So Darwin award winners are not fulfilling natural selection?
Religion could be argued to be a heritable trait, but I'm not here to assert that, nor can I prove it. I will, however, say that the United States kicked Japan's ass in dubya dubya two. If you can't see how a religion could be helpful to an organism to survive and successfully reproduce in a culture, you're very stubborn. I believe everything we do is part of natural selection, from fashion and fads, to the methods we use to manufacture products. I chose natural selection as the word because it's the closest thing to what I mean. I suppose I should say "success of the fittest". Religion is unarguably successful. In another 2000 years? Who knows?

I would say that christianity is simply a facet of white people, which have spread over the world, and essentially been jerks about it.

Religion has transformed itself over time to accommodate the massive amounts of idiots in the world. This does not equate to an idea where intelligent people cannot have religion. Furthermore, a logical person does not always equate to an intelligent one. Logic should be seen as a tool for developing one idea from another, given that the original idea is a meaningful one. In many cases, meaning can be stressed differently, and can result in logical arguments for multiple solutions.

Example:
Should you commit suicide?
Yes. By doing so, you eliminate your consumption of resources, effectively enhancing the potential for others to do great things. Someone else will get what you would have obtained, and they will be better off.
No. You have the possibility of creating something great in your lifetime. Or if not, you can support a society where someone will eventually do something great, and by contributing to the society, you will have enacted this.
This example is of course dependent on the fact that doing something great is the reason one does not commit suicide, which may or may not be the case, because again, both answers can be supported.

I don't believe strongly in a religion at this juncture in my life, but if anything I would say that a higher IQ would lead to someone having a stronger belief in a god, due to the realization that it's highly unlikely that all of this (earth and everything that it is comprised of) just happened by chance, even by any means of science, which is an incredible thing in itself. Like when I look at how vast the ocean is and know that it can't be a product of any means that we can understand any time soon, if ever. If anything, I attribute the lack of belief in god to human arrogance, not any means of intelligence.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on May 10 2010, 2:38 pm by youarenotworthy.

You have a point, though I am somewhat dissatisfied with it - I just can't articulate this dissatisfaction... Regardless, thank you for this enlightenment.



Nice example of God of the Gaps, youare. Just because we don't have knowledge in a particular thing does not automatically mean "God did it".

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on May 10 2010, 7:38 pm by Pinky.

Basing your argument on the unknown doesn't show that the action of murder is neither good nor bad. The problem is that the action can be framed as good or bad depending on how you want to frame it. What you should conclude is that good and bad can't be defined in a universal way without an overarching authority, such as a government or a god.

We don't prove arbitrary axioms because they usually are what they are defined to be. I can define a nargle plus a stoof to be a gilf, and it is so because it is so by definition. Similarly, 1 + 1 = 2 because it is defined to be so.

Sorry but this isn't how to contribute to the SD. You cannot just assert yourself as right without any support, unless you were referring to the support in the post that this quote was from, which you should have referred to rather than using a tart three word reply.

No, I was replying to you overall post. You were using examples and reasoning that showed that there is no difference between a purely subjective reality and one which was created by one's mind. I replied saying that I agreed with that statement, though I didn't agree with how you were using that statement as evidence that the universe was necessarily so. You had an unsupported premise that the universe was completely subjective from person to person; I tried to point this out.

And to bring things into perspective of the topic: Your original post was concerning reason leading to a conclusion that no actions are good or bad, implying that those who are more intelligent would be more likely to come to this conclusion.

I'm beginning to think this topic should be locked and restarted with a more refined question...

If we are to prove the hypothesis that people with higher IQ are more likely to not have a religion we are better off doing an experiment(s) and checking the results.

The link given in OP merely talks about the study and then discusses it and doesn't actually show the study itself or the results it came to, or if the study was carried out correctly, ie. extraneous variables eliminated and numerous samples tested and correct design of the experiment itself.

From the discussion I'm reading in this topic the title should be more along the lines of: what is "good" and "bad"?

This is, stupid. You'd have to survey and measure intelligence a significant portion of humanity in order to get a reliable result that correlates between religiosity and intelligence- and one would still be unsure if it had any connection between the two. Even the article ends in a unclear manner. 'It's not that simple.'

Although, I believe that 'we' believe what we want to believe. And it's simple as that. If one wants to believe in God, then so be it. If one doesn't want to believe in God, then so be it. Also, Evolution isn't necessarily the opposite of creationism, which is contrary to the popular belief. One can be created and then evolve. The opposite argument of creationism would be something along the lines of 'Universe always existed' sort of thing.

If this was purely the case, there would be no problem whatsoever. The problem is that people use this belief to justify any number of things, and THATS when it becomes a BIG problem.
This is the problem with knowledge, there are two sources of knowledge acquisition: discovering things through our own senses; and trusting sources from external sources, such as teachers telling us about this and that, books telling us this and that, other people telling us this and that.

If (intentional) lying did not exist, this would not be a problem; however it does - so ALL external sources must be treated with a healthy grain of salt. This is where it comes down to making a judgement on the RELIABILITY of said external source. Most athiests would consider the Bible to be an unreliable source, whereas the theists do not.

When we try to approach the thiests and say "how do you know the Bible is true?" they can through back at us the very same argument - how do we know what our teachers taught us at school is true, how do we know the books we read contain true facts, how do we know the media and other people we talk to are telling the truth - we can't, and so we can't really use that argument again them...

It's a pickle my friends, I still advocate for this topic to be locked and restarted with a more refined question, however.