Are People Who Believe in God Stupid?

[Coito ergo sum]

Another theophobe! Theophobe!!!

I don't fear him. I mourn his death at the hands of a theist.

[Coito ergo sum]

But I believe in god. Are you saying that I'm stupid? Surely not.

You believe in something "just 'cuz." You tell us. Does that sound like someone who isn't stupid?

[Chuck Jones]

Coitus is a theophobe! He hates theists and then lies about it! Theophobe! Coitus wants theists to be put in concentration camps!

[.Morticia.]

Are you still here?

[Chuck Jones]

I'm always here.

[Brian Peacock]

Especially since most children will believe anything they hear :/

Exactly. Children are credulous of authority by their very nature. Religion's exploit that - really exploit it - and inculcate their principles in the young by constantly telling them that all personal virtue is actually religious virtue; in other words, you can't be good without being religious, being religious is the only way you can be good. Frighten the little dears with the apparent truth that Satan will flail their tiny bodies forever in Hell Fire if they don't believe 'properly' and that exploitation turns to emotional abuse, IMO.

[Annuhh5]

And IF there really was a heaven, don't you think that God would let people 'in' based on how good they've been in their life, and not if they've been worshiping him?
That's just what I would think anyway.

[Copyleft]

People who believe without looking at the evidence and thinking it over ARE stupid.

People who looked, thought, and came to a different conclusion than I did... maybe, maybe not. I'd have to hear their rationale first.

[beige]

People who believe without looking at the evidence and thinking it over ARE stupid.

People who looked, thought, and came to a different conclusion than I did... maybe, maybe not. I'd have to hear their rationale first.

I wouldn't say stupid is necessarily the right word. Many aren't lacking in intelligence, they just choose not to apply it in that direction. Or direct it into formulating convoluted ways to justify the things that don't make sense.

[stripes4]

Sorry, but I haven't read all the comments. The OP just caught my eye. The answer is "yes - people that believe in god are fucking stupid". I hope this helps

[.Morticia.]

Sorry, but I haven't read all the comments. The OP just caught my eye. The answer is "yes - people that believe in god are fucking stupid". I hope this helps

People don't believe in God.

They believe the people who taught them there is a god.

And that social/psycho bond with the people who taught them, who may be their mother, is a very very important survival mechanism.

In the first place, as children that bond is life or death.

As adults social bonds determine our successes and failures at life tasks, such as learning life skills, obtaining resources and finding a mate.

Belief can not and should not be dismissed as a matter of intelligence only.

[Tero]

Coitus is a theophobe! He hates theists and then lies about it! Theophobe! Coitus wants theists to be put in concentration camps!

Could we just burn them? We could convince them they are in hell. With two way mirrors it could make a theme park like the Kentucky ark.

[Coito ergo sum]

Sorry, but I haven't read all the comments. The OP just caught my eye. The answer is "yes - people that believe in god are fucking stupid". I hope this helps

SWMBO'd was exclaiming her belief in God last night. And apparently she thinks it's me.

[Brian Peacock]

She says that to all the boys. Just ask anyone.

[jcmmanuel]

All good points - but, like I said, I was addressing your point about the theist who "chooses to learn science from the Bible." Naturally, music is not science, etc., and there may be plenty to be gained from the Bible. I've read it, and there are some very interesting stories, some very poetic portions, some interesting moral lessons, and whatnot. It gives one a basis for much of English literature, which contains many Biblical references. An appreciation of the Bible is very important to a good knowledge of English literature.

It's more than that of course. To all people who love things like the arts, culture, or even just the development of our human be-ing and our mind, and of course, spirituality, the Bible is, just as other religious books, the outcome of a thinking process, much as a book on philosophy is the outcome of a thinking process (but the axioms, or parameters, are different of course). It would be very arrogant to posit that ancient people didn't think, just because they happened to be acquainted with what we (only now, and in modern interpretatin) call 'religion'.

I'll just have to point out, once again, that you're the one that referred to theists who choose to get their science from the Bible. That's what I was responding to. But, now I see we are in agreement - there is no science to be gotten from the Bible. Fair enough.

I'm not sure if we were in agreement. The starting position was more like a suggestion that all theists are de facto mad at science and want to set a religious book as the standard for science. Which is what some do - but clearly this is ridiculous. On the other hand: there's humans involved, and humans are the ones who invented science, and who are doing science too. So religious people are not by any standard rejecting science, although they will normally all share the rejection of the idea that science is the only epistomological tool in our toolbox. History, for instance, is also a scientific discipline, and so is textual criticism, and experts on the subject of culture or linguistics or sociology are also involved in scientific means of knowledge - none of these of course using the same methodology as the natural and exact sciences, for obvious reasons. When it comes to certain domains of research such as textual criticism, ancient documents do not contain science, but they provide the source for the data: it is to be taken serious, and the authors are to be taken serious (framed within their own time and culture, before we interpret what they wrote, and so on). Sources of data are not less serious just because they are not the domain of study of biologists for instance. Fossils too are 'not science', but they are important to science. If you look at it from this perspective, then a phrase like "there is no science to be gotten from the Bible" makes just as much sense as "there is no science to be gotten from the fossil record". Admitted: I know you were perhaps addressing 'religious fundamentalists', yet, nevertheless, taking them as the standard doesn't make much sense.

Arguing that science disproves some religious assertion is not the same thing as "learning about religion from science."

At this point we agree - but it's obvious.

...Love is not rational and not scientific - but it is human. A part of the sciences (natural sciences, physics) are 'exact' but not all things are exact and certainly not humans. So what are you talking about and what is the problem I am supposed to see for me here?

Your the one who made some assertions to which I responded. What I would say to you at this point is that man's capacity to love says nothing about the existence of gods We don't have to believe in a god or gods in order to experience love and appreciate other abstract concepts.

True, but it's also true that for a lot of people god (or, beyond 3.5 billion monotheists, "gods" indeed) is in important concept related to their being human - and this does not necessitate the presumption that god "must be this concept" in order to experience love, it just means that the experience of love can cross over into a domain which is not the domain where science as we know it is interested in (apart from parapsychology and some other sciences). It is not just about existence, because existence at this level is not existence as we define it philosophically in terms of our human existence. Even at the human level, our brains are, as far as even the best neuroscientists know at this moment, too complex to be fully understood - and we are always subjectively researching these things too, so... 'existence' is already not something one can fully grasp in terms of any one particular 'science' known today. It is all patchwork - and we know very much of our brains today, but not so that we would be able to define our own existence. The concept of God does not belong to our human existence at all - no more than the big bang singularity belongs to it. We know very little about the absolute beginnings, and what we know is not known as facts but as mathematical and physical models that depend on many numerical parameters (more than twenty, in physics and cosmophysics alone). So who are we to claim that the existence of a god has nothing to do with the human experience of love or whatever experience there is - human longings beyond the things we can see, what can science 'decide' about that? Science has never been developed to either confirm or deny 'what is', it just addresses 'what is within reach' of these tools. The truth is, we don't know much beyond that level. And denial is not a theory. But to *doubt* the existence of gods or a god is agnosticism, which is a reasonable position in my opinion. It is not a certitude.

Kind regards.