I don’t think that the concept of “God” is in and of itself irrational. I think that any person that considers themselves to be smart is going to be open to the possibility of “God”, but will be able to admit that the possiblity of “God” exisiting is infinitesimal at best. While the old axiom “Nothing is impossible” may be strictly true, some things are more probable than others, and I believe that “God” and religion would most certainly fall under the highly improbable category.
The Church of England is fine and well, it is also one of the least dogmatic interpretations of Christianity that I have heard of. (unless you consider Unitarians are a interpretation of Christianity).
No western country other than USA considers creationists as being more than cranks worthy only of ignoring.
Cheers, Bippy
I would agree that European society is generally more secular than American society. And the Queen is a ceremonial figurehead who has no impact on the way the country is run. That’s what happened to her. Royal power is so dead that the parliament actually proposes and approves the list of knights, the Queen has no input into it.
To my knowledge, there hasn’t been a conclusive study that has proven a correlation between intelligence and belief in any kind of deity.
As far as the ancedotal evidence is concerned, I have met very smart theists and very stupid theists of many different types. I have also met intelligent and adapative as well as stupid and dogmaic atheists.
I find the notion that “Believing in God is not smart” quite amusing. As if science, mans ability to comprehend, and smartness was all encompassing and perfect.
Science does not know what happens in a black hole. Does that mean you dont believe anything happens in it? If it wasnt “smart” to believe in anything science or logic cannot comprehend, there would be no innovations or discoveries. No one “smart” would look for anything that didnt exist, cannot be proven, or hasnt been seen before. For me, God iis everywhere, especially at and past the point where science ends.
to quote a very smart man,
“Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.”
Ah yes, the Einstein quote.
Einstein was a very spiritual man, but it’s doubtful whether he could be said to believe in “God” in any standard sense.
Slayer, you’re confusing science and knowledge.
Science is a methodology. If you don’t know something, science exists to provide a means to investigate it and learn about it. There are theories as to what happens in a black hole, but they have not yet been verified. When you say “science can’t comprehend” something, to me you’re not even speaking English. What you might mean is that there are things humans have yet to discover, which is indisputable, but I don’t think it counts as evidence for god - that’s just arguing from ignorance/god of the gaps stuff.
He didnt believe in a personal God. He didnt believe in a God that punished bad deeds and rewarded good deeds. The fact still remains that he does believe in a Deity. I dont think there is such a thing as a “standard” God.
now people in this thread are saying Believing in God (any God) is not smart because it is irrational. To some people, the general theory of relativity was irrational in the beginning. Believing in “irrational” things is not always foolish. The very smart people do it all the time.
Certainly, atheists can be zealots. An atheist can be anything (except a believer in gods), because atheism is not a belief system. It’s just a word that describes people who lack a particular belief.
In my opinion, it’s not logical to conclusively say God doesn’t exist, because nobody has ever sufficiently defined “God” to the point where it would be possible to disprove it. As zwalld pointed out, “God” is a place-holder for what people don’t know, and only a fool claims to know everything. Of course, to me that renders the word God meaningless and redundant. I prefer to say “I don’t know”.
As for the OP, I recall reading about a study done which showed atheists to be of higher intelligence than theists on average, but unfortunately I don’t remember where I read it. But whether or not that’s true, it would be pretty ridiculous to suggest that all religious people are “dumb”. You don’t even have to look further than this this very forum to see theists who are obviously quite intelligent.
Dogface:
Well then you’ve formed your opinion based on a very small sample.
I am not saying the limitations of Science is proof of God. All I am saying is that belief in God is not foolish. Belief in what science can not prove or disprove IS smart because you keep an open mind until proof does come along and puts the issue to rest. If science does prove that God does not exist then it would be foolish to believe in God.
If I were to say that I believe that a black hole is actually a gateway to another universe that has totally different laws of physics from this one and eventually someone will prove me right because other people believe the same thing as I do and are working hard to come up with a way to prove our beliefs.
Logically, a wise person would say, “well I dont believe in what you just said but if you can prove it me, I’ll consider it.”
Now if I were to say that I believe in God and that God loves me and someday God will take me to heaven for following his laws and teachings.
Would the same wise man say, “well that wasnt smart…” ?
slayer the reason a person believes something is more important as to if they are smart or not.
eg.
“I believe that a black hole is actually a gateway to another universe”
Is not smart if the reason the person believes this is that they watched Black Hole on disney channel.
It is smart if you learn what they can about black holes, and from this construct your belief.
“I believe in God and that God loves me”
Is not smart if the reason for this belief is that you read about it in a translation of an old book that is full of contradictions and errors.
It is smart if you learn what they can about God, and from this construct your belief.
I believe I recall the same study making the news (5 -10 years ago?). It was a little more complicated, of course. As it almost had to, it used IQ to judge intelligence. One well known criticism of IQ tests, especially the “generic” tests given in American schools, is that results tend to reflect ethnic/cultural groups, without any evidence that intelligence breaks down along those lines. For example, Baptists scored lower than athiests, who scored lower than Presbyterians and members of the Anglican churches. Guess which groups have the highest percentage of WASPs?
I’m sure someone can find a cite site, but I’m at work.
I have to take exception with this assertion. Most people believe in God. Atheists and agnostics are far more likely to encounter hostility than theists.
As for the perception that “smart” people think that theists are dumb, I would say that there may be a certain level of impatience with naive, dogmatic or simply uneducated religious attitudes, but this should be distingushed from a per se belief in God.
For example, a Young Earth Creationist is not going to earn a lot of respect with scientifically literate people, not because he/she believes in God, but because he/she has adopted an attitude which is irrational in light of objective evidence. A theistic evolutionist, OTOH will be perceived as a perfectly rational, intelligent individual.
Theists (of any religion) are also not helped by fundamentalists who take a narrow view of the world, espouse intolerant or bigoted ideas, advocate for a more theocratic society, etc. Sometimes the most vocal and radical proponants of a religion can give a skewed perception to others. For instance, look what 9/11 has done for perceptions of Islam. On a lesser scale, the revelation that “I am a Christian” may conjur up an image to some of a naive Biblical literalist when that person may be nothing of the sort.
I think we can look at the SDMB for evidence of how different sorts of theists are received. I would point out that some of the “smartest” and most respected people on this board are theists (Christians, Jews and otherwise). People are judged by the quality and intelligence of their posting, not by some litmus as to theistic belief. Stupid atheistic assertions get get flamed just as hard as stupid religious assertions. If some newbie came along calling himself “Nihilist666,” and he wrote an OP in GD asserting that “Evolution proves there’s no God,” he would not be perceived as a genius and it would probably be an agnostic or an atheist who would be the first to tell him so.
Smart people (theistic or non-theistic) like smart, reasoned discussions. They tend not to like factual distortions, tautologies, logical fallacies and declarations of dogma. A simple belief in God does not fall into any of those categories.
Oh this is amusing as well. 
You are saying that the origin of the belief predicates the “smartness” of the belief system. Heh.
Then the inventor of the cell phone was foolish because he first saw it in a Star Trek Episode.
Everyone in the SETI project are fools.
You can google a lot of inventions and discoveries that were inspired by fairy tales and childrens stories. The are not all fools.
A belief is the “assumption” in a logical statement. It doesnt matter how you got or made the assumption, It is the proof that is essential. You assume something is true (without proof) then set about to prove (or disprove) your assumption. Making an assumption is not foolish.
You misunderstand me, to believe a cell phone can be created because you saw one on star-trek is tom foolery. But if after seeing the star trek you learn about electronics and radio systems, and invent a cell phone that is smart.
It is not merely the first spark of interest in the possibility, it is the process of learning the thing that makes one smart.
Making an assumption without basis in thought and knowledge, that is foolish.
Assuming the speed of light is constant, without using thought and knowledge to create that belief, is stupidity, even though it is true.
Assuming the laws of Newtonian Mechanics are true, through study experiment and knowledge, is smart, even though the laws are only approximate.
Do you see. Someone who can parrot 1000 correct facts is not smart. Someone who can derive one fact from another, and give reasons for such belief is being smart.
b.t.w. I certainly don’t believe that belief in God is foolish, only belief based on what was taught you by rote and which you have never experienced or questioned is foolish.
well that was a mass of contradictions… 
I’ll accept your last statement and let it go at that. Its close enuf for government work.
And nowhere did I say that it was.
If science CAN’T prove or disprove something, it doesn’t matter what you believe. That’s an opinion issue.
You don’t know anything about science, do you? Science doesn’t work from belief. Scientists gather information and theorize about what it might mean, then test it and continually revise those findings until there is a theory that makes sense and is at least generally accepted. You don’t start with the answer and work backwards, that screws up your results.
Religion is starting from the answer (god and whatever books) and working backwards. That, I think, has a lot to do with why TVAA says it is irrational. And irrationality isn’t a comment on stupidity or falsehood. If you know what the word believe means, you’ll understand the irrationality angle. Believing is having faith in something in spite of a lack of evidence or in the face of evidence to the contrary.
I believe 
that is false. Belief in no way requires lack of evidence or even contrary evidence.
Slayer if you have the time, please email me with why you thought my previous post was full of contradictions, I would like to learn from it so that I can improve my debating skills.
Stick around.
I’d say if you have evidence for something, you don’t need to believe it. You don’t need to believe that the Earth is round(ish), there’s verifiable evidence that it really is. Most people use the words interchangeably, I realize, but I was differentiating and should have explained that, perhaps. Then again, I think Slayer used the word in a similar manner: he talks about believing black holes lead to other universes without any evidence.