I do not have a lot more to say on this subject in general, but I would like to make a point on the bold statement. The politics observation is invalid imo and a different example is required. In politics the goal is to sway or enlist the support of a mass of people with overall average IQ. It is a requirement to be consistent, passionate and committed to a path to achieve that goal. It is intelligent to simulate that certainty whether the individual sincerely feels that certainty or not.

Yeah, I think "political knowledge" in this context amounts to "exposure to the rhetoric hand-crafted to evoke support for a particular agenda."

If "political knowledge" correlates to IQ, which I suspect it does, then all you (and RLK) are doing, is describing the mechanisms by which these higher IQ people are led to have greater certainty in their beliefs. My suspicion is that the belief-forming mechanisms for liberal theism (based as it is on false or non-referring theological beliefs), is closer to politics than to science or math.

in before sklanksy becomes a missionary

I meant no "mainstream philosophy of math", I have no idea what non math philosophy is mainstream or not.

That is totally irrelevant to David's point though.

Sklansky's point presupposes that high IQ is correlated with liberal theism, which he associates with holding theological beliefs (especially about the nature or character of God) with less certainty. If this is false, if people with low IQ hold theological beliefs with less certainty as well (i.e. if there is no correlation between IQ and the certitude with which a person holds her theological beliefs), then Sklansky's argument fails. So I'm not sure how this is irrelevant to his point.

Maybe you just disagree with my interpretation of a shallow religious belief as a belief held with little certainty?

All David needs is for smart people who think there is a personsal god to be unlikely to hold strong theological beliefs. Dumb people could be uniformly distributed from strong to weak and his argument still works.

Of course. I'm not claiming this correlation doesn't exist, just that there has been no actual evidence presented for it, and unlike others in this thread I don't see strong prima facie reasons to think it is correct (that was the point of my politics counter-example).

Yeah, nobody has given actual evidence either way. But I didn't think your hypotheticals had to be true for David to be correct

You can only prove everything if your rules of logic include the law of the excluded middle. There are viable logics which don't include this and you can build a mathematics using that in which A and not-A can both be true without yielding everything true.
It has happened before - a field of geometry in the early twentieth century (I think) was shown to have inconsistent axioms. All that meant was that they weren't doing real maths. If someone proved the axioms of maths inconsistent the next step would be working out which axioms needed to be dropped in order to ensure it was consistent.
Well see my post above - there are inconsistent mathematical systems, even though they are somewhat fringe (I think they're only of interest to logicians). Nonetheless, you say it's not by fiat but accepting axioms or systems of logic based on what you'd be 'hugely interested in' is selection by fiat.
I don't know what you mean here. You said:

"For axioms, I think it is very easy to make their case over their negations."

and this is an example of an axiom for which that isn't true. You can do the same with others. I don't see how you can make the case for an axiom (or the selection of one logic over the other, the definition of sets and elements, etcetera...) Axioms are the starting point (even if you define truth the way madnak does - your starting point is just 'assume the only true facts are empirically verifiable facts').
I meant that you and madnak are like literalists only in that respect (ie that none of you are correct about what 'truth' is). I was merely stating an opinion as to my own preference for a realist account of truth (which I hardly know anything about).

I am always skeptical when people mingle science with religion and the same goes with mingling maths with religion. Unfortunately, mathematicians like to use 'cute' terms for their concepts (perfect numbers, rational numbers, etcetera) but the meaning of the words is profoundly different from everyday language. When he says things like:

"Thus, it is called an irrational number, because the love of God itself is irrational to the human mind"

I suspect that he's no longer doing maths or religion - he's just mashing together concepts from two separate fields which share some terminology. Posts like this don't shed much light on religion, imo and open him up to ridicule (pi isn't really 22/7 for example and 22/7 is not irrational). Making such simple errors of maths undercuts any power to his argument - if the maths really does say something about religion then wouldn't you think it'd be important to get the maths correct?

I personally believe religion stands on its own two feet and that attempts to 'justify' it with science of maths are likely to do more harm than good. In taking that view though, I alos believe religion doesn't have much to say about science/maths or anything else beyond the spiritual. My approach admittedly cedes an enormous amount of ground on topics which traditional religions feel falls within their purview - nonetheless it makes sense to me.

Yeah - I don't believe in a physical resurrection (I don't believe in an afterlife for anyone). It was ultimately this realisation which cemented my decision to stop calling myself a Christian - no doubt there's some sect somewhere who share my view, but it seemed like a physical resurrection was something essential to Christian belief.
Well maybe you can understand my position on the bible. Imagine me saying to you "But is IS making a factual claim! Shakespeare said 'Thou art more lovely and more temperate' and people aren't temperate."

I don't think Shakespeare was making a factual claim and I don't think God was when he inspired the bible and caused it to be written.
Well I don't subscribe to such miracles - I think the bible is best read as entirely allegorical. Having said that, you bolded hypothesis is probably correct. I was raised by passionate atheists in a pretty secular society. Nonetheless, Australia had a Christian culture not that long ago - when people say they're religious you assume they're christian. No doubt the stories and framework of the bible seem more naturally meaningful to me because my culture and society was formed when Christianity was much more dominant.
The essential component to my faith is personal experience. Nothing I have ever said on 2+2 would persuade me to believe in God. I would have remained an atheist without that personal, subjective experience and my coming to accept God as the best explanation I have for it. Discovering that I had the belief doesn't suddenly mean I think it's justified to believe whatever you feel like. Nor does it shift my agnosticism.

Theism is a part of my psychological makeup but I don't see any problem in divorcing psychology from rational considerations of the world. If I found myself drifting into scientific speculations based on what I believe about God then it would be a matter of concern. As I see it, such conflict doesn't arise - I don't get 'spooky religious insights' into empirical or rational facts and feel no need to fill in the gaps in my knowledge with 'goddidit'. I also don't think it's possible for science to answer questions about things which are not measurable or are inherently subjective (cognitive science might change that, but I've been reading promises along those lines for over thirty years now, so I don't foresee any imminent triumph). The two realms of spirituality and physical life are reasonably separate, in my experience.

I agree the hypothetical literalist I'm describing is begging the question also. DS seems to think that the literalist should be worried about the fact that christian backgammon players are not so confident and (as usual) he hasn't given any reason to think so other than 'it's obvious that smart people will get stuff right more often than dumb people' I don't think it is obvious if the stuff we're talking about is not amenable to rational analysis (since the claims are not actual statements but are rather poetic attempts at expressing not-fully-understood or even understandable concepts).

Sure, I think at this level "what smart people believe" is of questionable relevance.

For Max Raker:

It's too late to edit, but I meant the rejection of the Disjunctive Syllogism not the Law of the Excluded Middle in post #161.

The correct way to compare 2 populations is interpretate the distribution of them data .And in this case the mean is a adecuate indicador.

Example:

Let's say that exist 99% of theist and 1% atheist. But 90% of atheist are genius and 10% of theist are genius. So in a population of 1000 we expect
exist 89 genius theist
and 9 genius atheist

So we say theist have higher iq in average because there are more genius of them?
I just wanna remark that compare 2 diferent size population on the number of data insted the distribution of them is pure nonsense.

btw: sorry for my english

I don't know why you keep going down the IQ rabbit hole DS.

Anybody that studied poker in depth can tell you it's easier to run a bluff on a very intelligent player than on a calling station. Sometimes an intelligent player has to widen his calling range to snap off a bluff.

Look at the way atheists constantly attribute Satan's traits to God.

Do you think they might have fallen for his bluff? If they did then Satan can steal all day long on them.

You're bad at analogies.

LOL...atheists are so bluffable.

Calling station.

Yeah, I widen my calling range in tournaments sometimes when I'm up against a cash game player. Caught 2 people bluffing recently doing it.

No arguing with success, is there?

asdfasdf32 = confirmed cash game player

(To be fair, I used to play a lot of online tournaments, but live tournaments are just soooooo boring)

ST Success is not a metric of good quality poker.

And yet you still try