Religious people are very intellgent, as it applies to religion and their needs & beliefs. Half the people that created the internet probably believe in a God. A person can be competently smart in many areas and bad in science. A person can be a deep "prober" of a particular subject such as evolution & creation, and be emotionally and socially ignorant. Consider this question posed to us in Bible study long ago, Q: If the earth is only a a little more than 2000 years old, how do you explain the existence of dinosaurs? (frantic uncertainty followed ...) A: God created the Earth WITH AGE. God created Adam and Eve as adults, not as babies. God created trees, not seeds. God created life on Earth, God created death on Earth. Religous people are good. Only intelligent people can come up with something that clever. Yup, probably. And really why not? 99.9999% of us won't be around long enough when they finally discover the meaning of life. And this is coming from an intelligent atheist.
it would be interesting to see how you define religion. Religion to me is a set of beliefs and rituals based on a supernatural existence to explain the universe and then translated into laws to be followed. if you disagree with that then let me know. i find this approach to be dogmatic - but not saying it's not without value. Relgions by nature have to be dogmatic. Where it's Islam or Buddhism. How else can it be shared with others in a meaningful way? In terms of metaphor versus literal - I speak of the stories every religion tells. I would recommend Joeseph Campell's the Power of Myth - particularly the video series (you can get it from netflix) - does an amazing job of explaining religion far more elquently than i can. As far as the monkey example - my point is that it's ridiculous to claim an embryo is santified life. That's it. I'm not saying they should be against testing on monkeys, just that maybe they should lay off the whole stem cell thing. To me that would be consistent interpretation that demonstrated fitting religious beliefs into a modern world. Why is an embryo so sacred? But look, I respect your opinions and way of thinking...but I just don't buy into the thinking that you have to be religious to be moral and know the difference between right an wrong. I don't think there's a prevalence of atheist criminals. It's one thing to reject religion because you reject morality. There's plenty of criminals though you believe in god though. But I don't agree that religion is logically necessary after a certain point. I actually think there's a great deal of wonderful stories in all religions if interpreted correctly (not literally) tells of a lot of nobel truths. However, I do not think science is better then religion or anything like that - simply that intelligent people will reject relgion most likely because they find that the laws or teachings of religion (mainstream) doesn't connect with the world they see around them and that they no longer need that system. I'm not trying to justify why people can abandon religion, just explain why they do.
Do you expect there to be one unifying answer to the "meaning of life?" I think the question is flawed if you ask that kind of a question. What should we all do and we all should want to do? The unique thing about our species is that we give ourselves a purpose. Well, some people do. We're the only species that knows we're going to die and also the only species that can view the world subjectively. We see what we want to which is both a blessing and a curse. Voila, religion! For me, I hope I get all the answers when I die, but my vanity doesn't have to live forever. I'm fine with death. It doesn't diminish my life. It definitely doesn't make me immoral.
The 1st and 3rd questions have answers from nonreligious side. The 2nd question is only a question if you take a religious stance. Why are we here? What about there's no why? What if there's no purpose? Life just happened?
I never said religious people are stupid....just why a lot intelligent people become atheists. I never said religious people are dumb either. I date a lawyer who is a firm believer in god. I don't question it one bit. Again - this isn't about science or philosophy either. It's really just a matter that at some point, people probably just see a lot of the inflexibility in most world religions, some of the trapped beliefs and that does turn them off, but in the end i think it's the recognition that the stories behind a religion are myth and some of the assertions just don't fly with or make sense in the world they live in. Now there's a lot of smart people who are religious - that's good for them and means nothing. But a lot of people abandon religion as they gain experience and find their own trek. I am only trying to explain the phenomen, not say it's good or bad.
Do you really think that before God supposedly handed down the ten commandments that people thought rape and murder and stealing were ok? Either we were basically pirates for the first hundred thousand years or we have a very lazy uncaring god. Or maybe we have invented god over and over and over and it was a waste of time. We're divided, it actually effects people who don't believe through politics, and the funny part is we're all blank slates to begin with, to be good or bad of our own free will. Unfortunately not all environments and brain cocktails, propensity for anger/cruelty are equal. Christopher Hitchens has a great challenge: Name me an ethical statement made or an action performed by a believer that could not have been made or performed by a non-believer.
We're in the same boat. My little lady is Catholic. She goes to church every now and then. What do I have to say about it? Not a damn thing. I could care less what she thinks. I do care how she thinks and we have had many fights about that very thing. To be fair, she's never said anything that has forced me to say something. Either she knows when she's fighting a losing battle (since Aristotle) or she doesn't believe that deeply and it's only a cultural habit, like "bless you" (because your soul is coming out of your nose when you sneeze!) I celebrate all the major Christian holidays, but for cultural and social reasons. Why is it that important that a giant rabbit should fly out of a cave and see his shadow every Easter?
definately agreed and that is the challenge for the 'debators'- if you want to know about God- ask- and brace yourself. Thanks
I will name several- 1. loving God 2. repenting of sin against God 3. following the prompting of the Holy Spirit
LOL, why? So you can laugh at him? HA, HA, I was right and you stupid non-believer was wrong! I'm sure Jesus would be very proud. Maybe you two could high five and laugh all the way back to the golden streets of heaven.
“Our leading minds kept insisting that if you can’t prove it, you can’t believe it, but then kept stepping their way past their own criteria. From anthropology’s infamous Leakey family, who kept claiming they found the missing link – only to have another sibling discredit them – to Stephen Hawking, who made science the new philosophy, science keeps trying to answer more than it can prove. Science can’t even begin to touch the most important question to us, which, of course, is why. Knowing how it happened is fascinating, but knowing why it happened is essential. You can live without knowing how it happened, but when you can’t figure out why, it’s absolutely maddening.” - Erwin McManus, "Soul Cravings"
You expected a thread called "Intelligent People Less Likely to Belive in God" was going to give you a compelling reason to change your agnostic beliefs about God??
I think most people here would call me religious. I would reject that label, frankly. But it seems we play a lot of semantic games with it. I think the inability to define that word from thread to thread and from post to post gets us into arguments we might not otherwise get into if we all knew what the other was talking about. If your contention is religion is a set of laws with no introspection, then I will heartily deny I'm religious. And I would tell you then, that I know some religious people who go to church, but I know a lot less than you would think. (of course, my church is very different from "church" as many of you would define -- again another semantic issue). My concern is Jesus. That's really it. I'm convinced he was he who said he was. I'm convinced my life is better here and today when I seek to live it even remotely close to the way he lived his. I'm convinced I'm not there yet, though. I'm convinced that a life turned inside-out for others is freaky and strange and weird and beautiful and totally worth it. I'm convinced that when people come together to serve other people in that same life turned upside-down. inside-out sorta way it is more beauty than I can take in and makes me happy in a way I can't describe. I'm convinced that when those people and I do that it's service to the God that Jesus pointed to. The God who called for that very thing eons of years before Jesus took a step on this earth. I'm convinced God loves (real love) every single one of you and he calls me to do nothing but the same. I'm convinced that's not easy. I like this by a guy named Erwin McManus who is a pastor of a church called Mosaic out in California: “In this it appears all religions are the same. They give God a name and then establish the rules that we must follow if we are to his favor and affection. I think this is why a lot of us see all religions as different ways of getting to the same thing…Really, it’s absurd to think that any religion would somehow get you to God. It’s like being in love with a person who has no interest in you. He loves your advances only because they make him feel self-important, but really he has no motivation to pursue you. It’s all one-sided. He loves being pursued, and so your desire only inspires him to be more elusive. You have to admit, if the premise of religion is valid – if you do this, then God will accept you – this is a more accurate description of God: He’s just some really good-looking, smug and arrogant Divine Being who loves being the object of all our affection. …I’m often accused of being irreligious, and I suppose it’s for this reason. Whether it’s Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Judaism, or any other ism, when a religion is created on the subtle premise that God withholds his love and you must submit to the system to earn that love, I consider it the worst of corruptions… …What in the world would happen if people actually began discovering the actual message of Jesus Christ – that love is unconditional? What would happen if we began to realize that God was not, in fact, waiting for us to earn his love, but that he was passionately pursuing us with his love? What would happen if the word got out that Jesus was offering his love freely and without condition?” “This is the story of God: he pursues you with his love and pursues you with his love, and you have perhaps not said yes. And even if you reject his love, he pursues you ever still. It was not enough to send an angel or a prophet or any other, for in issues of love, you must go yourself. And so God has come. This is the story of Jesus, that God has walked among us and he pursues us with his love. He is very familiar with rejection but is undeterred. And he is here even now, still pursuing you with his love. …In that moment, the story of Jesus was not about who is right and wrong, what God’s name is and who his prophet is, but what exactly God’s motivation toward humanity is. If the message that God wants to get across to us is just about getting our beliefs right, then he didn’t need to come himself. If God’s entire intent was to clarify right from wrong, no personal visitation was necessary. If the ultimate end was simply to overwhelm us with the miraculous so that we would finally believe, then even God taking on flesh and blood and walking among us was far from necessary. There is only one reason for God to come himself, because in issues of love, you just can’t have someone else stand in for you.”
That is a great quote and I've often thought of it as, science can tell us about how things are but it can't really tell us why things are. I think as thinking beings its in our nature to seek out meaning and the problem with a purely materialistic view is that it won't answer the question of meanings. While some will say if there isn't a way to empiracally find a deeper meaning then there is no deeper meaning and that doesn't matter to me that seems as shallow as someone who unquestionably buys into religious dogma.
I don't like seeing religion or religious texts twisted to answer science questions...and pretend to be science books. Equally, I don't like when science (and by science I mean scientists...scientific establishments...etc...not merely the laws of nature, which don't think, act or feel) seeks to become philosophy with ardent followers. My friend Jim Tour...the professor at Rice whose profile I posted in my very first post in this thread...tells me that people in the "hard" sciences rarely give him trouble for his beliefs. He said they're smart enough to know the unanswered questions and don't assume their guesses at them are any better than his. He says the guys who give him the most trouble are those in the softer sciences...sociology and psychology....who already have their own Jesus in Skinner and Freud and their own Bibles. Just his take on it.
Though we are far apart on matters of faith, I absolutely love Christopher Hitchens. I try to hear or read him whenever possible. He has a passion for truth, that is why he is so tortured about ultimate questions. If he ever becomes a Christian, which is my hope, he will cut through Christianity Lite (the modern substitute for the real thing) like warm butter.
