Isn't everything volitionally thinking differently in a way groupthink? Also, can't a crowd of people follow a preacher without being blind in their faith?




If that doesn't happen now, why would violent killings in this context cease to exist just because everyone's views are different? I might possibly have a religion where I need to kill others who commit a certain act. Just because everyone is individualized and isolated doesn't mean that violence will disappear.

It sounds like you never had any deep reflection on the subject. There is simply no way for raw reason alone to prove that one definition of good is better than another.

I'll try to give you a simple example. Let's say you consider that committing murder is objectively bad because every being should be allowed to live as long as humanly possible. But who is to say that after death, one does not continue to live as a soul in some sort of fantastic realm like heaven? Then, under that logic, murder could no longer be bad because it does not end one's existence. There are countless such arguments for every single moral value (e.g. murder is bad, helping the needy is good, etc.).

No. By definition, good is what's better than bad (obviously). If no action is better than any other, then there is nothing good or bad. All actions are equally meaningless.

This is precisely what DavidJCobb mentioned in a previous post to which I already responded. Giving your own arbitrary meaning to your existence is tantamount to saying that there is no such objective meaning. Most of you fail to understand the gravity of this thought.

A reality without objectivty is tantamount to a reality born from your own thoughts; a reality that is the product of your imagination alone. To know that you are one lonely being in a seamless nothingness, that there exists not only none other greater than yourself (which is awful by itself) but also no other thinking being like yourself is the most awful thing; think of it as being immortal and buried alive. I certainly would not want to be a God (that is, there exists no being whose knowledge of truth is greater than one's own) and I most definitely would not want to be the only existing being.

Objectivity being inattainable does not directly imply that nothing exists outside one's self but it certainly points in that direction. Think of it this way: if you are buried alive without any way of ever escaping your coffin, what does it matter if there is a world bustling with life outside?

What? You probably did not mean to be rude but I am still slightly insulted by this. Faith is never a question of fear. Yes, some shady men of religion use it to spread the "good word" just as some politicians cultivate fear of terrorism or communism to get votes.

Also, you're saying that faith is just an escape to all of the big questions ("you have less dillemas and unanswered questions than an atheist or a skeptical would have.") which is a blatant generalization. It was common for societies in the early stages of their cultural development to believe in supernatural beings to explain certain phenomena like thunder, rain, etc. In our modern era however, faith does not serve the same purpose (in most cases I know of). If you read my previous comments, you would know my reasons for believing.

Ethics/morality is a a different issue, of which religion is only a small part (divine command theory). I am of the opinion that morality existed long before religion, and religion merely incorporated it into its structure (i am an temporal agnostic concerning the concept of God. But I am an athiest when it comes to religion as a human construct, ie. i oppose it). All this talk about "good" and "evil" and what is "meaningful" sorta is moving away from a religion argument into different arguments.


My theory, now I'm not sure if anyone else has ever thought of it before, but I came to it by my own conclusions and I would like some feedback on this theory.
"Diversity needs to be replaced by unification - order out of chaos if you will."
I came to this conclusion by thinking about where most conflicts come from - which is opposing beliefs/opinions/goals. How do people formulate these differing beliefs? Through knowledge acquisition throughout their lifetimes. I admit I do feel a bit of cognitive dissonance at my own conclusion, as my moral intuition tells me diversity is a wonderful thing.
However, I thought of the following scenario, which solidified my belief:
"If there were two beings of omniscient nature, what would they fight over?" Think deeply about this scenario!

With this in mind, I believe a One World Government is the best solution for the human race. And we have already taken the first steps toward unification, just look back on history, never before in all of humanities existence have we been so interconnected. The internet, vehicular transportation, phone lines - all sharing knowledge.

Problems I thought up, two main ones come to mind:
BIOLOGICAL FACTORS: this harks back to the nature vs nurture argument. I'm of the opinion that nurture accounts for the majority of our actions, with nature being the minority. That said, biological factors will continue to feed diversity; and opinions and predispositions may stem from there.
ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT: corruption is a big issue, I have no idea how this one world government would work - but if everyone starts getting taught the exact same thing at school - are they being taught the "correct" thing?

Please, your thoughts.

I think you misunderstood what I said. I didn't mean to say that faith is always a question of fear. I said that in some cases it is a consequence of fear, which isn't a good thing. Not everything that I said was a generalization. Don't be offended, I didn't include you into it.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on May 8 2010, 5:12 pm by adeon. Reason: Trying to clarify

No because if everyone is thinking differently then they will atleast critically question other people's religious.

I thought the MAJORITY of believers believe in an afterlife, because they fear death?
Just like they follow their religious laws, because they fear being excluded from this afterlife?

Perhaps fear is too strong a word?

That doesn't show that reason alone will always come to the conclusion that all actions are equally good or bad. I could reason that one person causing another pain during the murder is "bad".

You still haven't shown why any action wouldn't be either "good" or "bad".

Fair enough, but you haven't shown that the only knowledge people have are ones in which are purely subjective to that person's thoughts, opinions, and wants. I would agree that a purely subjective universe would be no different than one created by your own thoughts, but that doesn't necessarily mean the one in which we live falls into either of those two scenarios.

Not necessarily. One person's belief might be that they must not critically question other views, and that they must blindly believe. Isolation of the masses just isolates the masses, it doesn't solve inherent problems of ignorance, violence, or fallacies, it only removes these problems from a group. A violent group of people with a single belief separated into isolation from one another (belief wise) won't inherently curb all violent tendencies, it will only reduce the "mob-effect" created by a large entity of people.

This is actually getting a little off-topic. The topic at hand is a discussion about how the article correlates intelligence to a fewer religious views. There are other topics to discuss things like this, and if you can't find a sufficient one you can always start your own.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on May 8 2010, 5:27 pm by CecilSunkure.

As are there hundreds of intelligent Muslims, Buddhists, Taoists, Animists, you name it. Intelligence and Religious preference have no link.

Is it me or there are way too many different discussions going on at the same time ? It's becoming a bit overwhelming.

Anyway, I'll try to reply to as much as I can...

Try to cope with me; it's very difficult to spontaneously elaborate a sound argument.

I can't think of a generalized argument that would encompass all situations where there is a reason to believe that something is neither good nor bad. I'll just have to tackle every example you make. Saying that murder is "bad" since it causes pain probably stems from the belief that causing pain is objectively bad. Thus, an action could be qualified as good when it does not cause pain (or cause pleasure or whatever is opposite to pain) and bad when it causes pain. But, after you're dead, who is to say that you would not enter a state of pure pleasure? That would certainly offset the limited amount of pain caused by murder and thus could be considered as good.

This kind of thinking is commonly accepted. Take mathematics for example. We define arbitrary axioms to prove all theorems. Yet, we do not prove those axioms; we simply take them for granted. We know that there is no way for us to find an underlying truth upon which we could found all mathematical reasoning. The same thing applies to physics. We base most of our knowledge from the results of experiments. Yet, we would need to experiment a certain phenomenon infinitely many times to determine if our reasoning is really true or not.

I just did.

I'm not really following you. Are you saying that there could be a scenario where objectivity is only half accessible to us? There either is an objective truth to the world or there's none. A statement cannot be both true and false.

(whole post is too big to quote)
The only reason for religion to exist is to define moral values. A long time ago it also tried to explain unexplained phenomena through supernatural means but this is no longer relevant.

Are you saying that people should be forced to act as one "whole" or are you saying that's what we are ultimately becoming with the advent of the internet and media? There is no way for us to omniscient; there is an infinite amount of knowledge we would have to learn in a limited amount of time since we are not immortal. Not only will there always be differences in opinions that will lead to conflict but there are also biological differences that will cause such conflict (i.e. pathological behaviour inherited genetically).

Of course, everyone would agree that a world where differences in race, religion or nation do not exist would be a good thing but it would also be utopical (i.e. inattainable). Also, I believe that good stems from wrong; there's a certain "beauty" to conflict. An utopical world is perhaps not what we should aim for.

That was the point I was trying to make. The OP claims that unintelligent/illogical people are more likely to become religious; I interpreted this as meaning that no intelligent people become religious.

Pinky, most religions don't fear death, due to the promise of an afterlife.

MasterJohnny, you don't seem to understand the amount of arguing that goes on in religious circles. There is very little 'blind following of a preacher'. People question EVERYTHING. This is why there are so many denominations, sects, and cults in the many religions of the world.

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Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jul 5 2018, 4:02 am by DavidJCobb. Reason: ignorant

...This is getting a little ridiculous. After everything I've said, I think it's pretty clear that I speak of God as a being that exists outside of myself. Otherwise, why would I even talk about God as a being that represents the objective truth?

Given that there are no means for us to determine objective truth and that this truth truly exists, then there are only two options. The first is trivial. That is, objectivity exists but no being knows about it and never will. That comes back to "being in a coffin with no way out even if there's is a world bustling with life outside". The second is for one being to know it (the being we define as God) and the only way for us to attain it is through that being. I have basically restated what I wrote time and again. Yet, you dare to call my argument fallacious. Try to read and understand before saying such ridiculous things.

You really don't get my point. You're basing your argument on probabilities. If it's improbable for an event to occur then it cannot occur? In a search for truth, there is no room for such things.

What is your point exactly? You're pretty much just corroborating what I've been saying; that the only way for us to reason anything that has meaning is to base our reasoning on unproven,arbitrary assertions.

That probability never reaches 0. Neither does it become infinitesimal. It is always a finite value. Thus, there is still reason to believe that it could occur. I don't know enough about biology and physics but in mathematics, there used to be something called the Polya conjecture. It held an assertion to be true over all natural numbers; although the conjecture was thought to be sound for a while, it was found that it no longer held for a small interval of very large values. Thus, had you tested a very large amount of values below that interval, you would think that the probability of it being false would be so small that it could be considered impossible. That's why we can't accept that something is true unless it is proven through reasoning alone.

I think the objectivity of goodness is clear. As organisms with nervous systems, we associate pain with negativity - we don't like to be hurt, physically or mentally. Likewise, we associate pleasure with positivity, and we enjoy things that make us feel good. Because we share this with every other conscious being (especially people), we can better understand their feelings, and therefore vicariously experience them. That said, when we make someone feel good, it can make us feel good to know that we are responsible for them experiencing an emotion that we too have experienced and enjoyed. This common human experience is the root of morality, I think. It's something we value as human beings. This commonality - that's god - not some omnipotent, universe-creating being.

I'd like to hear more of an argument for the existence of a deistic god. This morals-exist-so-therefore-god-does one really isn't doing it for me. Sounds like more backwards logic to me...

Y'know what they say, "There isn't a atheist inside a foxhole".
This is, in my opinion, where people let aside religion and their faith to things they thing they know are right.
Dumb people think they are smart because what they believe, Smart people also think they are smart because what they believe in.
It's all in the nerve system of the brain and all the things we learn from our schools that separates our minds and makes us pick one decision of Religion or Technology.
Pretty much the quote is saying that without faith and trust, anything we believed before is nothing.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on May 9 2010, 2:13 am by x-EnAlex.

It seems to me that in any religion that seems fairly sophisticated, this is exactly how it works, there are general ideas which make a foundation, however, when it comes to specifics, it takes one's own thoughts and connections to scripture to come up with a result.

The core of the belief is still maintained though. I'm quite sure that adeon was getting at people devising their own "personal religions" through critical thinking alone, without influence from religious groups.

Christianity covers more area than any other religion. In some cases you were killed for not being christian, etc... but suffice it to say, Christianity has spread more than any other religion. Islam has also spread, but mostly into africa and the rest of the middle east. Hindi hasn't spread at all. Also note that most world leaders (in the past and present) are christian. Since evolution utilizes natural selection, it seems clear to me that has an evolutionary advantage because Christianity is the dominant religion, and Christianity has developed into the most affluent parts of the world.

The complexities of the consciousness do not adhere to the principles of natural selection.
Religion is a product of our consciousness.

Except such an evolutionary advantage does not exist in many countries in Asia like Japan, and a few European countries.
And the article gives a feeling that Christianity is losing its "evolutionary advantage".

On a level playing field, that "might" be the case, but the thing is, we're not dealing with one. There were many factors that led to Christianity being a dominant religion. Its dominance is not really a case of natural selection, as the selection of superior species by nature is much different than the selection of religion by an individual. Nature abides by rules and logic (despite it being complex at times) - traits that are beneficial (or simply not harmful) to an organism will continue to appear in future generations, while those that are not will be eliminated. In this way, the strongest will rise, and the weakest will fall. One's choice of religion, on the other hand, could be be based on almost anything - political environment, finances, already present cultural beliefs, increased exposure to propaganda, a particular emotional sensitivity, the beliefs of one's parents, etc. That said, I think its quite absurd to make such a judgement, based on only on the "popularity" of Christianity.

All it proves to me is that there are a hell of a lot of stupid people out there.