[Lestat]

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<font color="blue"> Meanwhile if I am wrong, then why are the great majority of moderately intelligent people religious? </font>

The answer is upbringing and education. The majority were likely brain-washed as children and most do not possess post graduate degrees or a high level of education in math or the hard sciences.


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This is generally correct but a little harsh. Most people, at least in the U.S., believe in God for the same reason that they believe in democracy, capitalism, equality, etc. Their parents and the communities they grew up in accepted those principles, and they didn't find it particularly onerous to continue believing in those principles as they got older.

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That's kinda what I said, but DS is making a distinction between political and religious creed, because of religions upsides. What I'm saying is that if you are brought up having something drilled in you and everyone else in your family, community, country, seems to hold similar views (and certainly very few lambast them), then it makes sense how even an intelligent person doesn't think to question these beliefs even when he becomes an adult. That's all I was trying to say.

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A good argument for 75 years ago. Or maybe even 40 years ago. Nowadays everybody is aware that the majority of scientists disagree with most of the specific religious beliefs. Therefore moderately intelligent people who are religious, can be assummed to have made a conscious decision to disagree with those scientists.

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No one can rationally say this is a bad decision. It has been a very long scientific debate on creationism/evolution and multiple generations have lived and died while the debate is still on.

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I (think) I understand what David is saying, but I'm not entirely sure you do.

Yes, this debate has been going on forever, but much has changed in the last 75 years (or even the last 40 years as David said), and belief in god among the upper intelligent and educated is waning. But...

The power of upbringing is still important and plays a vital role in what one believes as he grows older. There's no other way to explain why ANY reasonably intelligent and educated person still believes there is an invisible sky god lurking around somewhere. In fact, there are many very intelligent and educated people who still do. Why?

Because childhood indoctrination is extremely powerful. It is very hard to shake and altogether abandon an all-encompassing world view after years and years of having your whole life formed around such beliefs.

Whenever there's a definite right or wrong answer to be had or calculated, I'll almost always defer to David. But this involves social and psychological aspects of how the mind works. The mind MUST make sense of things and for some people, they will not abandon beliefs which they have come not only to live by, but to die by as well. It takes more than intelligence sometimes to break through that.