The Better Intelligence-Religion Correlation

[Lestat]

Our backgrounds are somewhat similar. I was also raised in a Catholic household and didn't question my beliefs until my late teens. However, unlike yourself, the problems I ran into led me to become a non-believer (I prefer this term to atheist).

So if I understand you correctly, what you are saying is that you are less troubled by having a god who always existed than by a universe that always existed. Or...

By a god that sprang into being out of nowhere, than a universe which did so. Is this correct?

[mickeyg13]

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So if I understand you correctly, what you are saying is that you are less troubled by having a god who always existed than by a universe that always existed. Or...

By a god that sprang into being out of nowhere, than a universe which did so. Is this correct?

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Yes that is correct. I do find both positions troubling though.

[PairTheBoard]

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"You have been corrected about this premise of yours repeatedly on this Forum by countless spokespeople for Christianity, yet you persist in your mistaken notion. They tell you that something more goes on than logical evalulation of evidence. Why do you insist on ignoring their response and persist in misrepresenting their position?"

You are completely confused. I never said that this is most Christian's position. In fact the only regular Christian poster who takes that position is txaq. In fact my OP is saying that most intelligent believers of any religion don't take that position. And I neve mentioned Christianity specifically at all.


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This is important because lots of religious thoughts and actions can only be justified if believers can claim non believers are unreasonable.

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"Again, according to you. The rejection which they claim condemns the nonbeliever is not the rejection of reason."

I didn't say it was. What I said was that those religious people who admit that their faith isn't clearly the most "reasonable" can't claim that non believers are automatically evil, lazy, or have ulterior motives. And if they can't claim that, most people would agree that it is wrong to ponounce others condemned.

There was a time when you agreed with all that.

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Your last paragraph is a slippery convolution of the logic.

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What I said was that those religious people who admit that their faith isn't clearly the most "reasonable" ...

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This is what you refer to above as the intelligent position. But it misrepresents that position. You then use that misrepresentation to infer what you want to later in the paragraph. The point of their position is that their faith is not arrived at by way of logic or by way of "reasonableness" of the objective evidence but by way of something beyond those concepts. Your hidden assumption is that your only responsibility in approaching their faith is to be reasonable. Their contention is that you are responsible for more than that. This is something you don't understand so you continue to ignore it and instead misrepresent their position as something you can understand and thereby apply sophmoric arguments to.

I've never agreed with you on this issue. I've always encouraged you to expand your insight beyond the box of logic in which you seem so comfortably confined. That's not to say I agree with them either. But my disagreement with them is one of the spirit. And on that level there is a sense of the word whereby there must be a reasonableness to the spirit of the faith which involves both our intellect and that aspect of faith which goes beyond reason. This in fact is the foundation for a great deal of theological development.

PairTheBoard

[pokervintage]

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There are some religions that don't state that their beliefs are so self evident that unbelievers must have something wrong with them. I think they are in the minority. But there are also, I think, many members of all religions, who in spite of being a member of a specific religion, fully accept the idea that non members are not automatically unreasonable. Let's call those people Enlightened Theists.

It is my contention that the more intelligent you are, the more likely you are to be either an atheist or an Enlightened Theist. And that above a certain level of intelligence, the great majority of people are one of the two. And if I'm right, that IS strong evidence for the truth of something (that something being that no religion can lay claim to being logically self evident.)


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The point is that even an intelligent Christian who accepts what the bible says and therefore believes his religion is rational, should also accept that those who worship a different bible or set of beliefs are behaving in no less of a rationally manner than he is.

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Well I read his point as being that the more intelligent a person is the more likely he is enlightened theists (his term) or an atheist. Sklansky goes on to claim that because intelligent people believe one way that their way of thinking proves something. The fact is that no matter how intelligent a person is he has no known way of proving or disproving anything when it comes to religion. What they are good at is providing skepticism. Sklansky puts the horse before the cart when he makes his claim that something must be true because itelligent people say so. He does not consider the fact tht people not some God created religion and developed the laws of religion. Man attributed creation to a God and then created a religion to honor him. Which men of society did the developing? It certainly wasn't the dullards. It was the elite of society. It was the most intelligent. And what process did they use to develop their religious laws? They used logic. Religion was developed by the most intelligent of society and the more intelligent the scribe the better he was at developing religous beliefs. Some believe that the more intelligent a person the more they should be feared.

pokervintage

[vhawk01]

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the truth of their own beliefs is SELF EVIDENT, once the appropriate literature is studied.


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ie.
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logically self evident.


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You have been corrected about this premise of yours repeatedly on this Forum by countless spokespeople for Christianity, yet you persist in your mistaken notion. They tell you that something more goes on than logical evalulation of evidence. Why do you insist on ignoring their response and persist in misrepresenting their position?


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This is important because lots of religious thoughts and actions can only be justified if believers can claim non believers are unreasonable.

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Again, according to you. The rejection which they claim condemns the nonbeliever is not the rejection of reason.

There's really not much point in Christians talking to you. You don't listen.

PairTheBoard

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Umm I'm Christian yet I kinda think DS has a point. I haven't been around here long, but in what I've read thus far, I seem to agree with DS on a surprising number of points, considering he is an atheist and I am not. He seems to have great tolerance and understanding of the "Enlightened Theist," whereas others here seem to belittle even that position.

I get angry when an atheist claims that he has some sort of proof that his position is correct, because it's not even possible to have such proof. Similarly though I don't like when my Christian friends seem to think that they have proof that Christianity is correct. I recognize that my stance requires faith, but that faith is not illogical as some claim. It may be illogical to believe in something in spite of evidence to the contrary, and logical to believe when there is evidence. However, in the absence of evidence, it's pretty much a logically neutral position. I don't know why some people have a hard time understanding this.

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Its not really that logical to believe 100% in the divinity of Christ and salvation through him "in the absence of evidence." Its arbitrary, not "logically neutral."

[MidGe]

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Its not really that logical to believe 100% in the divinity of Christ and salvation through him "in the absence of evidence." Its arbitrary, not "logically neutral."


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It is not even logical, it is illogical, from its foundations onward!

[vhawk01]

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I get angry when an atheist claims that he has some sort of proof that his position is correct, because it's not even possible to have such proof.

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What proof could he possibly need? His position is correct, it's the same one you use for alien abductions and elves and people walking through walls ... "until you have proof, your claim is unproven and I have no reason to treat it as true."

Why would your claim be granted some special status and be accepted without evidence being presented.

If you make specific physical claims, such as age-of-earth etc, then an atheist may say he has evidence you are wrong.

luckyme

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I think the Earth is likely about 4.5 billion years old, though I'd be willing to modify that belief in light of new evidence. My religious beliefs do not contradict that. A lot of people don't know this, but Catholicism and the theory of evolution are not mutually exclusive.

We do not have evidence that atheism is correct, nor do we have evidence that it is incorrect. As a result, some choose the route of agnosticism, and in some ways that is the most philosophically sound route to take. However, I choose to have faith in something that I do not have evidence for or against. Logically there is nothing wrong with that. Strong atheists are essentially doing the same thing; they have faith in nonexistence even though they have no proof.

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We do not have evidence that unicorns DONT exist (well, we have tons of evidence if you count the fact I've never seen one, but certainly no proof) and yet taking a tentative (technically) stance that unicorns don't exist is still correct.

But ZOMG unicorns != God amirite?

[vhawk01]

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Your claim that atheism "has to be correct" doesn't make sense though, because you seem to be presupposing that you are correct in order to prove that you are correct.

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What choice do I have. If I don't believe in a god, I'm an atheist. ( that's what my "by definition" pointed out). When someone hasn't proven their claim, my non-belief is the only place I can stand.
How can it not be correct?

luckyme

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One can choose to believe something in the absence of proof, as long as it has not been disproven. Not only are laypeople allowed to do this, but even professional mathematicians sometimes do this, and theirs happens to be the discipline MOST concerned with proof. For example, most mathematicians that I know choose to believe the Axiom of Choice, even though we have no proof for it. In fact, not only do we not have proof for it, but it has been proven that it is NOT POSSIBLE TO PROVE IT. There happen to be a few troubling things about accepting the Axiom of Choice (like the Banach-Tarski paradox), but there are also some nice consequences (that every vector space has a basis, etc.). Actually that analogy worked much better than I expected it to...

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Do they Believe it or just believe it?

[vhawk01]

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I'm not angry because atheists can't prove their position; I get angry when an atheist thinks he CAN prove it though.

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Let's see... you claim you have an invisible friend. My position is " I don't think there is evidence to support that belief" ...and rest my case.

Proven.

What other evidence do I have to come up with... photographs of the invisible guy not being there?

luckyme

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You are completely correct that there is no evidence to support that belief. However, the conclusion is not that he does not exist. Something can be true even without there being evidence for it. Before the invention of the telescope, was there any evidence that Pluto existed? I think not. That does not mean that Pluto does not exist?

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And it would have been illogical and arbitrary to simply imagine some possible planet and then believe in it. Even though you happened to turn out to be correct.

[dragonystic]

david, even though you are correct here, its really no problem for an unenlightened theist. especially since most religious texts have many admonishes about worldly knowledge, so much so that it almost seems like a vice. whatever the mind wants to believe, that stance can be reasonably supported by the bible.