Are atheists more intelligent than religious believers? Study suggests such a correlation

reply to post by mamabeth

If someone puts a gun to my head and tells me to deny Jesus or die.
Guess what I would do? That is what I'm talking about,do you understand?

Of course. You are willing to die rather than deny your faith and you are proud of that fact.

Given the nature of systems of faith, I would say that is a very naive thing to be proud of. With 1000's of other beliefs out their, you are willing to bet your life on yours - a belief without demonstrable evidence. Some would say that is brave, I would not.

Part of me would just love for Hinduism to be right just to see the look on your face when you meet Chrisna.

I read from the KJV Bible and a jewish New Testament.In the jewish
new testament they use the name Yeshua for Jesus.

So???

reply to post by Welfhard


Ok, but because I sound like a nutter - is that the fault of me, or the person who perceives me as such? Does that fact that I sound crazy to you mean that I am wrong?

To be honest, I take being called crazy or a nutter as a compliment, considering the current state and beliefs of the world. I'd have to take a real good look at myself if the majority of people agreed with me, given the condition and way of this world.

Everyone has to have their own vision. The point is not to listen to someone else tell you about their experience, but to have the experience yourself. It's all about acceptance vs understand. Do not accept me, understand me. If I just wanted people to accept me as such, I would just tell them what they already believe like a politician.

reply to post by badmedia

Ok, but because I sound like a nutter - is that the fault of me, or the person who perceives me as such? Does that fact that I sound crazy to you mean that I am wrong?

I never said you sounded crazy - I never even called you a nutter. Re-read the post, it's subtle.

But if you take pride in being indistinguishable from one of those 'special' people on the bus, why not join them?

I would even go so far as to posit - within a contextual framework of an evolutionary NON-LOCALITY, and a holographic mind/body-mind/reality correlation (see the works of neuroscientist Karl Pibram, holographic mind, and phycisist David Bohm (who studied under Einstein), holographic universe), and in consideration of the fact that modern, highly evolved, sentient man has only been on the scene for less than 100,000 years - that the human being represents almost certainly, the very highest cosmological expression of the fully in-formed, intelligent creative expression of the Godhead.

Which leads me to consider the words, and the meaning of the willing sacrificial atonement (within the temple context) of Jesus Christ, regardless of whatever amount of mythologization may have been layered onto his life.

And so Monkey Jesus boy's avatar raises an important question then imho. Why did many of us not believe him, we of such little faith? Might he, as an embodiment of a divine principal of God's love, not have represented just what the Christians say he did? And need he have actually walked on water or been raised physically from the deed for his life, teachings and death to have the intended meaning and significance?

As C.S. Lewis states, if it means anything at all, then by extension, it means EVERYTHING, and the implications of it, are then of the very farthest reaching variety, even (I would add) of cosmological significance, no matter how solipsistic that statement may appear to be.
Modern science is no less solipsistic in its implications.

And do not forget that in the quantum realm, given enough time, anything, anything at all, is not only possible, but probable, and eventually, actual.

"Father. Let them be so one that they will know it was you who sent me."
~ JC

[edit on 3-8-2009 by OmegaPoint]

reply to post by Welfhard


Intelligence which is not within a certain range of understanding will be perceived as ignorant/crazy/nutty. 2 sides of that range. Above it, or Below it.

Also, wasn't referring to you calling me such, just towards that which would perceive me as such. I get what you meant.



[edit on 8/3/2009 by badmedia]

reply to post by OmegaPoint

and in consideration of the fact that modern, highly evolved, sentient man has only been on the scene for less than 100,000 years, that the human being represents almost certainly, the very highest cosmological expression of the fully in-formed, intelligent creative expression of the Godhead.

That's a fairly heady assertion to make, what are you basing this conjecture on?

reply to post by Welfhard

Please just STOP, and read my posts given towards the end of the last page of this thread, before continuing. Thanks.

Given what's been presented so far, you are starting to appear both ignorant and highly arrogant, not a pleasure thing to behold.

reply to post by Welfhard

Bell's Theorem of non-locality and the findings of modern physics regarding the nature of the universe as an information processing non-local open system.

Call it evolutionary non-locality. It's an inevitable conclusion.

The implicate order from which explicate reality and evolutionary progress manifests, is fully in-formed all the way along, forever.

"And the last shall be first and the first, last."

[edit on 3-8-2009 by OmegaPoint]

reply to post by badmedia

Intelligence which is not within a certain range of understanding will be perceived as ignorant/crazy/nutty. 2 sides of that range. Above it, or Below it.

If knowledge is power then what you said is not strictly true. If these esoteric truths you claim to have are real then they should bring you power, not render you merely a social spectacle.

[edit on 3-8-2009 by Welfhard]

reply to post by OmegaPoint

I must apologise, I've been heldup with Badmedia for over 10 pages. If I could be arsed, I'd go back and read your posts.

reply to post by Welfhard


Well, I am the CTO of my company, and I never even graduated highschool and taught myself how to program, worked my way up from working for free for the company, to being in that position in less than 5 years of ever using a PC. I'm very well taken care of in general.

I am doing a job that I absolutely love, and my job consists of doing the things I would do anyway in my free time.

I also have a high tolerance for pain, to the point where it blows peoples minds. But don't ask me to do it on purpose, because I don't like what I do feel anymore than you do.

Power to control 1 life is plenty for me. Any power beyond that I am not interested in.

Does that count?

To be honest, the best "power" I've been given is the ability to basically understand and get understanding of anything I want, so long as I'm prepared to take the time to understand it. The rest is IMO, superficial to be honest.




[edit on 8/3/2009 by badmedia]

reply to post by badmedia

Does that count?

Doesn't really matter. I wasn't challenging you on your success in life, I was challenging the statement that outside of a particular range of intelligence, less intelligent becomes impossible to tell from more.

But on that point, kudos on the drop-out to CTO story. I remember some of the subtle messages in school assemblies a few years back were drop-outs = failures.

Religious individuals are condition to a particular mindset, which they are victims to for the rest of their lives. "Faith" denies you the right to question and even take responsibility for your own actions;

"It was not me, the devil made me do it" or "Thank you, but it was God who worked through me"

Of course atheists and agnostics are more intelligent, these groups question and draw their own conclusions. Not what they are lead to believe is factual. How facetious is it to surrender yourself to a religious text or god and never question your surroundings? Believing the word of your divine dictator over family and friends. That is the definition of a cult and Stockholm Syndrome.

Notice how believers always defend their self through bible quotations and use religious text to justify all opinions and life's mystery. ATS is a perfect example of fanatics who use religion to justify violence and war on a regular basis. Ironic, Christian members accuse Islam of being evil yet Christian members are the ones justifying and defending violence!

We (atheists) can be articulate and suave without the need to use words from a 2,000 year old book In conclusion, candor and honesty are words not associated to religion. Most believers are fastidious.

Those assumptions are always so insulting, and ignorant, and in many cases, totally false.

reply to post by Welfhard


Oh well that is easy. All you need to do is take an Einstien, and throw them back in time about 5000 or so years(assuming we have been constantly advancing and such).

Or just try to explain quantum physics to a 5 year old.

Tell someone 500 years ago about germs and such. They will think you are nuts. etc.

You need a base level of understanding before those things make sense. Without that base level, it will sound crazy. Even today, Quantum Physics sounds/is crazy to alot of people.

What I understand now was really sparked by some other rather small understandings, but those understandings built up over time from working with programs, and asking deep questions etc. Most noticeable in the area of perception. When you have that understanding, then what I say will make more sense. Without it, I sound crazy.

I'm just as bound to that range as anyone else. Go ahead and start taking the stress' and loads of buildings and how to withstand earthquakes and such. In such a topic I'd have to just shut up, because my range of understanding is low. And if I get into that topic, the person with a high level of understanding is going to know I don't understand the stuff. Just the way it is, and it has nothing to do with 1 person being above or better than another. Nor is that person doing so to tell me that fact either IMO.

Oh, and I didn't exactly drop-out. Where I spent the later years of my childhood didn't have schools. But yes that is the point - If I had listened to society and everyone else, I'd be working at some factory or fast food joint. My family didn't even support me in doing what I did, and I was homeless when I started it. Literally worked my way from nothing to what I have now - although it wouldn't be false to say I threw it all away to arrive at nothing in the first place. I still consider myself lucky and am very thankful for it.

Believe it or not, but I nearly aced the GED examine and was offered scholarships based on my scores. But I joined the military instead. So, I did really throw it away alot of opportunities.




[edit on 8/3/2009 by badmedia]

reply to post by badmedia


OK but if we had an Einstein 500 years ago (ignoring the whole "building on past scientific achievements" issue) Albert would have tried to teach the people of the time about relativity and all that such. The people would have likely called him insane (mainly citing the fact that at that time he couldn't know such things but we're ignoring that so), but he could then turn around and use any of the power that comes with that knowledge and he wouldn't have seen so stupid after he dropped an a-bomb on their midi-evil asses.

So the idea that outside of a certain threshold, low and high intelligence appears the same is still not quite true.

reply to post by Welfhard


Not exactly, it would require precise equipment and such to split the atom in such a way. The creation of the A bomb used alot of resources and such. Even today, many countries are not privy to such technology all these years later.

I'm pretty sure some people thought it was nuts right up until the point it actually happened.

It's the so called crazy people that advance things.



[edit on 8/3/2009 by badmedia]

Originally posted by badmedia
It seems you are incapable of looking at things from any other perspective than your own. It seems you are incapable of even trying to take an honest look at another perspective.

Badmedia, the 'other perspective' from which you would have me look is not new, either to me or to anyone else. It is the human default setting. People everywhere, all the time, think, talk and act on the tacit assumption that they are independent, freely willing agents. Like everybody else, I grew up with this perspective.

Intellectually, too, I am quite familiar with it: Nietzsche is one my favourite writers. I have read The Ghost in the Machine by Arthur Koestler and the works of men like Aleister Crowley who believed that Will (always spelled with a capital letter) was all-powerful and could work miracles. Long ago - probably years before you grew to man's estate - I had made myself quite familiar with the line you are promoting here.

As established, a random number is not possible in a world of casuality.

You are wrong. Causality and randomness are not incompatible.

Consider an explosion. Every explosion has some cause - a fuse burning down, two pieces of plutonium slamming together, a suicide-bomber pulling a ripcord. And the explosion, in turn, causes other things to happen - it causes all sorts of bits to fly all over the place. Although, on a microscopic level, the trajectory of every fragment can theoretically be predicted, in practice this is impossible. Moreover, it is unnecessary, because we know the trajectories and distribution of particles will be random. If we look at the distribution of fragments on the ground after the explosion is over, we will see that it is random over any defined area.

Causality and randomness are not incompatible. You inadvertently proved it yourself in your poker game example. Look:

Lack of knowledge itself can give the illusion of chance, probablitiy and so forth. Once again, a poker game is a good example of this. Because we do not know all the cards, we rely on things like probablity, odds and chance.

If the choice is predetermined by causality, then there is no choice. This is about like saying the unknown card on the top of the deck of cards - which has a probability of being any card due to it's unknown, has a choice in what the next card will be.

The order of cards in a well-shuffled poker deck is certainly random, meaning that it is impossible to predict, by looking the cards already picked, which card will turn up next. However, this genuinely random arrangement is also utterly predetermined; the player has no choice about which card he picks from the deck. He is forced to pick whatever card comes next.

I am not looking at those things in the same perspective. Rather than looking at things in the limited "now", I am looking at things over periods of "time", in which case there is no probabilty because the "unknown" factor is gone. I'm looking at it from the perspective of after the hand is played and all the factors are known.

Yes, you made this clear several pages ago. Unfortunately you don't seem to have understood the logical consequences of your God's-eye-view too clearly.

Looked at post hoc as you say you do, everything is clearly predetermined, because you can see what drove the choice of alternatives at every step along the way. From an atemporal perspective, nothing is random, nothing can possibly happen by chance. If you can't see the determinants of any given choice, you simply haven't cast your gaze back far enough. Look farther - all the way back to the cosmic egg, if necessary.

You cannot, my friend, simultaneously argue against time and for free will. Time and ignorance are what make the illusion of free will possible. Take away one or the other, and the illusion vanishes - we are at once revealed as the automatons we really are.

* * *

I will forbear responding to your second post, which contains no actual arguments, just personal insults and protestations of your own superiority - which, of course, I am fully willing to concede if it will make you happy.

reply to post by Astyanax


Lack of knowledge does not = random. It's the reason in programming we call them pseudo-random numbers, because they are 100% predictable.

Look at what omega posted a few posts back. It was dead on - reality is where god took from all that exists, and purposely limited itself in order to have the experience. It is that limitation of knowledge which makes pseudo-random numbers and what we see as probability possible.

If the cards were played face up, they wouldn't be random at all. They are only random because you purposely gave away your free will and knowledge to have the experience of them being random.

Give me a ring when you've seen the static universe.





[edit on 8/3/2009 by badmedia]

reply to post by badmedia


No we were ignoring the fact that people wouldn't have had the knowledge to build one back then so we should ignore the technology.

He's an example that we don't have to ignore the technology part of. Elemental markers in light frequencies. I could teach the ancients about electricity and atoms in this way - (electricity + atoms = photons) with a little practical know-how.

At first they'd be like "You's crazy man, you talking crazy, man." because in this hypothetical scientists of the ages speak like surfie-hippies. And I'd be like "watch closely."

Genuinely crazy people can't demonstrate their "truths"


I actually hate the word truth and would rather use 'facts', 'evidence' and such like.