So, Are Atheists Actually Smarter Than Believers??

[Saltmeister]

If something truly trancends reason, it must embrace it first, that is the only way to go beyond. If a model, idea or concept violates reason, it cannot go beyond and belongs in the realm of magical thinking.

Yeah, but what is reason anyway? What is intellect? What is intelligence?

Is it just a bunch of neurons getting stimulated that makes you feel good and makes you think, "ah, now that was an intelligent idea!"?

I think of "reason" as the result of a process of thinking about how something works and doing something with your newfound understanding of the subject.

But "reason" and "intellect" as an objective quality? To me, that is rubbish. How do you decide that something is "reason" or "reasonable" or not? The fact that people can disagree and that we are so incapable of coming to a universal consensus on a lot of things leads me to the conclusion that there is no such thing as "reason." From time to time I see people promoting, advocating and parading it as the one thing we all need to get the whole world co-operating and working together constructively. But they never actually define what it is. They only give descriptions.

My conclusion is that there is no such thing as reason, intellect or intelligence except that which produces results you can admire, remember and value. There is no such thing as reason as an objective quality. Anyone who wants to find reason must experience it for themselves and everyone is likely to experience something different.

I liked what was said once in a James Bond movie: that the distance between insanity and genius is success.

Nothing is universal. There are no absolutes. It is a question of what makes things work. It is a question of what you admire and value.

The world is an arena of competing ideas, notions and sentiments. It is just a matter of who eventually dominates. This is why we must continually fight each other, so that ideas we don't like do not dominate. It is to prevent ideological hegemony and to preserve a natural balance. We fight to prevent a monolithic, centralised order of things. For the dignity of all individuals, the world must remain decentralised and divided with its many factions.

Ideas, ideas, ideas. Whether you're atheist, agnostic, religious, liberal, fundamentalist, secular, mystical, esoteric, etc., it's all just a load of rubbish. We're all thought warriors, born to oppose and fight. That's an extreme view, but without extreme views, life wouldn't have its dramas. Bring it on!!!!

I'm a shaft, a gear, a wheel that is part of a bigger machine called life.

The world is a battlefield.

But hey, let's stop complaining. It's part of the order of things. We were born to be different.

 

[c0de]

Dostoevsky was awful? Really?

Tolstoy once said that D. had little artistic talent. I agree. But he has something which Tolstoy never did: inner sight. Tolstoy probably recognized this, this is why his last novel was found at his bedside when he died. A literature expert in Russia who was trying to collect exerpts of all the greatest novelist in Russian history for a government project said that he could not find a single page in all of D.'s work worth putting in. This is because his novels can only be appreciated as a whole. He was not capable of coming up with lines like "All happy families are the same, but all unhappy families are unhappy in their own way" (opening sentence, Anna Karina - Tolstoy)

What made D. unique was a conflict within him which gave his novels depth and power. This is why I would always prefer reading one of his novels over something like War & Peace. They infect the person reading it with a darkness that you don't get from other writers, even when the prose is badly structured and in many cases drones on.

I suspect the main reason for the faults in some of his works was due to the fact that he published his larger novels in newspapers and journals, piece by piece. There was probably a minimum word limit that he had to meet on each issue, and therefore he had to structure his stories to meet outside criteria. If you read his "Notes from the Underground" which is a very short piece, and was published earlier, it has none of the problems of his larger works that were published piecemeal.

 

[lunamoth]

Yeah, but what is reason anyway? What is intellect? What is intelligence?

Is it just a bunch of neurons getting stimulated that makes you feel good and makes you think, "ah, now that was an intelligent idea!"?

I think of "reason" as the result of a process of thinking about how something works and doing something with your newfound understanding of the subject.

But "reason" and "intellect" as an objective quality? To me, that is rubbish. How do you decide that something is "reason" or "reasonable" or not? The fact that people can disagree and that we are so incapable of coming to a universal consensus on a lot of things leads me to the conclusion that there is no such thing as "reason." From time to time I see people promoting, advocating and parading it as the one thing we all need to get the whole world co-operating and working together constructively. But they never actually define what it is. They only give descriptions.

My conclusion is that there is no such thing as reason, intellect or intelligence except that which produces results you can admire, remember and value. There is no such thing as reason as an objective quality. Anyone who wants to find reason must experience it for themselves and everyone is likely to experience something different.

I liked what was said once in a James Bond movie: that the distance between insanity and genius is success.

Nothing is universal. There are no absolutes. It is a question of what makes things work. It is a question of what you admire and value.

The world is an arena of competing ideas, notions and sentiments. It is just a matter of who eventually dominates. This is why we must continually fight each other, so that ideas we don't like do not dominate. It is to prevent ideological hegemony and to preserve a natural balance. We fight to prevent a monolithic, centralised order of things. For the dignity of all individuals, the world must remain decentralised and divided with its many factions.

Ideas, ideas, ideas. Whether you're atheist, agnostic, religious, liberal, fundamentalist, secular, mystical, esoteric, etc., it's all just a load of rubbish. We're all thought warriors, born to oppose and fight. That's an extreme view, but without extreme views, life wouldn't have its dramas. Bring it on!!!!

I'm a shaft, a gear, a wheel that is part of a bigger machine called life.

The world is a battlefield.

But hey, let's stop complaining. It's part of the order of things. We were born to be different.

Awesome post, Salt!

Of course, I think there is an alternative...

 

[China Cat Sunflower]

Yeah, but what is reason anyway? What is intellect? What is intelligence?

Is it just a bunch of neurons getting stimulated that makes you feel good and makes you think, "ah, now that was an intelligent idea!"?

I think of "reason" as the result of a process of thinking about how something works and doing something with your newfound understanding of the subject.

But "reason" and "intellect" as an objective quality? To me, that is rubbish. How do you decide that something is "reason" or "reasonable" or not? The fact that people can disagree and that we are so incapable of coming to a universal consensus on a lot of things leads me to the conclusion that there is no such thing as "reason." From time to time I see people promoting, advocating and parading it as the one thing we all need to get the whole world co-operating and working together constructively. But they never actually define what it is. They only give descriptions.

My conclusion is that there is no such thing as reason, intellect or intelligence except that which produces results you can admire, remember and value. There is no such thing as reason as an objective quality. Anyone who wants to find reason must experience it for themselves and everyone is likely to experience something different.

Reason is a process whereby facts and logic are strung together to create workable hypothesis. The more facts and logical connections one can juggle simultaneously the more intelligent he or she is. Beliefs provide a set of values where best guesses are substituted for unknowable, or unspecifiable information. This doesn't just happen at the boundary between the physical and the metaphysical, no one is able to keep all the balls in the air all the time. No one is that intelligent. So we all use belief to fill in the gaps, and we do it all the time without really being aware of the conscious and sub conscious processes involved.

Reason is essentially argumentative. It's desired end result is to convey a compelling logical argument based on demonstrated strings of causality. If I am unable to convince you, compel you to agree by virtue of my assembled logic, I am unreasonable as far as your thinking processes are concerned. That's where the subjectivity of reason becomes apparent.

Intellectual honesty is very difficult, and perhaps not entirely desirable. Perhaps it is better to live a somewhat oblivious, yet peaceful and fulfilled life. It is much harder to live a purposeful life when one becomes aware of the essential chaos, unknowability, and self-referential meaningless of life. Who is better off? Regardless of intelligence, who lives the better life?

Chris

 

[c0de]

... who lives the better life?

To drown in the depths of darkness is better than swimming in a sea of shallowness.

Who is better off?

This is less a question, and more a common complaint of seekers.
It is also a result of "intellectual dishonesty."

Perhaps it is better to live a somewhat oblivious, yet peaceful and fulfilled life.

No peaceful life can ever be fulfilled.

It is much harder to live a purposeful life when one becomes aware of the essential chaos, unknowability, and self-referential meaningless of life.

Those who cry over "meaninglessness" are satisfied with nothing less
because only in its freedom can one create his/her own "purpose".

But this isn't about atheist vs believer, as all are the same in this regard.
They just seem different due to their self-deceptions which seem contradictory.

Most of those who believe in God want to become Him,
while those that rebel against God already think they are gods.

The tree from which Adam ate was not of knowledge, but immortality.
(Another account the bible gets wrong)... And nothing has changed...

we all seek the same fruit... wanting to be gods and goddesses.
like the dog chasing its own tail... we will run in circles all our lives...

But we will learn, one way or another...
By God... For that is our purpose.

 

[Radical_Reformer]

I think we can confidently say with six sigma certainty atheists are exactly as intelligent as people of faith !!

 

[Victor]

cOde? Do you have a... never mind, it was a bad pun. 15% of those in the United States who claim to be Christians, are churched.... that means they are members of a congregation and attend religious meetings of a Christian nature regularly, are involved in church functions, including educational process, and tithe. 85% are not! (I think my math is correct) How many of the 15% are believers... can't say. How many of the 85% are believers but just can't stomach the 'social' church as it is practiced today.... too many! Are they smarter than the 15%? No, just more honest! What percentage of the 85% are really atheist... still don't know but they are not smarter than anyone else, nor are they less intelligent. (What's the difference between smart and intelligent.... does it have anything to do with common sense?)

Oh, by the way, you are welcome to come to squirrel church any time you are in the area. They follow the laws of nature every day, not just on Sunday... and if you are a believer in any sense of the word, who created the laws of nature? Just the other day when I was putting out seed and peanuts ( a lot of my 'people' love peanuts) I heard two of them in conversation. "Hey, if there is no God who puts out our peanuts every day?" Then my favorite (Jerome) took a peanut out of my hand and proceeded to drop pieces of the husk all over my shoulder. I think, maybe, they're smarter than all of us!

 

[wil]

Years ago (decades?) I got our church to do a quiz at an outreach booth at a fair. We had folks taking the quiz at one time thruout the day and while there were some outliers our results were not dissimilar to the poll results. Oh, except our church members did better than atheists.

Are you smarter than an atheist? A religious quiz

Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons are among the highest-scoring groups in a 32-question survey of religious knowledge by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

www.csmonitor.com

 

[Cino]

Years ago (decades?) I got our church to do a quiz at an outreach booth at a fair. We had folks taking the quiz at one time thruout the day and while there were some outliers our results were not dissimilar to the poll results. Oh, except our church members did better than atheists.

Are you smarter than an atheist? A religious quiz

Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons are among the highest-scoring groups in a 32-question survey of religious knowledge by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

www.csmonitor.com

Charles Finney threw me

 

[Thomas]

Ahem ... I actually did rather well.

I got one of the US-legal questions right, and the founding of Mormonism was a guess. So was the religion of Indonesia, I think – I clicked accidentally, but it was the right one.

Yeah, the Charles Finney question threw me ...

 

[wil]

I would expect all the regular posters here to do quite well, comparatively, it is truly amazing how bad the average American church goer does

 

[Faithfulservant]

I can't get my phone to load the third question. The first two were easy.

 

[WendyM]

Am a theist is the theist as both terms claim....I think I'm A alpha highest type consciousness. Human.

You live to tell stories as a human and to argue you're a human.

A theist says the universe owns no human spirit life.

As they quote by owned self alpha. One. A human.

Universe began universe ends is A universe. Humans die.

In the alpha terms.

As what is a universe it began universe yet it stopped not being an ended universe.

A human stopped being a human as being.

Being is presence itself.

Why we aren't a universe. So said why no man is any god.

 

[RJM]

Am a theist is the theist as both terms claim....I think I'm A alpha highest type consciousness. Human.

You live to tell stories as a human and to argue you're a human.

A theist says the universe owns no human spirit life.

As they quote by owned self alpha. One. A human.

Universe began universe ends is A universe. Humans die.

In the alpha terms.

As what is a universe it began universe yet it stopped not being an ended universe.

A human stopped being a human as being.

Being is presence itself.

Why we aren't a universe. So said why no man is any god.

What's the conclusion? Can you try to be more clear?

 

[Thomas]

Am a theist is the theist as both terms claim....I think I'm A alpha highest type consciousness. Human.

You live to tell stories as a human and to argue you're a human.

A theist says the universe owns no human spirit life.

As they quote by owned self alpha. One. A human.

Universe began universe ends is A universe. Humans die.

In the alpha terms.

As what is a universe it began universe yet it stopped not being an ended universe.

A human stopped being a human as being.

Being is presence itself.

Why we aren't a universe. So said why no man is any god.

Sorry, @WendyM, but I'm really not following any of this ...