This topic sparks such furious debate and contrary to what some may think, as a believer in God I do like to hear different points of view! Furthermore, I do not hear the 'other side's' point of view in a jaded way simply in order to reinforce my own views like both sides do. I have watched a documentary by perhaps the most famous champion of atheism, Richard Dawkins and found it very interesting. He is certainly articulate and makes good points, just to drive the point home, that religion is shit, much of the documentary was centred on Palestine/Israel. There are many feuds all over the world in which it can be said that religion is the root cause. To use the above example however would be to trivialise this issue at best, and pandering to ignorance at the worst. I digress...
What I do not appreciate in this never-ending argument is the bitterness of some atheists and the way in which they belittle believer's arguments instead of counteracting it.
"Though my email address is BibleL7, I was not always a believer. Most of my life I was in fact Atheist. I had no reason to doubt that believers were foolish and thus less intelligent. However at the age of 37 I found out different."
One response was to say that they did not believe that the above commenter was an atheist based on the fact that he had capitalised 'atheist'. You cannot win an argument by telling people what they used to or currently do believe, in fact that sort of talk sounds fairly Taliban-esque. This type of militancy devalues their argument, and they become just as bad as religious extremists who see other points of view as nothing other than ridiculous. In any healthy debate, emotions should be checked at the door. Furthermore, it is probably one of the only debates in which the sides are extremely unlikely to change their mind, and both would also NOT agree to disagree. Others included,
"Thanks... for that sermon. However, your "They teach evolution as fact instead of a theory" comment only supports the findings, which is that low intelligence people are more likely to believe in a god / fairy / dragon etc."
The thing is that unintelligent people, who are often religious, will not look at the facts. They have little utility to understand the scientific method and will dismiss study after study that shows the relation between low intelligence and religion.
How a person of intelligence can generalise huge swathes of people in this manner, is again, very much in the same vein as the Taliban/Hitler/Militant Communist. The person of faith also contributed,
"It answered questions that no evolutionist or big bang theory believers ever could. And that was just the first chapter."
To which someone responded,
"Anyone can answer questions by 'making up' answers. If the bible had claimed that the universe was sneezed out of the nose of the 'Great Green Arkleseizure' would you also live in perpetual fear "The Coming of the Great White Handkerchief"?"
Although the analogy is crap and patronising, this point is fair enough as I always say, check your sources, and if you do not want to believe in a thousand+ year old book made and probably altered over the years, please do not think that many studies and stories you read today are not made and perpetuated by hidden and sometimes not so hidden agendas. With regard to the study in the article itself, I would seriously question their definition of intellectuals. This itself panders to elitism which is all about titles and formal education, which many impoverished yet highly intelligent people have not had the opportunity to pursue. According to Mensa, intelligence is mental agility, or quickness of mental comprehension, note that it is not attributed to self-important titles. The debate will rage on I am sure but conveniently so, my thoughts are summed up by some other comments,
"Thanks... for the drive-by sneers... Such disdain is a typical reaction of some "intellectuals" to arguments they disagree with but cannot refute."
"Even if it were true that intelligence is correlated with atheism, it only provides more proof that intelligence is not the same as wisdom."
"Sad isn't it? When we don't understand something much bigger than us we call those who believe in it un-intelligent."
The existence of God can only be put to rest once we die and get to see if there is indeed an afterlife, a punishment, judgement etc. so actually none of us, not intellectuals nor dummies nor religious or atheist zealots, know whether there is a God for a fact. Let's put our faith in that.
See also http://anbarrockny.blogspot.com/
