You should probably take a look at Francis Collins new book "Belief". He has a chapter discussing the irrationality of atheism in which he explains the end of religion is the end of reason. You'd probably find his view interesting.

I can certainly say the atheists I have met have been much smarter on average than the religious people for sure.

These folks need something to base thier worldveiw. Watch the last minute or so of this interview with Susskind and you will see what I mean.

http://www.closertotruth.com/video-p...-Susskind-/442

Now they would not come out and say these things are facts but it is certainly where they put their faith. Naturalism has failed them and now they begrudgingly have to accept an explaination which lies outside the realm of observability.

Lol. How did you decide that there is no evidence for the Many Worlds Interpretation? Aah, ignorance...

After reading about "the materialism of the gaps", "the naturalism of the gaps", and similar "smart" notions, this one nailed it for me. How impudent can you be to believe all the bullcrap religious stories and then call atheism irrational?

Atheists may well have a signicantly higher average IQ. But that may be mainly because almost all people with IQ's below 110 are theists. What about if only those with IQs above 130 are considered? Within this group what would the average IQ of atheists vs theist be (deists are a push)?

If you have some I can look at I would like to see it.

Also the multiverse/landscape is not the same as the many worlds interpetation of quantum mechanics.

The Many Worlds Interpretation is a specific exemplar of the multiverse hypothesis. There is real evidence for the former.

I am not a physicist and can't really summarize it for you. Look it up.

If you're right, then there's real evidence for both.

I'm also not a physicist, but I don't think I've ever heard one claim there is any evidence for favoring one interpretation over another. I don't even know what evidence like that would look like.

I have and there is no evidence that isn't umambigious which says manyworlds interpetation of quantum mechanics is correct. If there is please provide it.

It's not exactly a higher average IQ. There is a positive correlation between atheism and IQ. Which means, the higher the IQ of a person, the more likely they are an atheist (even though the causal direction is unclear).


By the way, you can't possibly consider that most people with IQ below 110 are atheists, sir. Forget about IQ for a moment, look at the negative correlation between religiousness and level of education. Does your hypothesis suggest that most people with IQ below 110 are also the educated ones?

I didn't say it isn't ambiguous. Not every scientific concept is equally well supported. But many physicists are working to find better evidence for it. Unlike the folks who assert SQ. Somehow, we just have to trust their spiritual insights about it.

If you are going to accept ambiguous evidence then you should start believing in God or at least consider God to be a very strong possibility because there exist ambiguous evidence that the universe is fine tuned by a designer. I would say there is more ambiguous evidence in support of God designing the universe than there is for MWI.

These are all deistic arguments, not theistic. Let's, for the sake of argument, assume that it really was god who created and fine-tuned the universe. Two questions for you:

1 - Is there evidence that this same god is still sticking around watching over us, answering our prayers, and punishing our sins?

2 - Is there evidence that it was actually only ONE god who created the universe? Why not two, three or more?

If you ask a christian for evidence of his God and he points to the fine tuned universe what are you going to do? Reject his evidence because it also points to a diestic god? Reject his evidence because it also points to a landscape/multiverse? The problem with using ambiguous evidence is it doesn't really provide much help in the way of an explaination. Its is really rather useless.

My own opinion is that if God exists, He interferes as little as possible in the affairs of man. If He interfered too much we would depend on him too much. If he interfered to little there would not be much hope for us.

I like the god of futurama

You didn't really answer either of my questions. I am not asking a Christian, I am asking you. I told you, for the sake of argument, I accept that god created the universe, because the evidence is compelling. Now, what evidence is there for the things I asked in my two questions?

Edit: I will read your response tomorrow, since it's almost 3 AM here and I am going to bed.

Little bit of a grunch - yes, it is. Among non-immigrants, people whose religious views differ from the mainstream tend to have higher IQs regardless of what the mainstream religion in that country is.

didnt some just recently post something about how the IQ of christians in China are on average higher?

seems to make a lot of sense that the group of people going against the grain would be more intelligent on average

We did a thread on this a while back and another poster supplied this test:
http://www.dbking.net/spiritualintelligence/sisri.htm

Because of general and special revelation.

This one Francis Collins gives in an interview with PBS is pretty good, too:

COLLINS: To my surprise, I found myself fairly easily compelled by his arguments (C.S. Lewis' arguments) about the existence of some sort of a God, because even as a scientist, I had to admit that we had no idea how the universe got started. The hard part for me was the idea of a personal God, who has an interest in humankind. And the argument that Lewis made there — the one that I think was most surprising, most earth-shattering, and most life-changing — is the argument about the existence of the moral law. How is it that we, and all other members of our species, unique in the animal kingdom, know what's right and what's wrong? In every culture one looks at, that knowledge is there.

Where did that come from? I reject the idea that that is an evolutionary consequence, because that moral law sometimes tells us that the right thing to do is very self-destructive. If I'm walking down the riverbank, and a man is drowning, even if I don't know how to swim very well, I feel this urge that the right thing to do is to try to save that person. Evolution would tell me exactly the opposite: preserve your DNA. Who cares about the guy who's drowning? He's one of the weaker ones, let him go. It's your DNA that needs to survive. And yet that's not what's written within me.

Lewis argues that if you are looking for evidence of a God who cares about us as individuals, where could you more likely look than within your own heart at this very simple concept of what's right and what's wrong. And there it is. Not only does it tell you something about the fact that there is a spiritual nature that is somehow written within our hearts, but it also tells you something about the nature of God himself, which is that he is a good and holy God. What we have there is a glimpse of what he stands for.

I know this is not a new idea that Lewis came up with. It builds upon long traditions over centuries of careful scholarship and thought. But I'd never seen it before, and I don't think I've ever seen it explained as well as it is in his book.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/questionofgo...s/collins.html

I recall it being true about Japan, I'm not sure about China.

One of the many problems with these tests is that they are not objective. The questions in the test that is linked ask the user to rate their own ability at various mental tasks. Even if each candidate were to answer completely honestly, the "test" simply acts as a gauge of how self-assured the candidate is, rather than as a measure of their aptitude at any specific mental ability.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning...3Kruger_effect

If the test were to pose situational examples of problems that only somebody with a high "SQ" (whatever that means) could solve, it would be much improved. Unfortunately however, as I have said in another thread, if such a test were to be made it could be beaten more effectively using IQ than SQ.

P.S. I would also be interested to see the original thread about Japan/China if anybody has a link.

From your link Russell said: "One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision."

He doesn't seem to give smart people credit for seeing value in decisiveness. You can drive yourself crazy with indecision and you don't even have to be smart to figure that out.

Also if this affect applies to SQ then it applies to IQ as well.

First of all, a few scientists that 'convert' to theism from atheism doesn't prove anything. What about the overwhelming majority of them who don't convert? Do you think there is a pattern of only the smartest scientists seeing the truth? Well, that is not the case. A huge percentage of the most successful scientists in the past 100 years have been and are atheists.

The interview itself shocked me. I would understand somebody like Bill Donohue making these claims, but how can a scientist be so ignorant when it comes to evolution? How can a scientist reject a theory, without being even remotely familiar with its claims?

This morality issue has been explained so many times before: genes ARE NOT conscious agents. They can't 'reason' what's good for them on-line, they just act the way they have always acted (for millions of years, unless they mutate). One reason altruistic genes are selected is because when you help another member of your species, that member shares a significant number of your genes. The closer that member is to you (a relative), the more genes you two share, therefore the more you contribute for your own genes when saving that person from drowning. So, genes again succeed in being selfish. They don't care about the particular body they live in, all they 'care' about is their own survival (but again, this is not a purposeful process; the whole process of natural selection is a self-organizing one).

Richard Dawkins discusses these issues in detail in his books.

And finally, even if evolution really couldn't explain morality, does it mean we should use that 'gap' again, to assert a supernatural being who makes us moral? Of course not. Same good old fallacy again. If theory A (evolution) can't explain phenomenon X, theory B (theism) wins by default. I lol at this. The lack of success of one theory is not evidence for another theory. You need positive evidence for god, not gaps in science to fill with him.

No, it doesn't. IQ is measured objectively. The tests (with all their downsides) are standardized, their validity and reliability (the statistical terms) tested. The thing you posted has none of these.

I will repeat: SQ is asserted without empirical evidence. Nothing like this happens in the field of experimental psychology. I will correct my point from a few posts ago, because I am not an expert in all fields of science (e.g., physics), so I will talk about psychology. I have made publications myself and I can tell you both from personal experience and from what others encounter: when you attempt to publish something, the reviewers can be real 'monsters' sometimes. You have to have justified everything in your paper. No blank assertions. Especially when you're publishing in journals (rather than conferences), where all important new theories are introduced.

Try finding anything positive about SQ in ANY scientific psychological journal
(good luck).