Boys, boys, just pat Clovis on the head for being way too smart to believe in fairies and move on.

It's convenient to poke fun at Christians on the internet because they aren't as likely to fight back. Turn that other cheek, brother!

Religions throughout history have been used and abused by powerful people to justify all manner of terrible things. By and large, the people who adhere to them have not done so with dark hearts and malicious intent. Making broad declarations and judgments by cherrypicking certain passages from the holy books of the world's most popular religions would be like judging Clovis8's contribution to society based solely on the things he's done while not wearing any pants.

I can't speak for Clovis, but I've gotten a lot of compliments on the stuff I get done while not wearing pants.

Results will most certainly vary from person to person. For your average person though, there have been some real questionable decisions made while pantless.

Cherry-picking is a term used when one chooses a few things from many, not when one chooses anything at random from a group of things.

The idea that there are just a few bad ideas in a sea of good religious ones is pure nonsense. There are very few, highly rare, good religious ideas, most of which don’t originate in religion but were coopted to mask the awful ones.

define good. there're plenty of stories that effectively convey meaning that would still resonate with modern thinkers because there're aspects of human relationships that are timeless. they just need to trim it down and rewrite the shitty parts. maybe make it a movie or something. Keanu reaves as jesus perhaps?

If you look back to your first quote, second to last sentence of the second paragraph, I explain my issue with MH. I brought up college because he pretends to be an expert in the field of science and calls people out. Here I was qualifying why I didn't believe he went to college bc it was relevant and supported my argument. I agree college is nothing special, but if you make the claims MH does about "knowing all the science" and "you don't even have a science background" then yea, I'd call him out if I didn't think he went, as it is necessary in STEM, while not so much in other majors. But I would never insult someone for not going to college. There are several external factors that could lead to one not going that has nothing to do with intelligence. But admonishing someone for not having credentials when he has none is ludicrous.

Maybe satirizing would be a better word. I spelled out my strategy against someone who speaks in absolutes. If someone says all apples are red, and I bring a green apple, then they are effectively proved wrong. I do not have to prove there are no red apples, or that most apples are green.

On whether I agree or disagree with the premise. I don't really have an opinion on religiosity and intelligence. I would have to hear how it connects to the original post that led to the discussion. Even if he proved without a shadow of a doubt that there is a direct correlation between IQ and religiosity, there was no connection made between that and OP for me to agree or disagree with. If MH had made the argument that there have been studies that correlate IQ and religiosity and that people with lower IQs tend to be less educated and less educated people tend to be more easily tricked by politicians, then yes I would say that is a valid argument. But no such connections were made. There is nothing really for me to agree or disagree with except the study itself which I would not bother to read because it wasn't being connected to OP. There are a million papers one could read, I wouldn't read one I have no interest in just for shits and giggles, or try to make other peoples arguments for them. And I definitely don't think going down the rabbit hole with MH on his most recent revelation is a venture worth taking.

If you really want my opinion, I think that there are just some people who need to take the red pill. I'm not sure what the reason would be that people with higher IQs would tend to be less religious. Maybe people with higher IQs tend to be less religious because they also tend to be less social, and community is a large part of religion. Maybe its because people with higher IQs tend to go to college to a higher degree and college is a natural progression to questioning one's beliefs and meeting others who question yours and their own, and not necessarily a product of higher IQ. It's worth mentioning that the updated study correlates analytical ability, rather than IQ, to religiosity. But I personally think religion has served great purpose in advancing society. It could very well still be relevant today. An atheist might look at religion and think they do not need it to be moral and do good. They can take the good and leave the bad and they do not need a heaven, hell or a flying spaghetti monster to tell them right from wrong. But even an atheist in the 21st century receives some form of morality from the religions of their culture, by having religion be an example of what to do and what not to do, as demonstrated by the long list of bad things that Clovis8 mentioned religious people have done. It's a complicated subject. Maybe this is just a way for me to justify something that is out of my control and would just infuriate me if I didn't. I'm not sure. But I don't think it is right to dismiss all the opinions of someone just because they are religious. Hopefully we can agree to stop talking IQ wrt religiosity and MH since he has decided to temp-ban himself and we can continue with the discussion pre-derail.

people seem to be missing that religion has emerged across cultures and across time. We actually think, conceptualize, abstract, etc religiously. I find it amusing to observe the far left activist types claim atheism and then mock religion. Everything about their thinking, behavior, and ideological possession is religious behavior. They just don't call it a religion.

anyone want to give a history lesson on the biggest monsters/worst regimes in the last century and its relation to formal religion? When traditional religions were dismissed or minimized, did something more moral/"logical" emerge?

Kind of impressive one post could simultaneously show a poor understanding of anthropology, religious history, epistemology and cognitive psychology. Well done sir.

To be fair, this is a thread on conservative principles and a biggie is having little to no idea how the world actually works.

I look forward to your explanation of "how the world actually works."

Lots of Yikes in this thread.

and yikes

An honest conservative would be able to admit among their principles is dumbing down society as much as possible, for obvious reasons. Couldn’t really find an appropriate thread so this seemed like the best fit. LOL GOP forever and ever.


"Every Republican in the House supported the bill. It now moves to the Republican-controlled Senate."


https://abcnews4.com/news/nation-wor...ue-to-religion

Religion is usually defined as something ala "organized practices related to supernatural phenomena". I'm unsure of how you take to apply to cognition. I certainly don't see how you can claim it pertains to the cognition of everyone else.

In terms of psychology there is certainly no basis for the "We actually think, conceptualize, abstract, etc religiously". The biggest reasons are of course that "religion" is not one thing, it is not really a term we apply to cognition and there are really not any way (that I know of) to measure "thinking religiously". There are some studies that show certain brain firings when engaged in specific religious practices, but I don't really get how they should apply here. I don't see what "emerges across cultures and across time" has to do with it. So does monarchy, it still doesn't make much sense to say ""We actually think, conceptualize, abstract, etc monarchically". Speaking for myself, neither monarchs nor divine events is really something I think about all when making decisions.

I suspect most studies which speak of religiosity use it in a manner which relates to behaviors and / or self-reporting, not guesses about how other people think. Well Named could perhaps chime in if he sees this post, that is a subject he knows better than me.

I read the bill, and there is nothing in it that speaks to science. The bill specifically states that ordinary academic standards shall be maintained for "substance", meaning that if a kid on a science exam says that the moon is made out of cheese, the answer will be marked wrong even if he answers that way on religious grounds.

Typical "fake news".

As a good conservative, I actually read the details and don't just blindly trust dishonest headlines and sound-bites from second-rate journalists.

Edit: And, yes, Fox "News" is often an offender in this respect.

Like any good conservative you simple lie, about everything, all the time.

Section 3320.03 literally says “...and shall not penalize or reward
a student based on the religious content of a students work”.

This after several sections obliterating the separation of church and state by codifying all religious practice at any time and during all school activities.

Juan is on the right track with his assertion that everything is religion. The only thing that might not be religion is getting one's worldview from King of Queens reruns like my dad. But even then there are elements of faith involved.
But if the "science believers" (and you can count me as one of those) actually believed in science as much as they say they do, then atheism becomes a tough sell. This is because materialism is dead. And I'd say it's been dead for at least the last 50 years, since the formulation of Bell's Theorem.
What "science says" about the world is absolutely crazy and ought to drive anyone to question reality. It is said that everything came from nothing, that we are flying through the universe at faster than the speed of light due to the expansion of the universe due to dark matter/energy. And moreover-- that none of what surrounds us is as real as we think it is. That matter only has a 'probability' of existence' and most importantly-- that we cannot separate consciousness from the nature of reality.
For this reason I like to pimp this article in these sorts of discussions: Minding Matter: The closer you look, the more the materialist position appears to rest on shaky metaphysical ground . And people should read it because it's good.
But because our media and educational system eschew any questions that point to anything deeper, we end up with "reality explainer" types who think all of the big picture questions have been answered when they haven't been. It's a worldview that rests on faith as much as any other, but it is unfounded in that they don't even actually believe what their own priests tell them.
Religious types can be just as guilty here in their own ways of course and it's arrogance that's the problem for everyone.

You won’t get any kind of substantive response to this. Lol lagtight.

I have read your links and get the gist of your argument. But I think this is a little bit of hyperbole. We have bridges and airplanes and nuclear bombs and vaccines because science/materialism actually works pretty well in the practical frame of reference, and you have to really ramp up your resolution before things start to get murky.

Most other worldview require a lot of cognitive dissonance at any resolution.

The RGT forum is thataway. Other than that, once "everything is A", A tends to be a completely useless variable.

I suspect both you and Juan are merely doing the mistake of assuming that your personal attitudes and intuition are somehow universal.

Seems like a total non-sequitor. I wasn't the one to start talking about ideas of religion and reductionism here but I'm happy to correct some of the errors that exist.
I don't think the nature of subatomic reality involves my own personal attitudes fwiw but to each their own.

I was being polite, I'll translate: "Everything is religion" is a nonsensical statement without any capacity for transmitting meaning that deflates the English language to worthless pile of junk.

And also, you and Juan are just assuming everybody else thinks like you two do. A common, but bad mistake to make.

True for survey research, in general. Common questions are about affiliation, how often one attends services, how often one prays, how one identifies, etc. Some surveys ask about specific beliefs like creationism.

More qualitative research via interviews, content analysis, ethnography, and so on often gets at what people believe or how they think about various issues, though. For example in our study of ex-Christian deconversion we were interested in part in the patterns in the intellectual process, how people went about answering their doubts, but also how they coped with issues like fear of hell.

How am I thinking everyone thinks like me? I'm not and I know they don't. There isn't anything in that post that should give that impression.

I think you can get close to saying something useful with "everything is social" (for people, at least), and religion is a social phenomenon par excellence. But cf. The note about criticizing Geertz' definition of religion.

The point of my post is that if people (and by people here I'm referring to 'internet smug guy athiest types") actually believed in science like they say they do, then they would think very different things about the nature of reality than they actually do.
But certainly all belief systems including the bankrupt mainstream materialism involve some level of faith/acceptance. It's understandable that people might object to their views being called religious but that can't be helped. Replacing 'religious' with 'socially conditioned' is fine I suppose and mainstream "scientism" works with whichever term.