Patio, if God is omnipotent than anything can be explained using him. It's simpler, too. But some of us don't like that method very much.
"Oh really-----I would like to have an IQ of 200 (which is somewhat greater than I currently have) please tell me how I can accomplish this amazing feat."
Take a different IQ test.
Cav, survival may be hardwired as an instinct, but we can choose to act against that, even so. So even that isn't written in stone...
The confounding question with God as the same as the confounding question with physics: where did everything come from? God's not a better explanation unless you can explain where he came from.
Perception, what exactly is an I.Q. test and why are they accurate? As Rufio said, take another test. Would help, especially, if someone developed better study habits, then another test. I'm speaking of minorities, youngsters.
Lotsa people would be in deep trouble if the chemistry of the brain couldn't be changed. Depressed? Eat more fish, take B complex, Vitamin E, Vitamin A before it gets a grip. We very much are what we eat.
Also, I think if a person stays with anything too long (alcohol, drugs, too much food, no food, medication, sadness) they can become hard-wired for it. Maybe we have genetic code from birth, but change is possible because of the human will. We are amazing beings!
rufio, I would guess that we are more hard-wired to survive than to hand our heads over on a platter to someone for absolutely no reason. Survival instinct is pretty much a given, how we survive, now therein lies the choice. We do also have the choice to accept martyrdom, should it seem necessary, but I would count that as a last resort, and still related to a survival instinct re: my death will keep my message/cause alive. Hey, rufio, check back into your war on grammar thread, you may find some interesting posts from a friend of mine.
truth
I agree, PatioDog. To "explain" the existence of everything as the creation of God, is to BEG THE QUESTION.
Exactly. But it's a simpler explanation....
Cav, we're certainly inclined to preserve ourselves. But you can choose not to. That's what gives us free will.
To preface my remarks, I am an evolutionary psychologists. "hard-wired" is a loose term. Yet, nature and nurture work to "hard-wire" our behavioral tendencies ---but not our behavior exactly in any particular situation. Hard-wired means there is some innate impulse that factors into our behavior. By this definition, yes there are hard-wired responses even before Nurture begins to shape them.
Saying that, you might be surprised to hear that I do believe idealism and pragmatism have a hard-wired base ---because we were both for 100, ooo or more years, and that's an evolutionarily-significant time to cause hard-wiring to take hold (like a giraffe has hard-wired colorations on its body from being in its natural habitat and requiring camouflage for such a lengthy period).
I'll address "idealism", since that's what so many "realists" discount. To get the point across quickly (I haven't the time for more studied elaboration, sorry): If a shark could talk, and if he were asked what is the ideal of being the perfect shark, he would no doubt respond: "Swimming around solo in the ocean ripping flesh apart joyously" or something to that effect. Given that the shark evaluates idealism from the frame of reference of what a shark is, that is tautological. All though we believe our sense of idealism comes "from the clouds" (God-given, or the like), we are wrong. When people consistently talk in terms of cooperation, sharing, universal brotherhood (or sisterhood) (translate to "spending one's entire life in a loving extended forager family) ---these were all qualities of our original natural habitat when we actually lived our idealism. And living in the way where almost continuous cooperation, sharing, and caring were necessary to our survival as the "herd animals" we truly are, well those noble patterns became hard wired into us ---same as the different brand of idealism based on shark behavior.
In short, it was realistic and pragmatic to be, what we now call in the perverted zoo in which we now live, "idealistic". Hope we can find the way to make the human zoo more "user-friendly" to our original hard-wiring (by "naturalistic enrichment" applied to humans??) so that idealism again is merged with realism ---and we no longer have these schizophrenic divisions within ourselves and just be as we deeply are.
Dale
