I’m just wondering why most people take an aggressive stance when the existence of God is mentioned.
Are people who believe in God not as bright as those who don’t believe?
Is it an unspoken rule that smart people don’t believe in God?
There are plenty of “smart” people who believe in God.
It doesn’t follow that believing in God is a smart thing to do.
Why is it not a smart thing to do?
I mean there is much “ridicule” and frowning when someone believes in God it seems.
It is fundamentally irrational.
Religious people will often admit this. They sometimes even say that’s the whole point.
But on the message board of a site dedicated to countering irrational thinking and spreading reason and factual knowledge, it’s not surprising that believing in God open will draw some negative attention.
I think there are smart people on both sides of the belief pole. I don’t see any reason to assume otherwise.
Can you be a little more specific?
The wise man accepts that he has much to learn. The fool thinks he already knows it all. Many religious minded people seem to think that their interpretation of reality and associated religious beliefs are absolutely 100% correct. They do not allow for the possibility that they could be wrong. This is a stupid thing to do. I haven’t met a human yet that was incapable of being wrong. The stupid part is when they close their minds to evidence, critical thinking, and draw conclusions based on social and personal desires that they state as if they were fact. They should accept that they may be wrong. It’s real easy to do.
Watch:
All of the above is my opinion of course. I may be wrong.
DaLovin’ Dj
VAA, you and I believe in God to a similarly infinitessimal degree, but I would never agree with you on this.
Atheists can be pious and chauvinistic zealots too, you realise.
Yes, I realize this.
Given the current state of human knowledge, drawing the conclusion that a God exists is irrational. This is not merely an opinion of mine; it is an objective fact.
That doesn’t mean that it’s wrong. It might be right. However, concluding that it is right at the present time is not logically justifiable.
And concluding that God doesn’t exist is…what, given that you realise that atheists can be zealots? Eminently logically justifiable?
SentientMeat, I’d say it’s certainly logically justifiable.
Some smart people do believe in god, but it’s true that that doesn’t mean believing in god is smart. The opposites are true as well.
Science never rules out any possibility, but does give a framework for what is most probable. I think that’s what TVAA is getting at. Religion rules out certain possibilities (ie. that God does not exist). Therein lies the distincition.
For those who seek knowledge, God is just a place holder that means the same thing as ‘I don’t know’. The ‘not smart’ (or more accurately, ignorant) contigent are those who use God to explain things that are known.
I think it is just as stupid to claim with certainty that a god does not exist. We simply haven’t got enough data to make an informed decision. Hell, we don’t even have a good definition of god.
A god could be :
An old man sitting in the sky.
An all powerful designer of everything.
An entity that controls THIS universe.
An alien race.
A kid playing a video game.
The sum of all that exists (intelligent or no)
A member of a group of super-powerful beings that meddle in human affairs.
A figment of imagination.
How many levels up do you go before you get a god? Heck, even if you find an intelligent designer who created all that we can see or experience, how does he/she/it know for sure that there isn’t an invisible god above that it simply hasn’t the power to recognise? How does god know he exists? I think therefore I am don’t work for us, wouldn’t any intelligent entity face the possibility that the scope of its powers may not be the ultimate scope of power?
Either way, the point is, the knowledge and evidence simply is not there. To just forsake all that we have learned from the scientific method and years and years of observations (which have revealed that there is a low we still don’t know) and claim that you have figured out how everything works and the reason you are here seems awfully stupid to me. Whether you’re in the for or against category.
I don’t know is a powerful position, and from where I am standing, the only rational call.
DaLovin’ Dj
Gee, you’ve just described nearly every single atheist I’ve ever come across.
I just addressed this in the post before yours, but they were pretty close so you probably had not read it yet. Any atheist who does such a thing is being just as stupid.
Agnostics win for the time being in my book.
DaLovin’ Dj
God as a concept is not all that irrational. But an awful lot of what people claim is true based on their religious belief system is terribly (painfully) irrational. So I believe smart people are against dogmatic religious ideas that are based on no more than faith and old books of dubious accuracy. This gives the impression that smart people don’t believe in God or the possibility of God, when they really only oppose religious irrationality. Smart people will tend to think about God in different ways than non-smart believers maybe even believe in different ways.
c.f. every post ever made by polycarp
A helpful and well-considered comment that contributes to the thread if ever I’ve seen one. And certainly none of Dogface’s posts could ever fit any of the above criteria either. I thought you were supposed to save that stuff for the barbecue pit or something.
Sorry, I just read this after my last post.
That statement may be true for some parts of USA, but most deffinately is false for most of the UK, and IMHO I am sure is false for most of the western civilizations.
Religion and faith not so big in the UK? What happened to god and the queen?
Is the premise wrong. Not God vs smart people
but
People that believe in God vs people that think they are smart that don’t.
There can be smart and dumb people on both sides.
What if God doesn’t care?
The problem often is that the believers are too pushy. I have had 3 christians ask me if I died right then if I thought I would go to heaven. I was walking down the street minding my own business. I told one that I didn’t believe in heaven. He stood there with his mouth hanging open.
I “suspect” that God doesn’t want dumb people in heaven, that is why the system runs on reincarnation. You have to keep coming back until you get your brain in gear.
Dal Timgar