Are Xians stupid?

Great Debates
1

In a word, No.

The question “Are Xians stupid?” is stupid, though, because it’s needlessly provocative. I used to have a father-in-law who, regularly as Old Faithful, would explode at me because

  1. I sometimes disagreed with him

and 2) I have a bunch of advanced academic degrees that he doesn’t have.

So when I said something like “Would you mind if I opened this window a bit?” there was a pretty fair chance he would go off on me like this:

“Do you think I’m a moron? Do you think I WANT to sit here sweltering in the heat because I’m too stupid to open the window? Listen, Mr. Pee Aitch Goddamned Dee, I may not have the education and the fancy degrees that you have, but I think I know when it’s too hot in here, and let me give you a little bit of advice: even the little people know the difference between hot and cold, and here’s a flash from one of the little insignificant people you look down your nose at, you smartassed fraud: It’s just fine in here, there’s no need to open the window. Oh, I don’t have any fancy measuring devices to prove my point but I have something better, something you don’t need nine years of graduate schooling to grasp: I have the common sense that God gave me, mister, and believe you me, I’d rather have that than all the useless pointy-headed booklearning in Creation…”

My point being that people who ask “Are you calling me stupid?” usually are pretty stupid, but not for the reasons they think–it’s because they’re looking to turn the discussion over to how rude you are for thinking ill of them than leave the discussion on the topic you’re discussing in the first place. And deliberate hijacking IS a pretty stupid tack.

Now, I may have on occasion risen to the bait and explained why I thought Xian philosophy was simple-minded or even why a particular Xian was displaying a large quantity of dumbth, but I don’t think Xians hold the patent on stupid thinking, nor do I think that Xians are dumb as one their top-ten identifying traits.

If you put a gun to my head, and said “Are Xians stupid? If I hear anything other than a Yes or No answer I’m pulling the trigger,” it’s possible I might go for “Yes,” for a variety of reasons, but I don’t think that’s the optimal way to couch the discussion of why Xianity is outmoded or a deterrent to human advancement. There are more germane dichotomies than “Smart/Stupid”, I think:

Courageous/ Cautious

Open-minded/ Closed-minded

Independent/Suggestible

Original/ Conformist

Complexity/ Simplicity

Inner-directed/Outer-directed

One’s self/ One’s Group

Authority of reason/ Authority of perceptions

plus an additional couple dozen overlapping dichotomies, all far more valid than “Smart/Stupid.” In all cases I identify with and promote as virtuous the first term rather than the second, but (unlike “Smart/Stupid”) there’s a case to be made that both terms have merit and it’s also possible to argue that there are circumstances in which, say, a Xian may behave with far more courage than an atheist, or even that I’ve reversed the appropriate terms.

Nevertheless, that’s how I see it: that there are real areas of difference between the two worldviews, and that it’s mildly insulting to be pigeonholed by one’s adversaries into a position but it’s very insulting to be put in the pigeonhole labeled “DUMB.” That’s the only category of all those listed above that’s clearly pejorative.

Now, where I understand that I have (seemingly) insulted Xians is my use of the term “ignorant” as in “Xianity is a species of ignorance.” I don’t consider “ignorant” to be pejorative in nearly the same sense that I think “dumb” is. “Dumb” is a condition of impairment that it is almost impossible to ameliorate, but “ignorance” can always be corrected and often eliminated completely. Indeed, that’s one of the things I like most about the SD–ignorance is often fought here, and people are made less ignorant daily.

I cheerfully admit to my gross ignorance, for example, in many, many areas, and am always eager to be educated. Of all the knowledge in the world, I’m familiar with less than a fraction of 1%, and I expect to die ignorant of many, many things I could know if I were a harder worker, smarter, more amenable to education than I am, a better listener, etc., all of which I’m working on. There’s zero shame in being ignorant, IMO, though there is considerable shame in refusing to acknowledge one’s possible ignorance.

Which brings up the whole subject of arrogance. This is something I don’t see in atheists much, I admit. I’m not saying I am certain that God doesn’t exist (which might be arrogant) but rather I am certain that I have seen no persuasive evidence of God’s existence, and choose in the absence of that evidence to think otherwise. But I’m willing to listen to you if you think you have such evidence. Now, I find it arrogant of Xians, particularly those SD Xians who acknowledge some understanding of logic and evidence, and the rules that pertain to them, to say that they are certain of things that do not stand the first test of logic or evidence. I have no problem with them saying that they choose to believe in things that can’t be proven (though I don’t understand why they do, and will ask them to explain their thinking) or that they choose to believe in a pleasing fiction, which I think is their legal right. But they go further and proclaim with some vehemence and ire that they are “certain” of these things for which they offer neither evidence nor logic. Well, if you’re certain, to my way of thinking, that’s because you know something. You can’t be certain, IMO, of your feelings, because one’s feelings are by definition subjective and can’t be tested or falsified, so when someone tells me he or she is certain of something that he or she refuses to provide me with a cite for, well, THAT I call arrogant.

So that’s the slightly pejorative senses in which I apply “ignorance” and “arrogance” to Xians, which I’d hope they’d be able to see as being adversarial but not deliberately insulting, contemptuous or patronizing. But I’d hope that we can remove the whole “smart/stupid” hijack from the discussion–it only inflames without adding in any way to the clarity or point of either position.

2

Dude, YOU were the only one who asked the question in the first place. What does that say about you, according to your own logic?

3

I feel sorry for your father in law

  • I hope his daughter does not turn into her father
    (usually they become their mother)

You owe me one spoiled keyboard.

4

I presume Xian is some kind of insulting label for Christians rather than a reference to the inhabitants of the city of the same name in central China. Where does it come from?

5

Nice post. :slight_smile: And it makes a valid point.

Being (a) a Christian who (b) tries to work with logic and the appropriate form of reasoning for a given discussion, allow me to say this:

Draw a distinction between issues theological and issues material. Do I believe in a God? Yes. Do I believe in the God to whom the Bible points? Yes (subject to multiple long posts of caveats about how to properly read the Bible). Do I believe in a God who flooded the entire world, as described in the Bible? Of course not; there’s geological, geomorphological, geographical, and mythopoetical evidence demonstrating that the Flood story is not to be understood in anything but a figurative, hyperbolic, legendary fashion.

How can I believe in God? Because I personally think that the weight of the evidence points to His existence, and because I have personal experience of Him. (To be fair, I recognize that the latter could be self-delusion, and again it would take far too long a hijack to explain why I have rational grounds for rejecting self-delusion in this case.) I do not believe that my personal evaluation of the evidence should be binding on anyone else, nor do I believe it gives me any special privilege to dictate what another should believe or not believe.

On the nature of evidence, though, we need to get into a long discussion about metaphysics in general, and Materialism in the philosophic sense in particular. Quite simply, everyone believes in things for which there is no visual evidence, but indirect evidence pointing to its existence. The electron and the neutrino, for example. And when I was a child, it was impossible to image an atom, though by my young adulthood improvements in microscopy had changed that. The entire question of whether tachyons exist is one in which no direct physical evidence is possible; any proof or disproof requires logical analysis of what effects they might cause if they did exist, and then experimentation to determine if those effects in fact occur. (And note that errors in logic may make the results of such experimentation moot as far as proving anything.)

There are also a wide variety of phenomena known by short monosyllabic names and technical terms that are a part of the human experience which are not themselves amenable to physical-science tests. Examples include love, hatred, beauty, truth, freedom, tyranny, tragic flaws, catharsis (in the literary sense), verisimilitude. To evaluate these, one needs to use a different regimen – that of the social sciences and humanities. There are no physical science tests which prove theorems in mass psychology or that Rembrandt was a better painter than Kincade; forming these conclusions requires a different methodology.

Simply put, I have weighed the evidence before me, and come to a different conclusion than you. This is not arrogant of me (unless you postulate that your views are the only right ones, in which case the arrogance shoes are on quite different feet). What you seem to have mistaken is that if there is a pearl of great price in a mudhole, it’s quite possible to mine that mudhole, slough away the undesired mud, and recover the pearl. If I were to present to you Nennius, Gildas, Geoffrey of Monmouth, the Bruts, Wace, Malory, and a variety of other materials, you could do a critical reading of these credulous retellings of legend and slanted chronicles, and one that would probably stand as a triumph in the field of criticism of Arthurian literature, widely recognized as excellent scholarship in early English (and medieval French) literature. But if your task was to uncover from that morass what facts are known or knowable about the historical figure on whom the Arthurian legends are putatively based, you would have a result far more debatable, as, for example, Geoffrey Ashe’s work is. Most thoughtful Christians bring to the Bible a desire for critical scholarship, an awareness that it resembles the compendium of Greek myth and legend or Arthuriana far more than it does a collection of historical writings, short stories, and poetry about World War II, and analyze what it can tell them about God using the Arthuriana methodology, not the credulity with which Edward IV read Malory or the presumption of objective factuality that we typically bring to modern histories.

So, too, the nature of faith and belief is misunderstood. It’s not a statement regarding degree of credence in matters of varying relative factuality. It’s a statement of trust. Anyone in a happy marriage can state their confidence that s/he can trust in his/her spouse, that s/he loves said spouse and know he/she loves him/her. To prove that logically to a thrd party is a quite different task. And it’s that form of certitude in the unprovable but intuitively known that is at the core of faith and belief.

I personally would love to see theology become a much more scientific discipline. Because far too much of present theology consists of efforts to rationalize already-held positions by selectively producing evidence and arguments in support of a given already-held conclusion. That, however, is a far different argument than the one you’ve proposed. But one that I think deserves saying.

6

Nope. Your FIL has issues, but mentioning “the sense God gave me” can be just an expression, just like using Yiddish phrases is a colorful way of speaking for many athiests who happened to be raised Jewish.

If you like you can come to my place and we’ll hop on the subway and go a few stops to sit in on some classes at Fordham University, a Jesuit one. I think they teach evolution there and philosophy and history and everything…

Or you can come to church with me and see the Upper West Side professionals, engineers and musicians and lawyers and doctors, packed into the pews. I hope the parishoners from the nearby housing projects won’t intimidate you, but speak to them for a few minutes and you’ll find they’re as bright as anyone else and just as community-minded.

Unless you think that a degree from Georgetown or Notre Dame or even BYU is equal to one from Bob Jones University; if you have any doubts, your argument falls apart.

7

Christians are not necessarily stupid. There is ample evidence that many intelligent people have professed belief in Christianity. That said, you always have to wonder if they really do believe such obvious horseshit, or if they have made a certain calculation that, even if they do not believe in Christianity, the social cost of expressing atheism/agnosticism is high enough in their particular situation that it is simpler and more rewarding to go to church a couple of times a year and answer “yes” if someone asks if you are a Christian. (Which I think is the basis for an awful lot of ‘Christian’ belief in this country.) This is an especially appealing stratagem if you simply are not religiously inclined.

I do think you can be intelligent and honestly profess Christianity. Otherwise intelligent people are capable of huge feats of self-delusion. A delusion as widely accepted as Christianity would be especially easy to fall prey to.

8

From here

9

That I’m interesting in clarifying an issue that’s been presented in a misleading way, and possibly defusing it, at least in conversations where my assessment of the inherent intelligence of all Xians is wrongly presumed?

Now, as to what issue with me provokes your clear hostility here, let me presume to ask: Dude, what’s your fucking problem?

10

That I’m interestED…

11

My takes on a few of your dichotomies:

Courageous/ Cautious
From a USA point of view, I don’t think it takes a whole lot of courage to be Christian or atheist for most people. An openly atheist politician would exhibiting a form of courage by risking his election chances. Missionaries display several forms of courage when they leave behind more comfortable lives to work in difficult and sometimes hostile environments.

Open-minded/ Closed-minded
I see the full spectrum among Christians and atheists, but in terms of numbers of people, I know more closed-minded Christians than open-minded ones. The open-minded Christians I know have faith, but seek the thoughts and wisdom of others to better understand the details of Christian belief. Most atheists seem closed-minded to me, but my point of view is not unbiased. I was a closed-minded atheist myself until a series of circumstances and people opened me up.

**Complexity/ Simplicity **
A full spectrum among Christians, no opinion on atheists. While simple-minded Christians are quite obvious to all, there are theological topics that engross some Christians which are quite complex.

Thanks for asking.

12

I not only see absolutely no evidence of god’s existence, but I see no reason to believe that god, as presented by the books a believer reads, is worthy of anything but fear and scorn. There is little in the bible that a rational person could interpret as being useful in today’s world (unless, of course, you play the “twisty, squinty” game and pretend that your interpretation of ancient writings has anything to do with what was actually written). The horror stories that some believers pick off their plate (but are unbelievably embraced by many, many others) would have sent me running in the opposite direction as fast as I could.

I think very few actually believe there’s a god (regardless of what they say). I believe they have an overwhelming need to belong to something, a fear of the unknown, and an arrogance that is seldom matched by anything in the real world. Since so many people also believe, it gives it some kind of warped credibility.

The danger that exists because of religion is not so much in the overzealous “fundie” crew who flies planes into skyscrapers, but in the “Religion Lite” people who actually lend credibility to the beliefs of the nutcases. Every little bit of reinforcement in mystical beings who are supposedly communicating with some of us here on Earth makes it easier for the bad guys to stomp on those who choose to live outside the make-believe constructs of religion. It doesn’t matter that they don’t fly planes into skyscrapers. The fact that they agree with the crazies that it’s even possible to receive messages from the spirit world is akin to “a wink and a nod” to those who say “god told them to do it.”

13

Actually my (ex-)FIL is an atheist (and a Yiddish-speaker) who happens to be very insecure and marginally equipped intellectually, perhaps the most fearful person I’ve ever known, who’s managed to allow his neuroses to cripple him and impair his chances of finding fulfillment. I’m not sure what else you’re driving at–I’ve taught at a Jesuit college, so I don’t really need to be shown the Bronx. I don’t get your point there, either. I’m affirming that there are smart Xians and dumb atheists–that’s my point. What I’m saying is that the whole issue of “smart” and “stupid” plays a minute role in the whole issue of “Xianity/atheism” and I wish people wouldn’t keep making false accusations of “Are you calling me stupid?” because I think that hijacks the subject in unhelpful ways.

As to Crotalus, these dichotomies, off the top of my head, do have some more value, and may be worth clarifying further. I do think it’s much safer for any American, not just a politician, to identify in public as a Xian than as an atheist. I think if you compared the number of Xians who identify publically as atheists because they think that will be less controversial to the opposite, my point here will be taken.

14

Well, maybe it isn’t “obvious horseshit” to them. If lots and lots of intelligent people believe something that to you looks like horseshit… well, granted, one possibility is that it is indeed horseshit and that they believe it, or claim to, for social or psychological reasons. But another possibility is that what you think they believe isn’t what they actually do believe. Another possibility is that there are explanations for or nuances to what they believe that make it far more plausible than you think. Another possibility is that it is your own prejudices or presuppositions or psychological quirks that make their beliefs look to you like horseshit.

15

It’s interesting how many people, on both sides of the theiism/atheism divide, believe not only that their perspective is obvious but that it’s practically impossible to believe otherwise.

Personally, I think the world is like one of those funky pictures that show a completely different scene when you move your head and look at them from a slightly different angle, or one of those optical-illusion-ey drawings where, if you look at it one way, it’s a vase, and if you look at it another way, it’s two faces in profile.

When you look at reality from one angle, it appears clear that God exists; from another angle, it appears clear that God doesn’t. And some people are only seeing the world from one angle, and some only from the other. And some, like myself, switch back and forth. If I go by what seems obvious, sometimes I see the world from the angle where it looks atheistic, sometimes from the angle where God is clearly present. Not only that, but I can understand how it’s possible for either perspective to be explained away under the assumption that the other is true.

16

Absolutely excellent points, there, and points which seem to be missed constantly by those who would characterize christians as differently-abled mentally (whether you choose ‘ignorant’, ‘suggestible’, ‘simple’ or whatever adjective that suggests ‘inferior’).

Secondly, those who continue to insist that there is neither logic nor proof about the existence of a Divine seem to me to be the flat-earthers of physics. Fact is that humans once having come to a grand new discovery in science can be prone to stating that that particular discovery is the apex of human knowledge which will never be superceded - we’ve seen it time and again. It wasn’t that long ago that it was thought that the atom was the smallest particle in nature.

Atheists not arrogant? Oh I beg to differ. I too often find that they are incredibly arrogant in their certainty that they have grasped all the possible fundamental precepts of science and can therefore state with absolute finality that there can be no Divine.

Clearly we have not reached the apex of human knowledge at this point any more than we had when we thought the sun revolved around the earth. We’re closer, maybe. We might’ve reached the foothills or maybe even base camp, but to found any conclusion on a certainty that current knowledge will never be superceded is, to me, ignorance of the highest order.

At this point, physicists are talking about a possible couple dozen other dimensions. We haven’t even grasped everything to know about our own three so how anyone can say with not only certainty, but with arrogantly insulting condescencion (not speaking about anyone here specifically) that all ideas of the Divine are ignorant, stupid, ‘simple’, etc. etc. only demonstrates to me that the speaker is guilty of same.

I think any fervent adherent of any faith, including scientism, who refuses to acknowledge the possibility of his own error is too close-minded to be bothered trying to discuss the issue with. I think in the end that what we believe to be the Divine will prove itself through some branch of physics. Might not be for another century or two, but somebody else much farther along the path to knowledge will find the answer. That we don’t have it yet only speaks to our own limits as recently-evolved creatures in a very old universe.

17

I don’t know any atheists who say they’ve got an understanding of all there is to know in the universe. Quite the opposite. We’re saying we don’t know yet but there’s nothing so far to suggest a netherworld with mystical controlling forces actually exists.

18

I, uh, guess you didn’t read the OP, did you? :wink: Plenty o’ arrogance in that one!

19

Name me two examples, please?

20

Mighty big o’ ya to concede that “Xians” are, really, when you get down to it, “stupid.”

Someday, you will learn that we all have “pleasing fictions” about which we order our lives. Even you, PRR.

You are telling people that their emotions are not as they describe, and yet you call them arrogant? LOL!

:rolleyes: No comment necessary, I’m sure.

Essentially your entire OP boils down to this: “You’re stupid, but I don’t wanna call you stupid so help me find some words that mean ‘stupid’ but don’t have the same negative connotations that ‘stupid’ contains.” Yeah… not a thing arrogant about that one.

Why is this in GD?