I reject all forms of mysticism, which of course means I don't believe in any God let alone the God of Abarham, Yahweh etc.

I think that is pretty obvious to anyone that most of the intellectual/scientific community is profoundly atheistic. I would like to know how Christians justify this, do they believe that all people really believe in God and are just manipulating logic and inventing wild theories so they don't have to change their ways? Do you believe that evolution is just our way of rationalizing sleeping in on Sunday morning?

Why are the leaders of our intellectual and scientific community so against the existence of a god? Is everyone lying to themselves?


edit: members of other faiths feel free to respond. Didn't mean to restrict this to just christians


Also I don't want to turn this forum into a just because all intelligent people believe something doesn't make it true thread

Well, my own personal beliefs aside, correlation does not imply causation.

I know correlation does not imply causation, and I'm not suggesting you just blindly adopt the beliefs of others that are greater in number/ability to you. I was wondering about what Christians believe the motives of non-believers are and that is all

as i mentioned before, I'm not using the this observation as a validation for atheism, I'm just wondering how theists deal with this observation, and how they view the processes and motives of non-believers

Personally I kinda think it's impossible to be very confident in most things you believe without being pretty arrogant if a lot of people disagree with you (since then you have to think you're much better at assessing evidence than they are, and it's pretty much impossible to not be bias based on your upbringing no matter how hard you try). I think that goes beyond just religious beliefs and into other areas of life as well.

I really doubt most Atheists think religious people believe what they do because they're evil or have some grand scheme or most religious people think Atheists believe what they do because they're evil or have some grand scheme. I know some people believe that, but most don't. I think most people just assume people disagreeing about religion or the nature of the universe is similar to most controversial issues where people have differing beliefs and opinions.

You hate God is the number one answer i think.

I read a psychological study a while back about abusive priests and iirc, their average IQ came in somewhere around 120. So, if that number is the norm among priests, I'd imagine the religious intellectuals are on par with the academic intellectuals with the probable exception of physicists and mathematicians. But considering Richard Feynman was awarded a Nobel in physics despite being 'handicapped' with a self-reported IQ of 125, I'm not sure the uber IQs matter all that much in a practical sense.

So your premise that "all intelligent people" don't believe in God is clearly flawed. But despite that shortcoming, if the average (100 IQ) religious people put their religious intellectual leaders on an even par with the academic intellectuals intelligence wise, then your argument is nothing more than a special pleading for academia intellectualism (which you prefer) over religious intellectualism (which they prefer).

Check this dude out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Stirling

His patent a lil bit improved:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Di...P_in_Spain.JPG

(p.s. i'm atheist myself )

Except that any sane person would bet money on average physicist vs an average priest on any question where a true or probabilistic answer exists.

Science has done more to change theology than theology has done to change theology. Ergo, it's not much of a stretch to argue that the opinion of scientists on theology (and science) are likely to determine the truth of an aspect of theology than the opinions of theologians.

They cover their ears and scream louder "But you can't prove he doesn't exist!!!"

The fact that people in 2011 still have this childish belief that superhuman roamed the earth thousands of yrs ago is just amazing. The excuses and garbage logic for believing is even more amazing.

Religion is the biggest sham in the history of the world ainec