Intelligent people less likely to believe in God

Originally posted by LostNemesis
I can understand this argument completely, that overly-religous people tend to have a really closed mind when it comes down to it. Inability to accept that there could be any way that there's some other truth out there.

And they tend to be really unable to comprehend the possibility that not everybody else is so willing to just accept their little bible book stories so easily. It does not make sense to them, what so ever.

Afterall, he who THINKS he knows everything, really doesn't. Probably because he's closed himself off to learning other 'truths'.

EDIT TO ADD: And, afterall, isn't it said that President Bush is a religious man, having said "God wants me to be president" ?

[edit on 12-6-2008 by LostNemesis]

Well I think atheists have a very closed mind Some people are just more mind - intellect focused - others have stronger leanings toward heart - spiritual beliefs - and some - just sit nicely in the middle - I think the latter are the more gifted and astute group

[edit on 17-6-2008 by destiny-fate]

I doubt it. There is just more ignorant and stupid people that believe in religion. I've met some real idiotic atheists too though!

reply to post by Maxmars


We are still monkey men in the woods; why,oh why this debate still arises i know not-it's foolhardy,self opinionated,bigotted and downright idiotic that the so called 'Elite' maintain there is no 'GOD'.Of course there is the source,creation,issness whichever label is attached to it;it's in all of us and everything-these people ought to read their own journals a little more;The LHC is trying to affirm the GOD particle,Higgs-Boson substrate particle,muons,gluons have been proven to exist.These people chase their own tails.I follow no religion only that of combining spirituality with scientific principles-there is no either or situation here-it's both,everything.Individuals tend to be misled by the term religion;there's a fundamental difference between being religious and following a religion-most of these'Elite' follow a religion called science and in this way become so close minded that they become what they initially started out to debunk.

Wow, how incredibly ignorant of him to state such a thing. I once knew an atheist guy who was a GENIUS with computers and could do things 20 times faster with one hand on the keyboard than I could with both hands, the keyboard, and the mouse. He had top grades despite only coming to school 2-3 days a week. He also thought that parrots ate each other and the Japan was a third world country. I guess this must be the intellectual elite that was referred to.

Ok listen up fellow Atheists..

Stop being assholes please. There are COUNTLESS people smarter than you who are or were very religious in our human history. Almost everything you can think of, every invention, every device, every system, every discovery, everything created by, thought of, implemented was done so by a RELIGIOUS person.

(don't attempt to give me specific examples to counter.. I'm talking about the entire human history here)


Religious stupid

I am a 100% atheist and I am constantly embarrassed by the lot I am associated with.

YOU are NOT superior to ANYONE else.

You don't believe in GOD or any other Deity? GREAT, now shut the F up about it. Telling people they are stupid will not help solve any perceived problem. Coming on a board and yelling "dUdez, yours is so stupidz", doesn't exactly make the case either.

You can be a mentally challenged Atheist as well.

As far as religion being the evil many of us portray it to be....

If all the world were atheist we wouldn't all of a sudden be singing Kum Ba Ya together in harmony, there would still be killing, raping pillaging and yes.. WAR.

Religion is NOT the root of all "evil" and taking it out of the equation just will only remove one incentive for our poor behavior as a species.

In Fact...

I have yet to see a large movement on the part of fellow Atheists to feed local poor children, take care of the sick, open soup kitchens, take in destitute parishioners and so on..

Yea, Churches do that stuff..
In fact all I usually see are Monday night book clubs of dimwits patting themselves on the back for being so much smarter than everyone else.
Us Atheists are busy telling others how stupid they are, fighting everything symbolic in our communities and rolling our eyes every chance we get.

Charming.

We need to just frigging STOP and just let time take care of it.
The more we learn about science, the more we realize there is nothing mystical about our existence, the less religion hold will have on our fellow man.

Give it time and don't fuel a fire that doesn't need to be started.


I am not any better than a religious person and neither are you...period.

reply to post by Black_Fox


I would agree,but people who depend solely on faith in God are less likely to have a secure feeling off faith in themselves. Independence in faith gains more self assuredness in a more dynamically frame of mind.

reply to post by muhadeeb99


I have no insecurity. I have no fear of death or what may lie ahead. I'm perfectly faithful as well.

Though most DO believe in God due to fear of death, some like I do not.

I could go out tomorrow and simply stop believing, and I know my life wouldn't change. I've just had too many things happen in my life for me not to believe.

reply to post by gormly


FYI, when I was an atheist I volunteered and did plenty of community service (voluntary), but as a whole, you're right. Atheists are too busy being right to they don't have time to do what's right.

i still don't see how this is going on through 17 pages intelligence deos not mean you instanlty know everything- but have a gift for understanding anything you hear learn and see.
education makes skeptics of us all as we see and learn about more probabilities, possibilities, and plausible realities.
it may seem that the more intelligent are more educatied and less have faith. but intelligence and education are not necessarily related
education can be gained through determination and perseverance and a learneing of how to do your job as a student and pass to higher degrees.

interesting article by the OP , but i feel it is misleading by heaps

I think that atheists have more faith then most religous followers.

There faith allows them to believe that are known existance created itself from nothing. Sceince clearly shows that all things artificial were created by somone. Some may like to debate our universe as artificial but i will stick with the leading science view from Einstien that what we see all around us is melrly a very convincing illusion.

So in closing these intellegent atheists have really chosen to ignore science. In regards to that I think they have a rather interesting belief system that claims many followers. Yet survey's taken show it to be less than one percent of the world's population. Still there followers consist largely of very vocal people trying to push there belief on others and largley overstate there numbers with no evidence to support any of there claims.

I agree with that statement.
Intelligent people don't believe in God, because they think outside the box and they think for themselves.
Go intelligent people!


Best Regards
~Lillith~

Originally posted by Quazga

Originally posted by Black_Fox
Im not religious.
But I still find that statement a bit off.
There are plenty of intelligent people who believe in god.
Belief dosent make a person any less intelligent,than a person who dosent.
I just look at religion as a means of comfort device for some people.
And if believing in god helps them get through this life,than more power to them.

Yes but are you *intelligent*? Given that the headline was "Less Likely" I would say no. At least not in the reading comprehension category.

Just got to this thread. Why do you feel the need to insult a person, just because they disagree with you. doesn't seem very intelligent to me.

Originally posted by Quazga

Originally posted by ALightinDarkness
Wow, did ATS just fall for the oldest academic fallacy in the book:

Correlation does not equal causation.

During the last few hundred years, religious practice has declined while the number of domestic cats have increased. This must mean religious practice declines are due to house cats!

I don't think you understood the article, it's not declaring causation, simply stating that intelligent people are less likely to believe in God, thats it. Learn to read what's there, not what you *think* is there.

Question? are you saying that this is a statement of fact or that the researcher belives that his findings say this.(opinion of researcher is very subjective).

I'll 'fess up first thing, I am a religious nut.
I see this world, our lives as a training ground, to develop experience and knowledge. It is pretty pointless to think we're going to sit on a cloud strumming a harp. There must be a purpose to it all, we're too intricate to have evolved. What are all those planets and suns out there for? I think they're for us. "Intelligent design" makes sense, evolution doesn't. We don't see evolution going on now; no new animals, humans or plants. Of all the creatures on the earth, humans think and inovate. I can't see that in evolution.

May I say that:
' "Believing" and "Knowning" are two extreeemly distinctive notions. '

Although in everyday speach they're used as almost interchangeable, -and that's what makes it difficult for most of us to qualitatively distinguish.

"I believe" will sound to me equaly as "I'm stupid" no matter what's subject of discussion.

While, expression such as: "(I think) I know" f.i., will signify to me that I'm dealing with an intelligent person who's knowlledge is also embalmed with maturity of a wider awereness that there is - to some extent dependent on the matter of disscusion - almost always some degree of uncertainty in any claim that one can make and of course, a sign of politeness too.

The human capability of "believing" is one of our virtues that has been instrumentalized and missused against our own kind throughout history in such evil ways that it hurts to mention.

You surely know what I mean, when I say that Trust is a derivative of this capability.


It is unlikely that an inteligent individual will base his judgement upon things that require the virtue of believing and trust, especialy when dealling with questions that does not involve human social relations. But some of them might extend this cautiosity in the field of their social relations too. Which is not always a good and polite thing to do. But proved wise to apply in times when you are living outside of your social circle, far from people you use to know.

2+2=4 is not an equation you need to "believe" in for it to be true or to know the truth in it. You either "know" it, or you don't! -If you believe it, it means that you don't "know" it, but you take it as a fact because someone you are convinced that has an undeniable knowlledge of the subject told you so. But "knowing" it is the fact that you can allways gather 2 and 2 to count them if they're 4.

So, "knowlledge" is something that is based on previous experiences of the facts proved to be true, (that most of the time can always be tested again) while on the other side, "believing" is based on: nothing! A word of mouth and a pure speculation that that person is talking the truth, since by experience, that person was always right (which is a pure misuse of logic in a deduction that is alaways open to the probability of proving itself both: false and true, equaly). But by purely subjective decision, you take in account only the "true" part of that probability, although the current question will have no connection, once or ever, with previous answer that proved to be true. I underline this to clear out the wrong impression that: previous casses should add to the probability of the current answer to be true disregarding the fact that this is a completely different question, and that there is no logical connection with the previous at all. The addition to the true part of the probability will be true in only one exceptional casse: when asking the same question to the same person a while after you forgot the ansewer but you remember that this same person told you the right answer.

Therefore, it is completely understandable that an inteligent person will not believe in God. Because "believing" is basing your judgement on things you absolutely know nothing about. But he will - in his early years of growth - try to prove, or find profs of its existence with no results until he finally gives it up and stop bothering himself with matters that are based on believing and the human uncompromised need to keep faith in certain impossibilities, necesary to calm down the anxiousity about definitivity of some - to us - very disturbing facts of life that are expectedly normal to refuse, not agree, or/nor accept them for what they really are.

Regards.

Originally posted by Gorman91

Though most DO believe in God due to fear of death, some like I do not.

Oh everyone fears death.

It's just a question of whether you can look upon death's face and smile.

Denying your fears will not dispose of them.

reply to post by gormly


Hey Gormly, I just had to tell you that I thought your last post was right on target, but unfortunately things will NEVER change. Wherever you go, you find that it is human nature to divide and start fights. From schools to prisons people look for ways to become clannish… to build a team of likeminded people and go to war.
Honestly, I’m sick of it.
In high school, I guess I was kind of a dork, in that I went against the grain of tradition. I tried to be friends with all the different groups. It never made a difference.
I’ll admit, my posts for the most part have not been friendly, which is really out of character for me. I used to frequent Amazon’s religion forum and nobody could ever accuse me otherwise, but I got on here and started to lean toward the aggressive side… a jerk.




[edit on 17-6-2008 by apaulo]

reply to post by Lethil


I disagree, especially with the main post. I think it is pure gullability and not intelligence. Just like all believers of all religions of all times; it just depends on what you believe is true. It is merely a matter of perception.

reply to post by Quazga


you mixing GOD with religion;These are different things, I believe in high power because it helps people everyday in making the right choices but I hate religion ; see www.sherrytalkradio.com... for events that are coming which are based on bible yet so called intelligent scientist have no clues about it;right now it seems that mythology is the truth and the current science is a mythology (evolution etc)

reply to post by apaulo


Well I don't think you are a jerk - it was an emotional response to something you obviously feel very strongly about - Why do people feel so defensive about this subject ??

Just a thought though :

The ( Academic ) ) that made the original statement is not INTELLIGENT - the comment he made speaks for itself - he is obviously a Linear thinker - ( Where everything has to be structured to fit his narrow concepts of logic ) Lets face it if we are talking about academics / educated people all they require is a memory - an ability to store and process information - even a child can do that

The title of this post was actually a comment made by Professor Lynn emeritus professor of psychology at Ulster University - Does not say much for Ulsters Psychology Department lol Because in my opinion Professor Lynn does not have a very deep understanding of the human mind or he would of taken his observation alot further - perhaps incorporating a Jungian philosophy into his final analysis - the four Jungian 'mental functions' - Thinking, Feeling, intuition, and Sensing.

He said most primary school children believed in God, but as they entered adolescence - and their intelligence increased - many started to have doubts. ( So perhaps we should be asking ourselves - Is an emphasis on education in our society causing some kind of imbalance in the structure and functioning of our brain ) ??? Imbalances can have huge implications for society as a whole - not healthy at all.

At the end of the day I don't care if people believe in God / Creator or not. I believe in an Intelligent Universe ( a creator ) - that's my choice and prerogative - does it make me any less intelligent - well I never considered myself particularly bright anyway For me balance is the key - all four functions working harmoniously - becoming and being



[edit on 17-6-2008 by destiny-fate]