[/QUOTE]Not education. Education doesn't promote critical thinking or creativity (some would say on purpose), and it's not like people aren't exposed to the scientific worldview just because they don't have a college degree. These days everyone knows lightning doesn't come from Zeus or Thor.
But intelligence is the "better" question (still a pointless question), and I don't have a strong opinion on that. I'm a little biased, I regard deep thinkers as "smart" and most others as "average". I feel like most people haven't thought deeply about their religion.[/QUOTE]

educations promotes conformity nothing else. this picture sums it up for me
maths aside, most other subjects teach a view promoted by the existing bourgeois corporate complex, assemble students for the 9-5 grind.

they absolutely do not promote critical thinking.

with regards to religion i think you have to look a little deeper into why so many people would believe in something (GOD) that they know they cannot prove.
I often questioned my faith and GOD, however i looked at the world at a whole after much thinking and semi critical analysis in my head i came to the conclusion that GOD does exist, the devil exists, and that deep in within humanity there is fight between good and bad, right and wrong.

i would urge anyone doubtful to look at prophecies that have been foretold (abrahamic religions) and think about the likelyhood of such prophecies becoming truths hundreds and hundreds of years later.

educations promotes conformity nothing else. this picture sums it up for me


hope it works otherwise https://twitter.com/FarhanOne/status...573440/photo/1

maths aside, most other subjects teach a view promoted by the existing bourgeois corporate complex, assemble students for the 9-5 grind.

they absolutely do not promote critical thinking.

with regards to religion i think you have to look a little deeper into why so many people would believe in something (GOD) that they know they cannot prove.
I often questioned my faith and GOD, however i looked at the world at a whole after much thinking and semi critical analysis in my head i came to the conclusion that GOD does exist, the devil exists, and that deep in within humanity there is fight between good and bad, right and wrong.

i would urge anyone doubtful to look at prophecies that have been foretold (abrahamic religions) and think about the likelyhood of such prophecies becoming truths hundreds and hundreds of years later.

If you were referring to my post, in my following post I retracted my use of that term. Influencing at an impressionable age.

I will say this. There's more to why people hold on to their religion than just early influence (but I think influence is most of the reason). People believe in Santa for a while but even if their parents never told them the truth, at some point they'd stop believing. Whereas people keep their religion because clearly it is a more sensible set of ideas than that of Santa (though I realize not all atheists would agree with that).

Not everyone who fancies himself smart is smart, this isn't news. Yes, those in power often think they're superior and smarter than the working class. Even today, guys like Mitt Romney think all poor people are dumb and/or lazy while the rich all earned their fortunes via sheer brilliance and hard work. The conclusion I draw from this isn't "lol intelligence", but rather, "lol power systems" or maybe, "lol the masses of people who let themselves be tricked by those in power".

Historically, I see a bunch of dumb bullies using the technology nerds figured out to bully more effectively.

I agree, at least in the US. It might not be like that in Finland. And maybe not in totalitarian countries because those governments don't rely on propaganda or a docile population, only force.

First, read your words carefully:

You're making a statement about the VOLUME of information. This is much different from saying "is related to" what we know and understand.

Second, a change in "culture" is a change that is not always related to the volume of information that we have now. That is, culture does not progress in a "linear" manner that corresponds to the increase in volume of information.

In general, you make too many statements that are trivially false on their face, and then you try to make them trivially true by altering your words to make it mean something completely different from what you originally wrote. Stop doing that.

Aaron is well on his way of convincing me that teachers really never give up...

As a student, I was so relieved to learn that most of the professors in the religious studies program at U of Chicago did not practice or affiliate with any particular religion.

You can take this one step further: Intelligent people tend to have different views. That people who score highly on intelligence measures tend to be nonconformists is fairly well known in psychometric research (and related studies).

You make it sound like something it's not. Often I'm articulating something for the first time, or for the first time in a context where criticism is well informed and that often causes me to try to refine or re-articulate whatever I said.

I don't care about being wrong and I think you realise that now because you've stopped accusing me of using underhand tactics or of intellectual dishonesty. I do care about being understood or understanding why I'm wrong.

On the issue of religion, what else has had such a huge impact on beliefs except for the knowledge and understanding that we now have?

Yes. I'm sure there are plenty of things that can 'change a culture' but I'm talking specifically about religious beliefs here. What else has changed since the times of Aristotle that has affected religious beliefs in the way that our increased knowledge and understanding of the natural world has?

Say something useful or go away Fret. Snide comments like this just erode the respect I otherwise have for you.

Then just say something like "Let me rephrase because I didn't say what I meant." Don't just change it on the fly and try to pretend like it's the same thing.

I still don't believe you. The reason I don't believe you is that you struggle mightily to admit to errors. You like to insist that you're right the whole time, even when you fundamentally change what you've said.

A shift in cultural values and scandals within church organizations are two things that have little to do with "knowledge and understanding."

You keep trying to narrow down like this as if religious beliefs were somehow isolated from other modes of thought. It's not like that.

This is even FURTHER from where you started. You began with citing a SINGULAR explanation:

Now you're trying to say that there is a dominant thing, which implicitly allows other things to have an influence. I would still disagree with your thesis that it's all about the "increase in volume" of information.

You're also changing from some sort of net increase to increase in a particular subset of knowledge that you're calling "the natural world." Good luck making sense of that one in some reasonable way that works consistently from the time of Aritotle through the Middle ages and the Enlightenment and into the modern period.

You're now saying something like "What else has changed religion in the way that understanding the natural world has changed religion other than the way that understanding the natural world has changed religion." This is a trivial observation, and you come to that point where you're babbling about nothing at all because you're unwilling to admit that your original observation was just wrong.

The creation of the printing press allowed for the spread of religious writings. That would count as the increased volume of information that worked in favor of religion and religious beliefs.

I think the explanation is fairly simple. They are taken to church or whatever at an early age by parents who had the same thing done to them and are told all about god of whatever variety religion their parents are and are fairly well indoctrinated at an early age. They then continue this practice by taking their children and so on. IMO it amounts to child abuse and is cult-like. In fact there's really not much of a discernible difference between a cult and organized religion when you compare the two.

I think this lies at the heart of why the study arrived at the conclusions it did. As previously mentioned intelligent people tend to be non-conformists. I think one of the reasons is because they look at the world around them and see how stupid the average person really is. Then when they see hordes of average people going to church and fully believing in what they hear they can't help but think "how sure am I this is even remotely true and/or accurate?" I am amazed every single day at how truly stupid the average person is. Living in the south, I'm even more amazed at how stupid the average deeply religious person is and the ignorance they spout off on a routine basis...I'm talking about the creationists who want it taught and evolution not taught, the anti-gay marriage stuff based on the old testament, etc.

I didn't read the entire study, but I would wager that if you excluded people from the non-religious group that had never been introduced to religion the differential would be even higher. I can see those people having much closer to an average level of intelligence. People that were exposed to religion at an early age and then become atheists I would guess are on average quite a bit smarter than average.

When you look at Christianity or the Jewish faith, they are ultimately based on books written thousands of years ago by corrupt rulers who used them as tools to govern, or a corrupt church, who used it as a tool to govern and/or exert influence to further it's own objectives. I can much easier understand believing in a god but behaving however you think is correct according to society and your own moral compass than I can basing your behavior on a book written by barely above cave-men goat herders 4000 years ago. You have to have blind faith and completely abandon logic to believe that, and I don't think people of well above average intelligence can do that.

Just because something was written in a book and happens to come true is literally no basis for a religion. There is no "nostradamus" religion. Also if it's just some stupid general prophesy anybody can make that up. I can predict volcano eruptions, floods, extinction events, visits by aliens, the sun going out, etc. and if you give me enough time they will all come true. Maybe I should start my own religion. I'm not sure where you are going with this honestly.

We've had this discussion at least twice before in RGT, so we can find links if need be, but to call raising a child in a religion child abuse is to render 'child abuse' a meaningless phrase. It's just not the same thing at all.

You're wrong here as well. Following a religion does not require that you be stupid or ignore all logic and rationality. There are people who are both well above average in intelligence and also follow religious laws that aren't also seen amongst the non-religious.

This x1000

For whatever anecdotes are worth, I was originally a Physics major in college. The two best physics students in my class (who got 100's on almost every test) were both Christian. I worked with both of them as lab partners a few times and sat next to them in a few courses. During lectures one of them would seem frustrated that the lecture wasn't moving faster, he instantly understood everything and mumbled under his breath like it was old boring news. I'd say they were both great analytical/logical thinkers and not irrational at all. Didn't get a chance to talk philosophy/metaphysics with them unfortunately.

Imo anyone who says no religious person can be intelligent/rational hasn't been out enough or has tunnel vision when it comes to judging intelligence.

That wasn't what I was trying to say. I was providing reasons why I think on *average* the study indicated non-religious people were of higher intelligence. Of course you can have smart people that are religious and you can also have stupid people that aren't. We are talking averages here, and the study reflected that.

I do think you have to ignore most logic and rationality to follow religion. Maybe not ALL logic, but certainly most. Lets take one of the most common tenets of Christianity as an example.

Jesus was the son of God, died on the cross, and in 3 days he "rose" from the dead. Nobody saw him rise, I'd guess they found an empty grave. Now, option 1 is his dead corpse floated up through the rocks or whatever and went to heaven. Option 2 is someone stole his corpse and buried it somewhere else. Option 3 is he never really died and he just walked out of there and hid somewhere forever.

Put on your logic hat and tell me which one of the above 3 is most likely. My money is on option 2. Have you seen anyone else rise from the dead lately? I know I haven't. Choosing option 1 there is ignoring logic, everything we know about life and death and just putting blind faith that it's true because someone wrote it in a book ~2000 years ago. At the same time the earth was flat, some people still worshiped the sun, everything revolved around the earth, blah blah blah. Lots of things could have happened back then that were easily misinterpreted as Jesus rising from the grave....all of which are infinitely more likely than a dead guy floating through solid rocks to heaven.

You could do this all day. The burning bush, Moses and the 10 commandments, Sodom and Gomorrah (clearly volcanic eruptions or something similar), etc. There are tons and tons of scientific reasons for whatever is in there, but 5000 years ago science was unheard of and if you saw anything unusual it was "god." Viola! Religion. When a volcano erupted God was angry...lets throw a virgin in there....when we were having a drought God was angry, lets sacrifice a goat and so on and so forth.

If you are basing your belief system on this book and these stories you are not thinking rationally or logically for the most part and are basing everything on faith that despite what you know about everything else, this stuff is still true.

My bible knowledge is rusty, but doesn't it say he did things after resurrecting? As opposed to never being seen again? (Maybe in real life he was never seen again but just saying.)

I get where you're coming from but I don't know if "logic" is the right word, I think people throw it around too lightly. If Christianity is wrong, then most likely it's just the axioms that are wrong (ie, the axiom of existence of god), not the actual logical connections. Otherwise wouldn't you have a logical proof that there's no god? What you're really talking about is inductive reasoning which is basically just intuition, not the same as deductive reasoning (except in mathematics where "induction" is really a form of deduction).

I think he allegedly appeared to one of the apostles where nobody else could see him or something...my bible is rusty too.

on the logic thing, you are probably right. I was just going for assigning probabilities to the myriad of things that could have happened in the examples I gave....what is written in the bible (ie god did it, or god spoke, or god carved the rocks with lightning or whatever) is generally the item I would assign the lowest probability to if I were probability weighting the potential reasons for whatever happened. This happens probably hundreds of times in the bible yet people base their belief system on it.

The way religions evolved undermines their sacredness and illustrates why people with lesser critical thinking skills would dogmatically adhere to religion today in the face of so much evidence that undermines their beliefs.

Human populations that where isolated for 10,000's of years, regardless of location, Asia, ME, Europe, SA, Africa, were all devising a system of thought to explain morality, life after death, and other uncertainties in their lives at roughly the same time 2000-3000 years ago, and in less structured/organized ways, even 1000's of years before that.

Examining the evolution of religions undermines their credibility and exposes them for that they are, non sacred, man made attempts at seeking explanations and pacifying the stress of uncertainty.

Despite the geographical isolation, all religions have so many commonalities that developed 2000-2500 years ago, regardless of whether its Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, or Islam. This render religion at best folklore, a man made attempt to add meaning and decrease the stress of uncertainty. Each population spread their own version of religion, and what you believe was almost solely dependent on geographical location.

I find a more interesting topic of discussion to be the impact that religion had on the evolution of societies. The wars created, economic inequalities perpetuated and justified, and as Bob Marley so aptly sings about in Redemption Song, the acceptance of a marginal existence for the sake of the glory of the afterworld.

Even today, crucial stem cell research is impeded by religion, and a whole class of poor ignorant people vote against their own economic interests for the sake of supporting religion, not to mention the rein of terror inflicted by Islamist extremist and blood thirsty American Christians imposing their worldview and righteousness at the cost of innocent lives throughout the globe.

Obviously the negative impact of religions can be countered with the common core of morality and structure they provided, causing people to consider the consequences of their behavior and generally adhere to an admirable code of morality. This was an important step in creating more sophisticated, functional societies and decreasing the innate savage nature of man.

christians don't choose their belief system by assigning logical percentages to biblical happenings. you either believe jesus was the son of god or you don't.

I know it is faith based and is far from an analytical decision. But anyone with a modicum of intelligence will not dogmatically accept religion as a part of their life and world view.

Being spiritual and affiliating with church is different, more like associating with a like minded social group and enjoying the fellowship of like minded people. But believing Jesus, who by all accounts was a typical person, making meager wages with a relatively small following, was the son of god is laughable based on empirical evidence compiled by the most acclaimed religious scholars.

Jesus was a dude who many contemporaries viewed as slightly crazy and troublesome, more of a political dissident raising hell with the establishment at Jerusalem. His legend and myth grew posthumously.

He was in the right place at the right time to gain fame and immortality, considering the political unrest and perceived abuses the Roman Church were inflicting upon commoners, taxing excessively without representation at the time. There were many others who died from Crucifixion at the time and many throughout history who were locked in asylums for claiming son of god status.

Imma gonna ask for a couple of cites and a few names.

And for a couple more cites.

You do realize that adressing the state cult of the roman empire (I assume that's what you mean?) as the Roman Church is an anachronism, don't you? There no more was a Roman Church at the time of Jesus than there was a Federal Republic of Germany at the time of Napoleon.

See the bolded. I know for a fact that children are exploited by religions, so child abuse does occur in this context. I think to deny that would be obtuse. Where I would expect disagreement is on the issue of what level of religious interaction with children constitutes abuse. My personal threshold is the point at which children are being taught that one particular religion is 'true'. At that point I believe that they are being exploited because they are too young to make informed, mature, reasoned decisions and that's a form of child abuse. I don't have an upper age limit, that would be child dependent.

So I assume you'd support legal actions against parents who teach their children that one particular religion is true? Would you think a fine is sufficient or should they be incarcerated? Perhaps their children should be shipped off to foster care.

Comparatively speaking a valiant effort on your part. Unfortunately, still pretty wrong. I assume you got your definition from here: http://legal-dictionary.thefreedicti...om/Child+Abuse. There, it states:

It does so under the heading of "Physical, sexual, or emotional mistreatment or neglect of a child." This should've given you a hint. Following up on what 42 U.S.C.A. § 5106g actually states, you find:

Your meaning of exploitation is not in the least the meaning intended by the law. You get partial credit as the comma in the legal dictionary definition is indeed somewhat misleading.

How you get from "death, serious physical or emotional harm, Sexual Abuse" to "teaching children that one religion is true" is quite mystifying, but I guess that's just you being you. I mean, we all know this kind of question from intelligence tests: "Which term does not belong: Death, physical harm, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, telling kid Islam is true." You're telling me you'd ponder this carefully and go "You know, I'm with Crackhead Dave on this and go with 'They all belong just fine'".

I dont get it? Is teaching them that one particular religion is true , the exploitation? Or is the exploitation what comes after?

Thanks for providing this definition Fret:

I'd say that the urging of religious beliefs on young, vulnerable, trusting children meets the bolded parts.

Mental injury: Scaring children with the idea of Hell and the Devil, that a God is 'watching over' them all the time and judging them and that they will answer to that god when they die.

Negligent treatment: We have a responsibility to protect our children from those who would take advantage of their vulnerability, in the case of religion, to urge a particular belief system on them rather than educating them and allowing them to choose. You wouldn't let most political activists urge a political system on your child, why does religion get a pass? (Do you actually have children?)

Maltreatment: (Includes all forms of physical and emotional ill-treatment, sexual abuse, neglect, and exploitation that results in actual or potential harm to the child’s health, development or dignity.) Urging a particular religion on a child, or allowing one to be urged on them rather than allowing them to choose can significantly affect that child's development or dignity.

I think it's exploiting their vulnerability, their trust and their innocence. There's a reason religions do it and don't simply leave children to come to the realisation on their own when they're mature and capable of reasoning for themselves. The cynical amongst us (me) might argue that religions have to 'get them young' because not to do so would have a detrimental effect on the number of followers those religions 'enjoy'.

Following on from your post in the other thread, I think this also happens in non-religious contexts such as politics, race issues and sexual orientation issues and I object just as strongly to it there, but this isn't the place to discuss those.

but what is the exploitation? Are you saying if they simply taught them that the religion was true, and then walked away, that would be exploitation? That teaching children a false idea, is exploitation? That if I , for example, taught a child that there was a fat man in a red suit who came down chimneys one night a year and left presents, I would be exploiting his vulnerability, trust and innocence? Or is it what happens after that is the exploitation?