Are people who believe in God “weaker” than people who don’t?

I see absolutely no reason to discuss something i did not bring up or even remotely mention. Perhaps you could point me to the post in which i equated IQ and relative mental health.

(Nor, for that matter, have i ever claimed to have a "genius IQ." Personally i consider IQ to be a load of codswallop.)

the point that Fresco made:

""strength" corresponds well with Heidegger's "authenticity" which involves a constant questioning of a person's "framework of existence". When that questioning ceases, dogma take over, and that is where "weakness" resides"

this can be applied not only to theists, but to any unthinking "atheists" as well, an atheist who just reads Dawkins and believes every word he says without question.

It can equally be applied to someone's political blindness . . . Werner von Braun and Albert Speer were both brillian men in their fields, yet they were seemingly blind to the idiocy of Hitler's political philosophy. As speaking of philosophy, is Søren Kierkegaard's "leap of faith" evidence of intellectual weakness?

People have all sorts of blind spots. I submit that those who insist that religious adherents are necessarily intellectually inferior are displaying a blind spot of their own.

So do I.

But this is all circular propaganda. The idea is that if you can suggest to the public mind effectively that atheism is correlative with superiority of any form people will tend to claim they are atheists in order to be taken as members of that superior class of persons. And it is very easy to claim to be an atheist.

And once the claim is made for this self-flattering purpose it has to be defended and the more it is defended the more hysterical the defence gets.

It goes without saying, almost, that only such superior persons are fit and proper to measure intelligence in others and thus a bias will come into play reinforcing the correlation between atheism and general all round numinosity assuming the cheque for the test fee has cleared at the bank or has been guaranteed by some other respectable financial institution.

Only complete idiots ever apply to be tested if my experience is anything to go by because being informed, by whatever means, a parchment certificate say, (£499.99 inc VAT), that one is a cut above most of one's fellows has a distinct tendency to do one's head in and to create glazed and mystified expressions in the thousands of people to whom the information is so enthusiastically imparted at every opportunity.

To those who think that the aim of promoting atheism is the destabilisation of society, and some do think that, it follows that IQ tests are merely a weapon of recruitment.

But what do I know? I'm as thick as thick gets as everybody knows who has had that message dunned into them by the atheists on the evolution threads who, I must say, hardly bear out the thesis being presented here by some atheists.

Who on this thread is claiming that true believers are less intelligent? Less sane hell yes but not less intelligent!

Dear Setanta I did not myself relate IQ with being a believer and that was the claim you so kindly embed in one long personal attack directed at me. Something in how dare such a stupid person that can not even write a simple sentence question the intellect of believers.
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You kn0w, Bill, there is an hilarious irony here that i'm sure escapes you entirely. You are attempting to argue that people who believe in god are intellectually "weaker" than people who don't (in case you've forgotten, that's the thesis of this thread). Yet you are yourself barely able to construct a coherent sentence, and the sentences you do write often can only be deciphered by careful reading. You misspell words and conjugate English verbs incorrectly in a chronic manner
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Many persons of super intellect were and are believers many with IQs way above mine and that is completely beside the point.

My position had been that believers in being believers in the supernatural are on it face far less sane then non-believers basic intellect being completely beside the point along with the ability to write for that matter.

There's just as much evidence for belief as there is for unbelief. i.e. zero.

There is also the difficulty of separating belief and unbelief from acting as if. There are lots of social reasons for acting as if.

The real question is the social effects of belief and unbelief. Many people think, rightly or wrongly, that universal unbelief will lead to a breakdown of the social order, anarchy and dissolution. To them unbelief is insane for that reason. Belief has been tested over many centuries and has contributed to us getting where we are. On that view, unbelief is a bull in a china shop.

Those with belief find it very difficult to credit the fantastic complexity of the world, an unimaginable complexity actually, and even the complexity of their own bodies, to a meaningless accident using what they see as common sense.

That's the position of 85% of Americans I gather. And I think the figure would increase if something other than casual answers were given to questions on the matter. An atheist scientist is an oxymoron. And so is a believing scientist. But I will agree that that is taking a very severe definition of scientist. And the danger in not taking a severe definition has the difficulty of where to draw the line. The same applies to art.

Only an agnostic scientist makes sense. And such a person would stay out of the argument except insofar as calculating the effects of belief and disbelief. On himself, on his career and on his society. I think from my reading that those who give priority to their society over that of personal interest are supportive of belief.

Sorry I can not agree with you and I can only hope you will not as a result turn to insults like some other gentleman here had done<grin>.

In any case given a god that from time to time will interfere with the known and unknown natural laws or act outside natural laws completely for that matter the whole idea of science is then worthless and all current scientists would need to find new careers.

One proven supernational event and we can tear up all the science books or at least place a bold letter statement that this law apply assuming that god at whim does not interfere.

Hell with such a supernatural being we would never even in theory understand the working of the universe as to do so would be to understand the working of an all powerful god mind.

No scientist can buy into this nonsense and it he or she does then they should become a priest.

In any case the theory that there is a supernatural being able to change laws at random or at least his/her/it whim as you said have zero evidence for it so it is not a theory in the framework of science.

You obviously didn't understand my post Bill.

but any action or belief, whether it is religious, atheist, anarchy, peace, all rest on assumptions by definition. if everyone was agnostic, then we would have no worry about socal and moral decay.

You are correct I did miss read your posting sorry about that.

You know what amuse me is that the religion people stand is that if it was not for an all powerful being ready to punish us we would all act badly.

Well we do need a police force to control some of us but I do not all along with the idea we are all evil and would act that way if but for the fear of a god.

That is correct except in circumstances when everyone isn't running the country. If everyone was running the country the very idea of social and moral decay is impossible.

How old are you Bill? We're all assholes.

You should take a look at the long running story which has dominated the agenda in Britain for the last two weeks and which shows no sign of abating.

Setanta,



No, because they were original thinkers. However the point is academic with respect to "modern science" because the latter has a different order of magnitude of semantic and social significance with respect to current concepts of "reality". To the ancients, "souls" were the big issue of the day.

ep,

I agree that some atheists are "dogmatic". The subtle point is whether they believe in an alternative system advocated by "an authority", not that they reject one.

They do as long as they are the authority.

"Good try..."? Do you read minds? I think not; therefore, please do not claim you know any intent I may, or may not, have.

No, Fresco, that is your point. My point, which i reinforced with my question about Kierkegaard, is that there are and have been many people in both ancient and modern times, who were religiously devout, and cannot by any stretch of the imagination be considered intellectually "weak."

You need to re-read the original post. You don't get to reinvent the theme of the thread just because your arguments are getting shredded.

Mr S.L. Goldberg wrote in the course of dealing with symbol motifs in James Joyce's Ulysses-



It is easily possible to design intelligence tests which will give either party a certain score.

But the remark about being "interesting" is borne out by my own experience. If it is true it might be considered a form of insanity to not only try to be less interesting but also to trumpet the fact from the watchtowers and have it measured and confirmed at some expense of those precious commodities, time and money.

For a social being I mean.