Life has no meaning

[Darryl_P]

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This whole point you are trying to make is pretty irrelevant anyway, as regards to the truth of religions.

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I'm not trying to bolster the truth of religions, or undermine the position of atheists. At least not in this thread. I'm countering your point about hi-falootin' scientists and the amount of stock that should be placed in their opinions on the (non-)existence of God.

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But the above means nothing unless you are suggesting that many of these Phds would change their mind if they DID look at the subject of religion in more detail.

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Actually I DO think that a good percentage would change their mind upon very long and very deep reflection. My theory is that a good number of scientists bury themselves in the various little details of their fields precisely to AVOID thinking about big issues, largely because of the pain it might cause them. That pain, and how it's dealt with, is a key step in the maturation process which, in turn, is a pre-requisite to being an authority on the God vs. no God issue IMO.

You may say that being in pain leads to people becoming irrational, which is a valid point. But to that I'd ask where that pain comes from in the first place. Is it something individual and circumstantial or is it something deeper and more universal?

[Darryl_P]

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And would recognize the differences between natural ability and rote memorization of a skill set.

It was a good movie though, and the hustler may not have been wholly acrophyal. But the prodigy had a PhD (if there can be one attributed to chess) for a more realistic barometer and a path to legitimate achievement. And that is probably the central point of this argument, no?

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I think you're being too cryptic again for me. I don't think I've seen the movie you're talking about. And which skill set in your opinion requires more rote memorization, chess or a PhD?

[revots33]

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Actually I DO think that a good percentage would change their mind upon very long and very deep reflection.

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An athiest could just as easily argue that a good percentage of theists would realize their beliefs were baseless upon very long and deep reflection.

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My theory is that a good number of scientists bury themselves in the various little details of their fields precisely to AVOID thinking about big issues, largely because of the pain it might cause them.

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My theory is that a good number of theists bury themselves in their religion precisely to AVOID thinking about big issues, largely because of the pain it might cause them.

[Lestat]

<font color="blue">It would have to depend on how much each person has looked at it. If a PhD spends most of his waking hours on unrelated issues, then he has a decided handicap. </font>

Darryl - I think you may be arguing in favor of the opposition.

What percentage of "believers" do you think are sufficiently qualified to make serious conclusions concerning theology? And even then, most believers don't come to believe through means of intense study.

Also, there are many branches of science such as, geology, evolution, biology, astro-physics, quantum mechanics, etc., that are slowly but surely (albeit inadvertently), doing away with the need for any god.

Lastly, I would guess that the number of high IQ people with expertise in the study of these sciences, far outnumber the high IQ people with expertise in the study of theology. In other words, there are more brilliant scientists plying their trade, than brilliant theologians plying their's. Remember, I'm not talking about the common person, but only the experts. Do you disagree with that?

[FortunaMaximus]

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And would recognize the differences between natural ability and rote memorization of a skill set.

It was a good movie though, and the hustler may not have been wholly acrophyal. But the prodigy had a PhD (if there can be one attributed to chess) for a more realistic barometer and a path to legitimate achievement. And that is probably the central point of this argument, no?

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I think you're being too cryptic again for me. I don't think I've seen the movie you're talking about. And which skill set in your opinion requires more rote memorization, chess or a PhD?

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Depends on the field. Assume it's physics.

You mentioned a chess-playing hustler having better odds. Got me to thinking about Waitzkin. Flick a few years ago, loosely based on his youth. Tutelage under Pandolfini, some scenes with Washington Square hustlers. One of the central secondary characters was Fishburne as a chess-playing hustler.

Struck a chord. Movies like that do sometimes. Anyway, back to it. You asked the difference? There isn't much of one. But I think it's more difficult for a person to become a GM without actually having quite a bit of talent for the subject.

There are far too many PhD's, for instance, who got there by simply doing what was asked of them and doing a thesis that apes things already done, it's just a bit better polished and agrees with the committee of the university that awards the degree. It's not a general rule, but this still happens.

For chess, this isn't so. Not even Deep Blue could overcome that without having a megafold advantage in processing speeds. And even with that advantage, it was a pretty close battle, no?

The uni of Alberta has Poki, which is an AI poker bot. I've played a series of hands against it. Pretty good. Ahead a little, it's a bit of a calling station, but usually at the right frequencies.

I stopped playing with it though. Got surprised. I raised its flop bet, it calls. Raise its turn bet, it calls. River completes my runner-runner flush. And the damn thing called with Q high.

I've been puzzling over this for awhile now. So even expanding algorithms will get creative quirks. And the call would have been correct, as my holding was lower than a Qx. And it illustrates a point.

People adapt. They remember. And they learn how to work within the system to get what they want. Poker, though, isn't a medium where sheer processing speed is going to overcome the human opponent. It guesses too.

Chess isn't a game in where you can guess optimally. So you need more than rote memorization to be a successful player. Sure, you can memorize opening books and variations. You're still going to get destroyed in the middle and endgame.

To get a PhD, rote memorization can get you there even if you do not have a genuine talent for it. You can gauge relative intelligence, but no metric will have optimal accuracy because the human mind is wired in such a way that different things have different meanings to two similar individuals.

How it's wired, and how you associate and store the information though is the one thing you probably will never be able to define. You can make educated guesses at it though.

[samsonite2100]

What's all this I've been reading here about the correlation between IQ and belief/non-belief? Even as an atheist, this seems like a real non-starter of an argument to me. Let's say you could somehow prove (which you can't anyway) that the average atheist has an IQ of 115 versus 100 for the believer. What would that prove other than the highly intuitive fact that smart people are more inherently drawn to things that are logical and provable and less enamored of things that are illogical?

[allisfulloflove]

you don't need meaning to have fun!

[singasong]

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Life has no ultimate meaning. We are the most complex animals on the planet which sucks. Enlightenment vs pain is the struggle all smart humans have to deal with. Ideally I would never be alive nor would there be anything at all.
I wish their was a God and afterlife, then I'd have something to look forward too but I just don't see it.

There is no mystery in anything, everything can be explained but whether or not we have the ability to do that is what needs to be examined. This life is [censored] dumb, things like pride and ego and self importance make people think they are actually important, the need to feel needed is some bs human crutch that is encoded into our dna.

Everyone who thinks they have power and money and importance, newsflash you're not [censored] except a tiny organism on a [censored] little ass star. in some universe that was determine by chance.

and scarface is a [censored] [censored] movie.

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Cant agree with you more lol...

[vhawk01]

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This whole point you are trying to make is pretty irrelevant anyway, as regards to the truth of religions.

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I'm not trying to bolster the truth of religions, or undermine the position of atheists. At least not in this thread. I'm countering your point about hi-falootin' scientists and the amount of stock that should be placed in their opinions on the (non-)existence of God.

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But the above means nothing unless you are suggesting that many of these Phds would change their mind if they DID look at the subject of religion in more detail.

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually I DO think that a good percentage would change their mind upon very long and very deep reflection. My theory is that a good number of scientists bury themselves in the various little details of their fields precisely to AVOID thinking about big issues, largely because of the pain it might cause them. That pain, and how it's dealt with, is a key step in the maturation process which, in turn, is a pre-requisite to being an authority on the God vs. no God issue IMO.

You may say that being in pain leads to people becoming irrational, which is a valid point. But to that I'd ask where that pain comes from in the first place. Is it something individual and circumstantial or is it something deeper and more universal?

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Wow is this condescending and (presumably) completely unsubstantiated.