[thesnowman22]

Please excuse my misspells, when i type fast and think fast my fingers dont keep up hope u can read it anyway.

ok Alex, lets examine my statements.

1) "Many people who are "highly intellignet" are many times almost socially defecient and lack common sense"- Notice I said "many", not "most" or "on average". The "highly intell." people we are talking about are the very upper limit of IQ, and to argue that this is not a problem with a nuber of them is wrong.

2) "If 80% of Americans believe in a supreme being, that in itslef almost guarantees the results are skewed" - This is the only statement I made u could argue is wrong. However, a large % of people who "believe in a supreme being" are not really religous, but merely are theists, two different things. Anyway, I mite give u a little credit for this one, but its pretty minor.

3) "Belief in a supreme being is such a wide range" My point obvioulsy is that some people who believe in a supreme being are Christians, some are Muslims, some are not religous at all but just believe in some type of supreme being. To lump all of these together is wrong. They can be so different as to not even really resemble each other. The devout Muslim who prays 5x a day has little or nothing in common with the redneck in the traioler park who doesnt even go to church but believes in a God, and to lump them together is ridiculous.

4) "People who talk about atheists being smarter are atheist, which in itself is a bias"- While i actually might not argue with the premise that the average IQ of the whatever % of Americans is hgiher than that of the other whatever %, the fact is if you play on the team you think more highly of your team. If youre a Democrat, you are more likely to think Dems are correct, so I think any argument made by a person for thier owngroup could be biased. i mean, I love athletics, and I would argue fervently for their worth, but even if Im right, my bias still exists.

5) "I see many countless people who are successful and intelligent who are theists"- No way to argue with this statement. Obvioulsy you could change the word "theists" to atheists" and it would still be true, but to argue its false is ludicrous.

6) "I look at many of our leaders and they are theiests"- Also impossible to dispute. Notice I didnt say that "most" or "the majority" of leaders fit this.

7) The next paragraph is about a personal experience, and while there is one sentence in it which says something about "many" highly intell. people lacking certain traits, AGAIN- It was not meant to appl y to all people who are super smart, just a %.

8) ' "If there is a God, and i believe there is, I'm guessing he really doesnt care how smart u think u are"- Notice I said IF there is a God and "Im guessing" to show it was MY opinion. Im admitting its my opinion guy, its not represented as fact.

9) "the bottom line is none of us really know"- Well die one day. Until then, were all arguing opinion anyway.

10) "If im wrong I dont lose anything" Im speaking in terms of eternal life, not happiness on earth. of course i am happy, and if I found out tommorrow there was no God, I would not immediatley go on a drunken sex spree anyway.


YOUR statement that "your beliefs contain a lot of prejudices and assumptions that are not thought through in the spirit of science and philosophy"- Now, "beliefs" are OF CORSE made up of a person's prejudices and assumptions, thats why they are personal beliefs. What does that have to do with anything? As for the "spirit" of science or philosophy, I could give a rats azz about that. We need to seperate the religous discussion on this board to their own forum then, because "science" is never going to fit with the religous arguments anyway. Cant we just have a good argument?

Look, the actual discussion is not wheteher the average atheist is smarter than the average theist, but that this is a good argument for atheism. Two different discussions.

The bottom line is there are very intellignet atheists, and very intelligent theists. If you are a theist and u suddenly turn atheist, you dont get smarter. So to "argue for atheism" is silly. So if u convince me youre right and i turn atheist, do i gain 10 IQ points?

The gist of my post was that the argument itself is silly. To argue that "atheism is better because the average atheist is smarter" or that "there is no God because the people who do not believe in God are smarter than those who do" is ridiculous. There are just too many people on both sides who dont fit one mold. I know blindingly intelligent theists and blindingly dumb atheista and vice versa.

So I dont see how "each sentence contains somethign factually wrong".