That is rather a restrictive interpretation of the word believe; when evidence exists, we still believe it; our acceptance of the ‘verifiable evidence that it really is’, is called belief.
If you wanted a word that implied belief independent of evidence, then it was ]faith.
An often quoted study is that something like 90% of the members of the National Academy of Scientists (a very exclusive group of the top scientists) do not believe in a personal god or in the immortality of life.
This doesn’t mean anything other than scientists tend to be areligious. I certainly don’t think it means that areligious people are smarter as a whole. As pointed out by many people already, there are numbskulls on both sides.
When we choose how to live our lives, we do it based on our perceptions about how the world works. People with strong faith need to make their decisions while taking this into account. I have no such sense, and I choose to live my life without religion. I don’t think that we have enough (or will ever have enough) objective evidence to invalidate the religious’ feelings – I suppose on some levels, it is like explaining sight to a blind man. I lack the sensation of faith, and I can’t have it explained to me. A pious person won’t have their subjective feelings invalidated either. It has nothing to do with intelligence.
I think, in the face of it, belief in something that has contrary (irrefutable) evidence against it, is foolish.
If i can prove that the earth is round and not flat, how can faith in a flat earth be not foolish.
I object to your implication that I do not know science or its methodology. Theories are assumptions that have no proof (thats why they are theories and not laws). You believe them to be true, Then you prove it either mathematically or thru experimentation or both. If proof comes along and finds your theory false, you drop that theory and come up with a better one. Tell me thats not how science works.
I don’t like quoting early posts, but could someone explain how believing in God is fundamentally irrational?
The equation for human intelligence is as folows:
Education + memory capability + functional reason - age (+/-) environment or genetics = Intelligence.
Of course, there are many variables in this regard, but generally i believe this theory to be correct.
That being said, Intelligence has, at the same time, everything and nothing to do with belief in God. Even a cursory glimpse at the American South will yield some frightening results for the “smart people don’t believe” arguement, yet in my personal experience, some of the smartest people I know believe, vehmently so, in ancient, and often outmoded church doctrine.
This is where the ‘Education’ portion of the equasion comes in. This, I believe, is a matter of repetitive data input, when the mind is the most receptive (i.e. youth). This input, because it is so ingrained, and comes laden with emotional triggers such as guilt, fear and the need for acceptance, can override the aspect of reason that is otherwise so prevalent in the intelligent person.
Does this negate, or even restate the question? Not quite.
The intelligent person believes in a higher power for one of three reasons.
I am of the opinion that those who believe because they are told to, and do so blindly, are indeed less intelligent, based on the theory aforementioned. It’s a poorly educated mind that fails to ask why.
It is in this bracket, that one that holds the less intelligent person. Lack of education decreases the positives within the equation, sometimes causing the equation to end with a negative, wherein the individual in question exists completely for the afterlife, and the esoteric, and gives no creedence to the present.
This is especially prevalent in less affluent areas (i.e. inner cities, as proof, I offer the proliferation of churches in the poorer sections of any large city, I cite Chicagos’ south side, where I am from, as a direct example).
In contrast, areas in the Greater Chicagoland area such as Hinsdale (which is in affluent Dupage county) Evanston, (just north of the city proper) and recently gentrified areas of Chicago, such as Bucktown, Wicker Park and Lincoln Park, have fewer churches at a glance than the areas aforementioned.
This, I believe, is a function of wealth, pure and simple. Storefront preachers mine the poorest of neighborhoods for the last vestiges of wealth, usually from pensions and the retirement funds of the elderly, to fund their so-called good works.
Meanwhile the more affluent neighborhoods and areas are equally pressed for money, in larger amounts, yet are less likely to be ‘guilted’ into donation, and generally less likely to be lied to.
Certianly, there are cultural considerations to address here, but I’ve taken up enough space.
I agree with you regarding the word “belief,” but not regarding the word “faith.”
Faith doesn’t necessarily mean belief without evidence. Rather, it means belief without proof. If you have neither proof nor evidence, then what you have is blind faith.
If he wont, I will. Thats not how science works.
First, you dont start with theories, you start with hypothesis. You dont show or ‘prove’ a hypothesis by mathematics, you develop a hypothesis with mathematics. But you seem to assume that, if there are no errors in the mathematics, that is somehow a validation of the hypothesis. That is incorrect; I think youre confusing the methods of science with the methods of philosophy, wherein merely the level of perfection of the logic behind an argument is taken as proof of its validity.
So you use mathematics to arrive at an hypothesis; now, you either have to devise ways to empirically test it and do so, or in some cases wait around for an occurance to happen naturally that your hypothesis predicted. Only if these last occur will your hypothesis be elevated to a theory. And when someonthing is a theory, it usually means that its known to not be a complete or full ‘answer’ so to speak, much like quantum theory. It only means its a workable framework to use to solve problems for the time being.
That’s wrong. Something with no proof is a hypothesis or a guess. Evolution, for example, is a theory: a theory is an explanation designed to account for data. The name ‘theory’ confuses some people; it doesn’t mean that something is unproven or necessarily in doubt.
THAT part you have right.
Umm, that’s not right either - though more right than X-Slayer. Theorems in math are different from theories in science. You prove things in math, in science a theory must be falsifiable, it must not contradict any known evidence, and it must in some sense be the best explanation for known evidence. It should also have predictive power. For instance, various explanations for the origin of life are hypotheses, since there is not enough evidence to be confident that any of them are true. Evolution is a theory, since it explains life very well, and predicts both the fossils we find, the results of experiments, and results from genetics.
In math, a proven theorem is true forever, unless some dreadful error is found. In science, theories are true only until evidence against them is found, or a theory which better explains the evidence is found.
Which god?
If you believe in a deist god, who created the universe and then scrammed, and admit you believe this out of faith, I don’t think you are being irrational. If you believe in the god of the inerrant Bible, who created the universe 6,000 years ago and flooded everyone out, then you are being irrational (or ignorant, if you are unaware of the evidence against this god.)
I’ve know theists who freely admit that their faith is irrational. They are the kind of people who don’t try to impose their beliefs on others, and I respect those people. However many, perhaps most, theists in the US have this irrational leap from faith to certainty to trying to impose their belief or the rules coming from that belief on others.
If someone says driving on Sunday is wrong because the Bible says so, he had better have damn good evidence that the Bible is trustworthy and correct. If he says that he won’t drive on Sunday because he thinks the Bible says so, but it is okay if I do, that’s fine with me.
Nice explanation, Voyager.
I just wanted to emphasize this. I’m not the one who started the irrationality thing, but I would say this supports it. I like to say that an unfalsifiable statement is unscientific, and thus purely a matter of opinion (or belief or whatever term you like). If I said “Coke is better than Pepsi,” that is unfalsifiable, it has no truth value. You can’t prove the contrary, or the statement itself either. Saying that, however, doesn’t mean I think Pepsi is better than Coke. I hope the analogy is making sense.
I think the existence of god as a general question falls into this category; “god exists” is unfalsifiable from where I sit. Too many questions, if nothing else: how do you know which god, etc. There’s no real evidence you can provide that will be accepted. Some say the cruelty in the world if proof there’s no god, others say it’s proof there is one, and you can’t conclusively prove either one.
When you give specific qualities to god, say something, like “god created the Earth 6000 years ago,” that has some truth value because evidence can be shown. Creationists play all kinds of games with it, but that’s neither here nor there. Actual evidence exists about the age of the Earth, and you can do tests and things to discuss its age.
I think this is important stuff, and hopefully what I’m getting at has gotten across here. 
So far it seems that science requires being smart, but believing in God doesn’t.
I suppose I could accept that.
I would like to point out that the smart people are having a bit of trouble defining just what science means. Of course, the folks who believe in God have similar difficulties. They argue about it, too, although obviously not a smartly.
I don’t know if folks who care a lot about being smart are as interested in dumb folks as God is. I do notice that a lot of folks who believe in God don’t much care for a lot of other folks who also believe in God, but I am not sure that the really smart folks are much different, in that respect either, to be honest.
I used to be smart, but I got over it. I started believing in God while I was smart, though, and I still do. I am still a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, too. I like the magazine. And I did stop by the Smithsonian Associates Seminar on Cosmology: Scientific, and Religious Views. There were a lot of smart people there, on both ends of the podium.
I suppose I will sit in the dumb folks who believe in God section. I’m not really all that dumb, but I don’t mind the company. If they start to thumpin’ on their Bibles real hard though, I may go sit with the science guys. I get along pretty well with them too, as long as they don’t start preachin’ from their dictionaries.
'Til then, me and the dumb guys will be quietly thanking the Lord that we don’t have to be so darned smart all the time.
“An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.” ~ H. L. Mencken ~
On reflection, I agree, although I think I’d have to say that both proof and evidence can mean different things to different people.
The existence of God is adequately proven to me because I have been privileged to examine compelling evidence; unfortunately the evidence is not of a type or standard that is presentable (or perhaps even meaningful) to a third party, so I can’t prove it to you or anyone else.
Scientific Method:
Observation and description of a phenomenon or group of phenomena.
Formulation of a hypothesis to explain the phenomena.
Use of the hypothesis to predict the existence of other phenomena, or to predict quantitatively the results of new observations.
Performance of experimental tests of the predictions by several independent experimenters and properly performed experiments.
Did I mention that dogmatic religious structures complement the American cultural tendency to go in for anti-Intellectualism?
After reading most of the above, I still think it’s dumb to be religious based on the evidence that we have.
It seems appropriate to add my all time favorite Jimmy Swaggart quote: "If there is anything that is a threat to this (fundamentalist) movement of ours, it’s higher education!
I saw him say it on TV with my own eyes and ears. Even after being busted with a really sleazy hooker, lots of people swallow everything he says.
It’s possible to be smart and believe in a god. “Yes, my gut instinct tells me there’s more to existence than mere chance.”
It’s possible to be smart and not believe in a god. “There is no verifiable evidence that a god exists.”
Ergo, believing in god has nothing to do with smartness/ignorance; it’s probably tied into how much faith (the “gut instinct”) one has in the concept.
A distinctive variation of the OP that some people have been assuming is, “Can a smart person have a religious fundamentalist view of God?” E.g., taking the Torah/Bible/Koran/insert-holy-book-of-choice as literal truth? That, IMO, is impossible, since science can be used to disprove the literal claims made by fundamentalists (the Earth is not 6,000 years old, for instance). I don’t think there will be a lot of folks arguing against this idea on this forum, but who knows?
I think you have really hit the nail on the head here.
The evidence that is open to all (ie not including personal experiences, and such like) is indeed insufficient for faith in God to be a smart choice.
But, and you will read this in all the smart theists posts in the SDMB. The most powerful evidence for God is in the personal experiences, the events of mind that are in no ways open to scientific scrutiny (well not yet, anyway). Those who are smart and theists will site personal experiences as their proof of God.
Those of us who have not had such experience, must not condemn as foolish the beliefs of those that have.
Also those that have had such experience must not condemn as foolish the beliefs of those that heve not.
Oh, boy. I strongly disagree. People might not have absolute proof of God’s existence based on the objective evidence, but that does not necessarily mean that this evidence is insufficient for faith to be a smart choice.
Well I disagree with you. Surely you mean ‘People have absolutely no proof of God’s existence based on the objective evidence, and that does mean that this total lack of evidence is insufficient for faith to be a smart choice.’
As you can see, I believe there is zero objective evidence for any God. Do feel free to provide some.
I’m not sure that I want to imply any criticism of religious believers, so will happily change ‘smart’ above to ‘logical’ (hope that doesn’t upset anyone either!)
I’d like to add that my parents took me to Church (UK Protestant Congregational sect) for 14 years. I listened in Sunday School and won the religious prize at School. But eventually I asked my Sunday School teacher if there was any proof of God (because I hadn’t heard of any). He replied that God was entirely a matter of faith.
Well I’ve not been ‘blessed’ with any personal religious experience, so until some proof does come along, God joins astrology, psychics, ghosts crop circles and the Loch Ness monster as something there is no proof for, and therefore no need to believe in.
I would add two points:
you need to define which religion and which branch and which sect your God belongs to. (e.g. is He Christian or Judaic? Protestant or Catholic? Fundamentalist or Anglican?)
Incidentally, the fact there are thousands of sects suggest to me that either God doesn’t exist, or His followers have not got the message.
I judge a person by their actions. I’ve met plenty of Christians, Buddhists and atheists who were civilised, caring and worthy members of society. I don’t care for violent fanatics, either religious or not.