Intelligence and God

[Pekka]

There's a claim often made, that intelligent people usually don't believe in God.

Spare me, I don't think this issue has much to do with intelligence. I understand the claim though, and many scientists do not believe in God. Are they intelligent? Sure.

But I also think there's a pressure to denounce God, if you are in some positions, because if you don't, well, you might be percieved as stupid. I really think the connection between believing in God and intelligence is weak at best. Let's face it, most people are not smart.

What has intriqued me for a while is if there's a different kind of belief, stupid people believe in anything, but if intelligent people would believe in the same thing, but differently.

As in I got this argument from a friend of mine, very intelligent and gifted, who says that the reason people believe in God is because of the afterlife. I agree. But he also says that you can't be intelligent if you believe in God, because you can't imagine there is no afterlife. Only nothingness. And that the minds of people aren't able to deal with that, they can't imagine what nothingness means really.

OK. Fair enough. I just don't see it as black and white like that though. I can imagine, well at least try to understand, two options. Soul dying after your body dies, and nothingness. That's pretty simple IMO. Or, afterlife, or some kind of deity. Or even nothingess, but still existing deity. It's not like these are exclusive.

While I do think most followers are freaking stupid, as in most people are, well, I just don't think it matters if you believe in a deity or not. The logic behind that matters more. How do you justify the existing deity, if you are supposedly not like the rest of followers, blind.

I think that's the key. And no, I don't think one should go to Bible, Koran or any other book to 'justitfy deity'. Because then you're on the road of 'well that's pretty stupid'. Because you're not using your own brain power there at all, so you really don't have your own justification for the deity. You need outside arguments, outside any books.

I can accept nothingness. I can accept a deity, who controls, or set in motion the beginning, or what ever. I'm not very passionate about how it all is supposed to be. I just see it all being possible. Why not? I'm not making a strong argument for some particular way, I'm just saying I consider everything possible when it comes to the existance of a deity.

Note, I am not saying the God is Christian God. I'm talking of a deity. Supreme entity. It's like... I accept that our intelligence is relative at best. To some other being, I don't know an alien, we might be extremely stupid, like insects. So our imagination can not even handle the discourse that exists, we do not have the keys or tools to do that. We know only what we are capable of knowing, we can't really outwit that. But that doesn't mean we are the smartest beings. What does an ant know about the world? Nothing. So what do we know about the world? We assume we know very much, but maybe we really don't know ****.

So this is my main argument, I don't think the existance of a deity has to do with intelligence. I think the smartest thing to do is to just accept that there are many options, and some of the options we can't even figure because we are not that supreme ourselves.

NOTE, this is a discussion of deity, not religion!

[Last Conformist]

Believing in God is stupid, ergo people who believe in God are stupid, ergo no non-stupid people believe in God.

[Pekka]

To summarize this all, I'm debating if intelligence and the existance of a deity.

My main argument is, that even the smartest one of us is only smart in relative terms. We also lack other kinds of features that even animals have. Some of these sea beasts have sonars in them. Yeah, we know how to build one, but we didn't have that stuff embedded.

And so we can not measure our level of intelligence, because we have very few points for comparison. We should accept, that we might be very limited in what we know or even our senses. Just because we rule this animal kingdom doesn't mean we are the highest beings in the universe, consider aliens and ****, many intelligent people believe in that stuff. So intelligence must be therefore relative.

And because it is relative, I argue that maybe we are just not able to even realize the many things that would show us the existance of a deity. I'm debating against the very argument where there is no deity, period, and there's no other possibilities, or you are stupid if you think so.

I mean, that's just.. we could still be in the cave and Plato would jerk on our ankles, and we'd be like, "white rain!". No dude... that wasn't white rain.

[Jon Miller]

Scientists are trained up to be highly critical. This can make faith difficult.

Additionally, most scientists are egotistical. Having God or something supernatural that can't be understood is not part of the universe that most scientists want to exist.

Additionally, scientists want to explain everything using science. Many people look to religion to explain things, and scientists aren't likely to look to it for explanations of the natural world (or explanations period).

All three of these make it so scientists are less likely to beleive in God. Of course, at least in the US, similar percentages of scientists were beleivers at 1900 as at 2000, which shows that it is really independent of our scientific understanding.

Jon Miller

[Pekka]

Faith is a very different thing, I'm not talking about faith.

I'm talking about accepting different options of existance of a deity. That's not faith.

[Blake]

It is stupid to try and justify the existence or non-existence of god. Believe what you will, for these are things which cannot be rationalized through logic.

Intelligent people who believe in God do not try to justify it - for they know that will only make them look stupid. Not because the belief in god is stupid, but because the arguing is stupid.

It can be logically proven that it is impossible to logically prove the existence or non-existence of god. Attempting to use logic in such endeavors is thusly stupid. Attempting to not use logic is just naturally stupid.

The nature of god and non-god is best understood through koans.
(heheheh, no, I'm not that smart, but I do have a fair idea of how smart I'm not, it's a start)

[Ari Rahikkala]

Originally posted by Pekka
Faith is a very different thing, I'm not talking about faith.

I'm talking about accepting different options of existance of a deity. That's not faith.

Do you accept different options of the existance of the Celestial Teapot, too? If you refuse to believe in the celestial teapot due to lack of evidence, why should you accept the option of believing in a deity without evidence, either? In case you think otherwise, well, you'll be accepting that even without evidence there just *might* be a teapot in orbit between Earth or Mars and will have to justify that.

[Sirotnikov]

Intelligent people who believe in God do not try to justify it - for they know that will only make them look stupid. Not because the belief in god is stupid, but because the arguing is stupid.

Besides there are plenty of intelligent people who believe in god. Steven Hawking is one

[Jon Miller]

There are, but I didn't think Hawking was one. There are some in his field that do, however.

JM

[Last Conformist]

Hawking wasn't a theist last I heard ... tho people have been known to change opinion.

His webpage doesn't say either way, as far as I can find.

[Pekka]

Ari Rahikkala, right, but we're not even talkign about proving a deity exists. Just, that it has very little to do with intelligence if you accept that there are many options, all of which are possible.

[Jon Miller]

Agnosticism is very intellectually honest. Even most weak atheists are intellectually honest. Most strong atheists are not however.

JM

[Nubclear]

. Attempting to use logic in such endeavors is thusly stupid.

No.

[DrS]

I'd argue that intelligence at it's base, is pattern seeking and recognition. People better able to recognize patterns will likely be more 'intelligent' than others.

However, people are also not so good at discerning between correlations and causations, hence: superstition and religion (organized superstition).

So... it might be reasonable to guess that superstitious people might be more intelligent (in hardwiring) than people who don't notice patterns in the first place.

[DrS]

Agnosticism is very intellectually honest. Even most weak atheists are intellectually honest. Most strong atheists are not however.

Not sure what a 'hard' or 'soft' athiest means. I'd argue that it's reasonable to make a negative prediction about theism.