistent?

logic is meaningful to me, not to a lot of people in a systemic in-depth way.

You may have a problem with that, but God apparently doesn't, given that He allowed it to happen.
If not even a blade of grass moves without God's will, then war - and everything else - is God's work.

absolute determinism is contra-indicated by the ubiquitous usage of the term "free-will". Coming to terms with the idea that God "allowed" everything that happens however, is an issue. I would like to say my description of our history as a pathway through the evolution of consciousness to God-awareness contains sufficient excuse for the existence of suffering, but i am sure it is incomplete.

 

[wynn]

there was also a large economic push for these crusades from what i understand.

The thing with seeing economical and political motivations in some action performed by people who claim to be religious (or are generally perceived as religious) is that if one wants to see those economical or political motivations - then one can indeed see them. That doesn't automatically mean that those religious people had those motivations. Perhaps they simply went out to defend the one and true faith, and the Lord, in gratitude, payed them by giving them a lot of valuable land, or gold, or cattle, or whatever was valuable at the time and place.

Coming to terms with the idea that God "allowed" everything that happens however, is an issue.

Why should it be an issue?

 

[cole grey]

If you subscribe to a certain definition of what God is which is a definition rendered by man and not by God.
Maybe asking God [ the universe ] to define himself/itself rather than projecting our own definitions upon it might be useful.
A more scientific approach yes?

This is a very complex idea - God's reticence to be more direct.

 

[cole grey]

The thing with seeing economical and political motivations in some action performed by people who claim to be religious (or are generally perceived as religious) is that if one wants to see those economical or political motivations - then one can indeed see them. That doesn't automatically mean that those religious people had those motivations. Perhaps they simply went out to defend the one and true faith, and the Lord, in gratitude, payed them by giving them a lot of valuable land, or gold, or cattle, or whatever was valuable at the time and place.

I am willing to accord whatever part religion has to play in things its fair responsibility. I see it as the excuse people use to steal when they say "big companies can afford it", or "they will just write it off" as an excuse, not a motivation. Pointing out that it is a deeply ingrained excuse that allows for much more powerful excusing to be done, doesn't change that.

ALSO, one person with the truth sending thousands of people out with a lie, does not make the original truth a lie.

CG "coming to terms with the idea that God "allowed" everything that happens however, is an issue."
wynn - Why should it be an issue?

Because it is hard to see how God allowed satan etc. without bringing up red flags in any simple explanation. Does God owe all people and beings independence? It seems that pharoah's hardening of heart would indicate God does not, also the whole satan rebellion thing. So how do we explain what God let's people/angels do? Of course, that would lead us to wonder how God allowed us to be what we are, or develop into what we are, at which point you must either say, "life is not right, we are not right", at which point your viewpoint on everything becomes suspect, or you have to say "we are in a position that could be seen as not right, but it is the only position we have to view the world from, so it has to be acceptable," which accords you some right to make pronouncements on things. From there, one can allow that it is possible, that there is some reason things were allowed to be this way. Not saying (like pangloss/liebniz) this is the "best it could have been", but allowing for the idea that it is an ugly path we chose that eventually gets us where we should go, so God just let it be that. If we want to believe we are in a race against the earth and each other to get our genes replicated, that is one of many correct ways to describe this place. Or we can "construct" other meanings to layer over that idea, or even question that idea.

You can't create a concept of responsibility, i mean even the idea of it, in a "doomed from the beginning" viewpoint. You also can't create the idea in a world without. The problem a lot of people have with the fundies is that their doctrine philosophically examined is, "you are responsible 100%, and you are not responsible 100%", which is hard for most people, including myself, to call reasonable.

I don't agree with people that say, "it had to be bad, because x good thing necessitates the bad." I think that is oversimplifying. I personally think we are here to learn, and this place is an excellent place to learn in, but it isn't all "good" - if the end goal is pure pleasure without pain, then yes this place is a mistake.

P.S. I am just posting stuff now, I have lost track of the thread. Perhaps in response to someone who would say, it is all evasion and double-talk, i thought i would provide people some actual ideas to deny.

 

[wynn]

The thing with seeing economical and political motivations in some action performed by people who claim to be religious (or are generally perceived as religious) is that if one wants to see those economical or political motivations - then one can indeed see them. That doesn't automatically mean that those religious people had those motivations. Perhaps they simply went out to defend the one and true faith, and the Lord, in gratitude, payed them by giving them a lot of valuable land, or gold, or cattle, or whatever was valuable at the time and place.

I am willing to accord whatever part religion has to play in things its fair responsibility. I see it as the excuse people use to steal when they say "big companies can afford it", or "they will just write it off" as an excuse, not a motivation. Pointing out that it is a deeply ingrained excuse that allows for much more powerful excusing to be done, doesn't change that.

ALSO, one person with the truth sending thousands of people out with a lie, does not make the original truth a lie.

I am brining up this extreme relativism of anything-goes to point out a formal problem: how can we, with certainty, exclude possibilities that seem repugnant or absurd?

Is our sense that something is repugnant or absurd, enough to say "Oh, that is repugnant, absurd; therefore, it surely cannot be true, and thus can and should be dismissed, and not taken seriously" -?

This problem becomes infinitely magnified when it comes to matters of "God."

People have indeed done all kinds of things (many of which many people would assess as repugnant and absurd) claiming to be doing them in the name of God, claiming to be doing them on God's authority, sometimes citing scriptual verses to support those actions, and when faced with opposition, would claim that it is just the opponent's own delusion and atheism that prevents the opponent from seeing the truth of the matter.

Unless one can claim to be beyond all delusion and atheism, the above scenario seems unresolvable. As long as one admits there may be some delusion and some atheism in oneself, one has to, logically, acknowledge for the possibility that, say, flying a plane into a tall, big building with many people in it, is righteous and pleasing to God.

Because it is hard to see how God allowed satan etc. without bringing up red flags in any simple explanation.

You mean why, not how?

Does God owe all people and beings independence? It seems that pharoah's hardening of heart would indicate God does not, also the whole satan rebellion thing. So how do we explain what God let's people/angels do? Of course, that would lead us to wonder how God allowed us to be what we are, or develop into what we are, at which point you must either say, "life is not right, we are not right", at which point your viewpoint on everything becomes suspect, or you have to say "we are in a position that could be seen as not right, but it is the only position we have to view the world from, so it has to be acceptable," which accords you some right to make pronouncements on things. From there, one can allow that it is possible, that there is some reason things were allowed to be this way. Not saying (like pangloss/liebniz) this is the "best it could have been", but allowing for the idea that it is an ugly path we chose that eventually gets us where we should go, so God just let it be that. If we want to believe we are in a race against the earth and each other to get our genes replicated, that is one of many correct ways to describe this place. Or we can "construct" other meanings to layer over that idea, or even question that idea.

You can't create a concept of responsibility, i mean even the idea of it, in a "doomed from the beginning" viewpoint. You also can't create the idea in a world without. The problem a lot of people have with the fundies is that their doctrine philosophically examined is, "you are responsible 100%, and you are not responsible 100%", which is hard for most people, including myself, to call reasonable.

I don't agree with people that say, "it had to be bad, because x good thing necessitates the bad." I think that is oversimplifying. I personally think we are here to learn, and this place is an excellent place to learn in, but it isn't all "good" - if the end goal is pure pleasure without pain, then yes this place is a mistake.

It looks like you are coming from a typical Western, Christianity-influenced perspective on this, with its assumption that there is only one life-time in which we can act (in contrast to the idea of serial reincarnation as they have it in some Eastern cultures), and possibly also with the assumption that planet Earth is the alpha and omega of existence.

Considering a many-lifetimes (in many forms of bodies), many-planets perspective, things look differently.

(Of course, in the Eastern view, one has to come to terms with karma as such, and/or with a GOD who set the world up to function by the principle of karma.)

 

[wynn]

If you subscribe to a certain definition of what God is which is a definition rendered by man and not by God.
Maybe asking God [ the universe ] to define himself/itself rather than projecting our own definitions upon it might be useful.
A more scientific approach yes?

No, unless you hope that God would somehow override your free will.

Because even if you prayed, and God answered, the fact that you knew this was an answer coming from someone else, would sully it all for you, and you'd be back to the question of how you can be sure that the answer has indeed come from God and not someone else or that isn't isn't simply a delusion of yours.
Unless, of course, you would already have full trust in your ability to distinguish who and what is God and who and what is not God, in which case, arguably, you also wouldn't need to ask God who and what God is to begin with.

 

[cole grey]

People have indeed done all kinds of things (many of which many people would assess as repugnant and absurd) claiming to be doing them in the name of God, claiming to be doing them on God's authority, sometimes citing scriptual verses to support those actions, and when faced with opposition, would claim that it is just the opponent's own delusion and atheism that prevents the opponent from seeing the truth of the matter.
Unless one can claim to be beyond all delusion and atheism, the above scenario seems unresolvable. As long as one admits there may be some delusion and some atheism in oneself, one has to, logically, acknowledge for the possibility that, say, flying a plane into a tall, big building with many people in it, is righteous and pleasing to God.

One must claim something. Refusing to act the world swims past. So you want to protect yourself from the possibility that crazy is sane? Not possible. I have a strong idea that we are supposed to do the best we can with what we have, so in terms of my meta-analysis, that is what i do. Who am i supposed to trust, if not myself? If some large percentage of people can understand this stuff, I certainly can. If a small percentage of people can, then I probably can. If only one in a very few people can understand it, well i don't see anyone else trying to make sense of my life for me, or better, when they do it sounds like illogic to me, so I guess i will have to take that chance and hope that i can.

You mean why, not how?

I don't know "why". I like to guess "why" but there are usually ways to second-guess the guess. I meant "how". I was saying if a person sees that God has allowed satan to run around loose, there should be issues raised. I guess you could continue onward and say it begs the question of "why, but i was saying more in the sense that, if a person believes god allowed x to happen, certain simplistic explanations don't seem logical, e.g. "God is good, so everything is for the good". Everything is not specified as good in the bible, as in "everything everyone does is going to be turned into something good by God." Why do people insist on saying that? It is clearly not true, except in the most magical maybe-land. Also, when people say that somehow sinners being punished will show the glory of God, I cringe. Where is the (using the actual meaning of the actual word) "glory" in that?

It looks like you are coming from a typical Western, Christianity-influenced perspective on this, with its assumption that there is only one life-time in which we can act (in contrast to the idea of serial reincarnation as they have it in some Eastern cultures), and possibly also with the assumption that planet Earth is the alpha and omega of existence.
Considering a many-lifetimes (in many forms of bodies), many-planets perspective, things look differently.
(Of course, in the Eastern view, one has to come to terms with karma as such, and/or with a GOD who set the world up to function by the principle of karma.)

One idea i had after reading dogen's "time-being" passages from shobogenzo - reincarnation is just a way for a person who is completely in the "now" to describe all the other moments of your life. It doesn't mean a different person, but since you are far from yesterday's now as heaven from earth, it is a different person. But like the guy says below, it isn't that simple. Your karma persists, from before through the now into the future. But it is just one life. Just an idea.
from http://www.thezensite.com/ZenTeachings/Dogen_Teachings/Uji_Welch.htm
(i was reading a different translation when i thought about the reincarnation thing, but here is the area of the text that gave me that (quite possibly absolutely wrong) idea)

Yet an ordinary person who does not understand buddha-dharma may hear the words the time-being this way: a while I was three heads and eight arms. For a while I was an eight- or sixteen-foot body. This is like having crossed over rivers and climbed mountains. Even though the mountains and rivers still exist, I have already passed them and now reside in the jeweled palace and vermilion tower. Those mountains and rivers are as distant from me as heaven is from earth.
It is not that simple. At the time the mountains were climbed and the rivers crossed, you were present. Time is not separate from you, and as you are present, time does not go away. As time is not marked by coming and going, the moment you climbed the mountains is the time-being right now. If time keeps coming and going, you are the time-being right now. This is the meaning of the time-being. Does this time-being not swallow up the moment when you climbed the mountains and the moment when you resided in the jeweled palace and vermilion tower? Does it not spit them out?

Although i don't have any particular reason to believe in reincarnation, i have no particular aversion to the idea that reincarnation exists, it could solve the universalism issue quite easily. You reminded me of a problem i had with a christian saying, there is a "chance for all people to accept jesus". I said without a reincarnation basket to put people into, a person with fundamentalist views on jesus has no point in saying that because clearly there is a historically limited group of people that have been evangelized to.
i wrote this as my idea - I just have to keep believing that if God can be called "good", God must be more compassionate and active than I am, and reject the fundamentalist viewpoint that the fear of god becomes something good simply because I personally don't have to fear him while others still do. I just have to keep believing that if God can be called "good", God must be more compassionate and active than I am, and reject the fundamentalist viewpoint that the fear of god becomes something good simply because I personally don't have to fear him while others still do. so this simple logic sifts through the back and forth of universalist and fundamentalist ideas for me.

and what i mean by "have to keep believing": that is just because God would have to be pretty messed up to say, "i'm morally good, but in your language i mean to say i'm morally nothing exceptional". There is a type of God that becomes at some point not worth worshipping at all, and it is irrational to expect a reasonable person to worship that type of god. There is a version of God whose only basis for worship is raw power, which really is no more attractive morally than witchcraft or other things portrayed by the bible as the wrong paths.

Also the many lifetimes thing is not my concern - i am in this one, i don't remember the other ones, I won't remember this one in the next one, unless i am the dalai lama, so what am i supposed to do with it, other than act out something i don't believe. I am not an objectivist universalist. I have a path. It is my path, and it doesn't include all the other paths. So for ME jesus is the way as far as i know, it doesn't have to be for anybody else. i can't judge that. I just bring all this up to further point out the idea i have of having to think something and nobody else seems to be able to jump in to MY brain and think something else. I guess that epistemic autonomy thing was pointed right at me, but what is my option. Epistemic democracy? Of course we lean on all these other people who we thought made sense or tell the truth or are likable or funny, but actually waiting for the consensus to know what i think? THAT sounds like insanity to me. Nietzsche would be crying just to think of it.

 

[The Marquis]

Well, if nothing else, Cole and Wynn... you have at least put the OP to bed.

 

[Aqueous Id]

Well, if nothing else, Cole and Wynn... you have at least put the OP to bed.

The article SkinWalker offered is full of tangibles since it involves stats on things like IQ and atheism, the drifting away from religious indoctrination during puberty, etc.

I am tempted to add that staying on point is another figure of merit that atheists may tend to excel in.

 

[The Marquis]

Alright, so perhaps we should speak more in terms of modes and means rather than making an absolute statement.

 

[Bebelina]

I think your IQ is depending on how rigid or open your worldview is. The more rigid, the lower IQ.

 

[The Marquis]

You're going to have to justify that.

 

[cole grey]

zzzzzzzzzzzz.. wha?
haha you are all funny, just don't quit your day job and run off to hollywood to start a comedy act.

i think people that are intelligent enough to notice the number of variables that go into an iq score would be hard pressed to point at 2-5 point variability and jump up and down. If my iq score one year was 5 points higher than another year, i would be hard pressed to put it down to anything more than getting a good night's sleep or drinking a cup of coffee. I personally would be looking at iq scores in bumps of ten to even raise an eyebrow. Maybe atheists have a higher value towards intelligence tests and try harder. Maybe believers have to use part of their brains to approach ideas atheists aren't "wasting their time" on, so they have a few points less to spend on other ideas. If some guy sits around all day working on sports scores or whatever, and then i say, hey what do you think of something that is actually important, and he doesn't know, did he have less raw mental power, or did he just spend his time deciding who was the best indy driver that week, or on some other (to me) stupid thing?

there's much more specific stuff i could get into but it is a waste.

Atheists are apparently more likely to have a specific mental health problem - http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2011/09/atheism-as-mental-deviance/
I think it is funny how comments on that statistic are like "social systems blah blah blah," just like i would say to bring up issues with the iq study. I didn't even bother to check out whether that study is meaningful BECAUSE, before you jump on that, here is my thought today at least -
if you can bolster your intelligence level by applying an average, you've got nothing to brag about.

 

[wynn]

Well, if nothing else, Cole and Wynn... you have at least put the OP to bed.

Duh.

You can see for yourself that few, if anyone, was willing to discuss the methodology and terminology of those "studies" that "find" that "believers are less intelligent than atheists."

 

[wynn]

One must claim something.

1. Why?

2. About what? The half-life of plutonium?
IOW, while there are things for which it seems we must make claims, there are also many things for which, even though someone might request of us to make a claim, there isn't actually the need to make a claim.

I've heard that one of the shooters at Columbine asked a student, pointing a gun at her, before shooting her: "Do you believe in God?"
Per your reasoning, she should have claimed one way or another. But should she really?

Refusing to act the world swims past.

Just because one doesn't react to every trigger there may be, or in ways that someone else expects, does not mean that one is refusing to act.

So you want to protect yourself from the possibility that crazy is sane? Not possible.

It's not possible? How would you know?

I don't know "why". I like to guess "why" but there are usually ways to second-guess the guess. I meant "how". I was saying if a person sees that God has allowed satan to run around loose, there should be issues raised. I guess you could continue onward and say it begs the question of "why, but i was saying more in the sense that, if a person believes god allowed x to happen, certain simplistic explanations don't seem logical, e.g. "God is good, so everything is for the good". Everything is not specified as good in the bible, as in "everything everyone does is going to be turned into something good by God." Why do people insist on saying that? It is clearly not true, except in the most magical maybe-land. Also, when people say that somehow sinners being punished will show the glory of God, I cringe. Where is the (using the actual meaning of the actual word) "glory" in that?

I think that, again, these are the cunundrums of mainstream Christian theology.

One idea i had after reading dogen's "time-being" passages from shobogenzo - reincarnation is just a way for a person who is completely in the "now" to describe all the other moments of your life. It doesn't mean a different person, but since you are far from yesterday's now as heaven from earth, it is a different person. But like the guy says below, it isn't that simple. Your karma persists, from before through the now into the future. But it is just one life. Just an idea.

For the concepts of karma and reincarnation to show their explanatory worth, they have to be considered in their traditional form, ie. as being something that spans over many lifetimes and many body forms.

The Truth of Rebirth - And Why It Matters for Buddhist Practice

Although i don't have any particular reason to believe in reincarnation, i have no particular aversion to the idea that reincarnation exists, it could solve the universalism issue quite easily.

Karma and reincarnation certainly present the theodicy problem in a vastly different light than, say, mainstream Christianity.

i wrote this as my idea - I just have to keep believing that if God can be called "good", God must be more compassionate and active than I am, and reject the fundamentalist viewpoint that the fear of god becomes something good simply because I personally don't have to fear him while others still do. I just have to keep believing that if God can be called "good", God must be more compassionate and active than I am, and reject the fundamentalist viewpoint that the fear of god becomes something good simply because I personally don't have to fear him while others still do. so this simple logic sifts through the back and forth of universalist and fundamentalist ideas for me.

and what i mean by "have to keep believing": that is just because God would have to be pretty messed up to say, "i'm morally good, but in your language i mean to say i'm morally nothing exceptional". There is a type of God that becomes at some point not worth worshipping at all, and it is irrational to expect a reasonable person to worship that type of god. There is a version of God whose only basis for worship is raw power, which really is no more attractive morally than witchcraft or other things portrayed by the bible as the wrong paths.

"Have to keep believing" - that is so strange to me. Almost as if you're forcing yourself to keep up a pretense.

Also the many lifetimes thing is not my concern - i am in this one, i don't remember the other ones, I won't remember this one in the next one, unless i am the dalai lama, so what am i supposed to do with it, other than act out something i don't believe.

Like I said above, for the concepts of karma and reincarnation to show their explanatory worth, they have to be considered in their traditional form.
In these matters, one either believes there is only this one lifetime to act, or one believes that there are many life times, or one believes in neither in particular.

If one defaults to the first belief, ie. that this life is the only one there is (such as mainstream Western culture holds), or that this life is the decisive one, after which it will be too late to act and that thus, our eternal fate is sealed with what we do in this lifetime (which the usual Christian perspective), then this has important consequences for the way one goes about one's daily life.

Holding the third belief, namely, that one doesn't know for sure whether there is a next life or not, is, IMO, actually quite difficult, because so many of our common beliefs imply one or the other definitive stance.

I am not an objectivist universalist. I have a path. It is my path, and it doesn't include all the other paths. So for ME jesus is the way as far as i know, it doesn't have to be for anybody else. i can't judge that. I just bring all this up to further point out the idea i have of having to think something and nobody else seems to be able to jump in to MY brain and think something else. I guess that epistemic autonomy thing was pointed right at me, but what is my option. Epistemic democracy? Of course we lean on all these other people who we thought made sense or tell the truth or are likable or funny, but actually waiting for the consensus to know what i think? THAT sounds like insanity to me. Nietzsche would be crying just to think of it.

A good argument can be made (as the paper I linked to earlier does) that "epistemic autonomy" is an internally inconsistent concept to begin with, so it is suspicious to build on it in any way.

 

[Yazata]

I think your IQ is depending on how rigid or open your worldview is. The more rigid, the lower IQ.

I think that's often the case. The rigidity of one's world-view probably is inversely correlated with the crudely-defined variable that we call "intelligence".

But not absolutely. I think that people exist out there who hold very tightly to a particular view of things, probably for emotional reasons. Then they will exert extraordinary creativity and intelligence towards crafting arguments designed to justify that unshakeable view.

Obviously people like Christian theologians or Islamic jurists often fit that description. I think that many of the louder and more aggressive atheists probably do too.