Show me the evidence.
Does religion make people dumber?
- Thread starter Magical Realist
- Start date
Seek it out.
Where?
Open your heart. Seek with sincerity. It is all around you, it is everywhere.
In other words, close my intellect. Now can you see why people say religion makes people dumber?
I am sure it was.
What an odd statement. Do you experience pain due to uncertainty?
It's not good or bad. It was simply a statement to show that truth is not a primary value for you.
Intelligence for it's own sake is a waste. if intelligence prevents you from experiencing joy, then what good is it?
In your case, intelligence closes your heart. It has made you cold and calculating. I would rather have heart.
On second thought, uncertainty gives hope. It depends on the topic. Scientists have no idea what caused the big bang. That gives me hope that there is a lot more to discover.
Again, it depends on the topic. I can't help but be disappointed by science. I had hoped we would have discovered hyper-drives and other exotic technologies. Quantum entanglement, so far, is this mysterious method (set of methods) involving phases of wave-functions. Will it lead to exotic new technologies or a richer more elaborate set of natural laws? From some articles I've read, it might lead to some improvements in photography. Oh joy. Truth (physics reality) falls short of what I had hoped.
Very good points Yazata.
Yes, that is true, for almost every distribution hehe But distributions show general trends; generalizations, never about 1:1 specific individuals.
I think when you break down the religions into cultural/racial groups, then you start to turn the statistics to your favor. Yes, Baptists and Pentecostal denominations are primarily black/african-descent, and are shown more likely to be poor and less educated. But the point of this study was to use the one thing they all share in common, religion, to make the distinction. There are peaks and troughs to every distribution, if you start pointing to the peaks and not the troughs, then you start to cherrypick. Of course, atheists must also have peaks and troughs, and if we start to pick apart differences between North American atheist and Atheists from 3rd world countries, we might see a difference in IQ. but that isn't the point. and nor is picking apart theists.
Yes, that is true, for almost every distribution hehe But distributions show general trends; generalizations, never about 1:1 specific individuals.
I think when you break down the religions into cultural/racial groups, then you start to turn the statistics to your favor. Yes, Baptists and Pentecostal denominations are primarily black/african-descent, and are shown more likely to be poor and less educated. But the point of this study was to use the one thing they all share in common, religion, to make the distinction. There are peaks and troughs to every distribution, if you start pointing to the peaks and not the troughs, then you start to cherrypick. Of course, atheists must also have peaks and troughs, and if we start to pick apart differences between North American atheist and Atheists from 3rd world countries, we might see a difference in IQ. but that isn't the point. and nor is picking apart theists.
So your assumption is that every intelligent person has to be Debby downer and drag other people into their misery? Please verify this, in addition by your logic there would be no negative emotions at all in the ones who are completely faithful or had a firm belief in a supernatural entity…Then what of the absolutely miserable believers then? Overall what you’re preaching is a religious covered conversion of the timeless phrase “Ignorance is bliss”. However ignorance can be very painful and detrimental if one doesn’t have basic, rudimentary, or simple background knowledge…so I’ll take intellect over faith any day of the week Mazulu. The fire looks pretty until you touch it and can still leave one in awe, but you are more careful around it after the experience of getting burned.
So not accepting superstitious ideas make me cold? That's such a narrow viewpoint. Being intelligent doesn't mean I'm Spock. I do in fact, experience joy, and much of it from fiction. But none of it comes from accepting fiction as fact.
I said open your heart. You said opening your heart makes people stupid. I drew the reasonable conclusion that you are a heartless, cold calculating person. Your rebuttal was not about how you are really a warm-hearted yet shrewd person. Instead, you rebutted that you read fiction. OK, so you must be a cold hearted book worm. Happy now?
How does nano-technology prevent us from destroying ourselves? I thought that war protesters did that?
You're such a nerd.
The assumption is that one's heart is usually closed when one simply asks for evidence of things asserted. I accept many definitions of spirit that do exist; as a metaphor for the essence of something, as the feeling one gets from a shared experience like church or a rave, as a symbol for having courage and a sense of style. But when you start to accept a definition that also applies to ghosts, it's a short leap from there to burning people for witchcraft.
If you truly embraced rationality, you would realize what a particular epistemological discipline is and isn't capable of evidencing in the first place.
Of course, "truth" is whatever Crunchy Cat says it's true.
It is a shame that for people to come to religion, it is something you cannot "open your intellectual mind" to, instead you have to open your heart - that is, in my eyes, an argument against religion and not for it. Being intellectual doesn't make you cold and calculating, it just means you are not dumb and gullible. I can't believe someone would even argue against intelligence, but alas, here we are. Yes, you would rather have a heart than a brain. That may represent why religion falls short for many rationale people, who would never give up their ability to think for themselves. We have evolved to develop a higher sense of reasoning and thought, to pull ourselves from the lower ends of sentient existence who only feel pleasure and pain. We can think and differentiate between what is correct and incorrect, but you would rather sink back to "feeling" rather than have the ability to think for yourself. Rather than "I think, therefore I am", you would have "I feel, therefore God is."
As for the query "Does religion make people dumber", well we need only look upon you and your reasoning, to find an appropriate answer. Thank you for coming to represent the statistic.