and what is your explanation for that?
Are you preying on the desperation of a human who wants to live, to try and say they aren't really atheists?
No, you haven't. I debunked most of your posts, Galileo, Descartes, Bacon, DaVinci, etc.
and secondly, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, there are exceptions to everything. Hitler was a Christian. So what?
The large majority do not believe in a god, no matter if Newton did. There are many others who don't.
Pasteur didn't practice religion like you do. His idea of a God was much more abstract and not specifically oriented.
quote http://www.gradesaver.com/the-philos...gious-beliefs/
"The religious beliefs of René Descartes have been rigorously debated within scholarly circles. He claimed to be a devout Roman Catholic, claiming that one of the purposes of the Meditations was to defend the Christian faith. However, in his own era, Descartes was accused of harboring secret deist or atheist beliefs. Contemporary Blaise Pascal said that "I cannot forgive Descartes; in all his philosophy, Descartes did his best to dispense with God. But Descartes could not avoid prodding God to set the world in motion with a snap of his lordly fingers; after that, he had no more use for God."
Using Descartes as definitive proof of an intelligent man who believed in a God is dishonest.
Many men of his time had to play by the rules, or be killed by the Church.
Shall we go back to the first article posted-- this is its claim:
First, I would like to see the data that indicates that academic professors indeed have higher IQ's than not only the general public, but also other groups, such as physicians or attorneys. If those other groups have higher IQ's, then what is their status of belief?Professor Lynn, who has provoked controversy in the past with research linking intelligence to race and sex, said university academics were less likely to believe in God than almost anyone else...
He told Times Higher Education magazine: "Why should fewer academics believe in God than the general population? I believe it is simply a matter of the IQ. Academics have higher IQs than the general population.
Next, if statistically true, one would then have to prove that this factor and this factor alone is what drives them to have less faith and not for example, the academic community itself.
About two-thirds of scientists believe in God, according to a new survey that uncovered stark differences based on the type of research they do.
The study, along with another one released in June, would appear to debunk the oft-held notion that science is incompatible with religion.
Those in the social sciences are more likely to believe in God and attend religious services than researchers in the natural sciences, the study found.
Nearly 38 percent of natural scientists -- people in disciplines like physics, chemistry and biology -- said they do not believe in God. Only 31 percent of the social scientists do not believe.
In the new study, Rice University sociologist Elaine Howard Ecklund surveyed 1,646 faculty members at elite research universities, asking 36 questions about belief and spiritual practices...
In separate work at the University of Chicago, released in June, 76 percent of doctors said they believed in God and 59 percent believe in some sort of afterlife...
http://www.livescience.com/strangene...tists_god.html
Even if a greater percentage of "more intelligent" people are atheists than the general public, it is still a far cry from most of them being atheists. The majority are still people of faith in God.
LOL @ calling sociologists scientists.
The original poster cited an article about academicians- not scientists.
And, yes, they included social sciences and natural sciences, and the data are not that far off between the two. Both groups still show a minority (1/3) who do not believe in God.
Yeah, the seven percent of Scientists was my misreading. But here are some other quotes from the first article ploto left out:
"A separate poll in the 90s found only seven per cent of members of the American National Academy of Sciences believed in God."
"A survey of Royal Society fellows found that only 3.3 per cent believed in God - at a time when 68.5 per cent of the general UK population described themselves as believers."
From the last study:
"It is suggested that IQ makes an individual likely to gravitate toward a denomination and level of achievement that best fit his or hers particular level of cognitive complexity."
durrrrrrrrr...................
Ateists r dum.
The smartest people ever do ented were believers of God. This seems to be a very unintelligent and extremely bias study.
Why was this study even necessary, this phenomenon is very obvious...
someone actually paid for this study ? people with higher IQ's also tend to be more educated and secular.
the implication that there is some physiological correlation between faith and reason is in itself a metaphysical assertion. why this study decided to take a leap back in time to the days of logical positivism is beyond me.
another unecessary and repe ive study in the halls of the psychology/pseudo-science department.
by the way, there have been studies using fMRI imaging that have actually indicated people who claim to be agnostic have more belief than they suggest in surveys.
I always loved this clip. "Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawd."
I would bet that, out of all athiests, a higher percentage of them are "converted" athiests (i.e. they were not raised athiest) than the percentage of religious people who came from a non-religious upbringing.
And of those athiests who were raised in athiest households, I would bet a significant portion of them are only 2nd-generation athiests.
Here's what I'm getting at... I believe it takes a certain amount of mental for ude to question and/or reject the assumptions you were raised on. The pool of religious people is watered down with people who subscribe to their religion simply because it's what they've always believed and have never really questioned it. Unintelligent people are more likely to do this, and because there are MORE religious people than not, those people are more LIKELY to be religious than not.
I would be (more, but still not very) interested to see this study examine the average IQ's of athiests vs. "converted" religious people... people who became religious after being raised in non-religious households (or households of another religion).
this sounds like an argument based on faith. j/k.
Well then go on... don't stop there.
Nicolaus Copernicus - just because he was persecuted by the Vatican does not mean he wasn't a believer.
Johannes Kepler - One of the Fathers of Modern Astronomy
Louis Pasteur - Father of Microbiology
Gregor Mendel - Father of Modern Genetics
Michael Faraday - Distinguished Physicist
Blaise Pascal - Distinguished Mathematician
Sir Isaac Newton - Father of Calculus and Physics (without him the modern scientific era doesn't unfold)
Carolus Linnaeus - Father of Taxonomy
Leonhard Euler - Distinguished Mathematician and Physicist
Niels Bohr – The Atom, need I say more...
John Dalton – Distinguished Chemist
James Clerk Maxwell - Father of Electromagnetism
William Thomson "Lord" Kelvin - Father of Thermodynamics - Distinguished Physicist
Linus Pauling – Revolutionized the World of Chemistry
Werner Heisenberg – Father of Quantum Theory
Max Planck - Distinguished Physicist – Co-father of Quantum Theory
Enrico Fermi - Distinguished Physicist
John Ambrose Fleming - Distinguished Mathematician and Physicist
J. Robert Oppenheimer – Distinguished Physicist
Alexander Fleming – Discovery of Penicillin
Sir Robert Boyd - Distinguished Astrophysicist
Albert Einstein - Einstein is probably the best known and most highly revered scientist of the twentieth century, and is associated with major revolutions in our thinking about time, gravity, and the conversion of matter to energy (E=mc2). Although never coming to belief in a personal God, he recognized the impossibility of a non-created universe. The Encyclopedia Britannica says of him: "Firmly denying atheism, Einstein expressed a belief in "Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the harmony of what exists." Much like Isaac Newton (more on him below), this belief actually motivated his interest in science, as he once remarked to a young physicist: "I want to know how God created this world, I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details." Einstein's famous epithet on the "uncertainty principle" was "God does not play dice" - and to him this was a real statement about a God in whom he believed… My favorite quote of his was "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
I think that what really bothers many of you is having to admit that ‘science’ and what we now know as the ‘scientific process’ were largely invented by ‘religious’ people (and especially Christians)… Most branches of science were developed by Christians, even if schoolbooks abstain from mentioning such details… Furthermore, you all seem to strongly gravitate away from the idea that scientists can in fact be believers (this thread wreaks of it). But you all wouldn’t have such a hard time reconciling the two positions if you would only accept the fact that numerous professors and scientific leaders worldwide today are Christians... Either way, these facts make the statements that claim that science and Christianity are enemies as being absolutely false and extremely unfair distortions of history and the present.
It is also a fact that Christian scientists often publish in respected journals, but if they write about ‘creation’ or something ‘religious,’ even if it’s rigorously testable scientifically, it’s almost always censored and banned from publication just like those who think of alternative theories to the Big Bang (even if not Christian) are censored and usually not allowed much freedom to publish. We never think of our free press being censored, but it is in several areas and especially in reference to the relationship between science and faith...
Unfortunately, some Christians have reacted to this ridicule with ridicule of their own. This has just hardened each camp in its position and greatly hindered progress and true scientific knowledge. I am trying hard to avoid this because I know and have met many very sincere atheists and evolutionists who want to understand what is true and accurate and follow it. There are many atheists and evolutionists who have contributed important things to science and they are dedicated and want to do good things for human beings. But, they have serious philosophical questions that make belief in God difficult for them and this should be respected and everyone should be allowed the freedom to theorize and try to prove their theories. So, I have much respect for those who search for truth and really try to be objective even if that means giving up a worldview or theory that they have held for a long time. This deserves much respect.
That said, it cannot help the truth to intentionally distort history and posit the idea that Christians are intellectually inferior, simply because of their Christian beliefs...
He most definitely was not... FAIL. Or are you trying to make a Bill Maher-like argument here? Maher recently suggested that Stalin established a “state religion” while building his case against ‘religion’ only to conveniently lambast Christians for it? Talk about blinders… and revisionism… Stalin pushed one of the most devastating atheistic movements in the history of mankind. And as I stated in another thread, more than 40 million people lost their lives in opposition.
Except that you are conveniently minimizing who Newton was and what he represented… Isaac Newton is arguably one of the 10 most influential people of all time.
As an aside, in today’s age, scientists who openly embrace faith are blackballed by academic publishers… For that reason alone, I will always doubt the validity of such surveys/studies… if you can even call them that… these surveys do nothing more than propagate the notion that belief in GOD is tantamount to idiocy. Ironically these ‘studies’ do a great disservice to the virtues of scientific process they are trying to endorse…
So then you are saying he wasn’t a believer? Either he was or he wasn’t… clearly his writings show that he was. He just happened to take the position that many other great Deists, including Einstein, chose to follow. They believed in GOD regardless.
And using this as an argument against the supposed lack of intelligence in believers is a reach… and you know it.
now attack ad infinitum... you've never been one to concede on anything, much less admit to erring.
Last edited by Phenomanul; 06-01-2010 at 04:44 PM.
.
I find it ironic that these articles seem to have such little actual proof to support their conclusions.
I believe it is simply a matter of the IQ.It is suggested that IQ makes an individual likely to...
So some famous smart guys believed in God...whooptee doo...they also lived in a time where technology was archaic by today's standards. If they had all the knowledge and resources we do now, I guarantee every single one of them would be an atheist.
And Descartes argument that God exists solely on the basis that he is a conceivable idea is ing stupid.
Technology, knowledge, and resources only do so much. You can understand and take as sound that the mechanism of evolution works, and each day seems to bring us closer to understanding how it works, but that doesn't explain why it works. Why do forces allow matter to cohere, to provide conditions for life, for that life to propagate?
I'm not saying this to suggest that atheists don't confront these questions just as much as religious people do, but more that these questions haven't gone away despite quantum leaps in our understanding of the how of the world.
if your argument is that all conceivable ideas are essentially precarious assertions, then you have reduced all truth to mere tautology (admiral referred to this in his post as well) and even then such truth would be categorical, at best, since it would be dependent upon cognizant perception. so, you have essentially handicapped such natural sciences as theoretical physics and math in the process.
as to your first premise, the glaringly obvious weakness is that it would take just one contrarian to render the premise invalid and any following conclusions unsound. or perhaps i just confused a mere opinion as a poor syllogism.
The only interesting thing in this thread.
My father was agnostic, so all the self-confidence Ive built over the years regarding my contrarian nature towards organized religion and God Himself just got tossed out the window.
I am now a hollow follower where I once believed otherwise, if your theory stands the test.
you, Spurm.
Translation: I'm trying to sound really smart while not dismissing anything you posted in the first place.
Nah I'm jerkin ya, that was a very well put together response, though I don't feel like you particularly addressed anything.
1. I'm not making an argument that "all conceivable ideas are essentially precarious assertions." Have you looked at Descartes argument for why he believes in God? Because it is a conceivable idea that couldn't have come from nowhere, so therefore God must exist because he can be personified or conceived. That is completely stupid. I can envision and comprehend the idea of a magical monster made of spaghetti and whatnot, but that doesn't make it real.
My original point was that these geniuses didn't have the understanding of things like we do now. It's not a coincidence that the vast majority of scientists/physicists/whatever are atheists and the big bang is pretty much accepted as fact in the scientific world. You cannot argue the conditions of today wouldn't affect their understanding or perception of reality and it would probably tip their faith into the favor of atheism. That's all I'm sayin.
it depends on what you believe in n lvl of tolerance willing to listen and learn the different aspects from different cultures and nationalities in what they believe in.
descartes was a rationalist who did not trust the senses and was more inclined to argue on the behalf of an idea based on reason. your idea of a spaghetti monster is not necessarily the best analogy because it does not meet the definition of a perfect being but if your point is that god is a subjective en y then that is more valid. however, as the logical positivists found out, presupposing that empirically and/or analytically verifiable assertions are the only meaningful ones is in itself a metaphysical assertion. of course that leaves us with the senses as the sole measure of verifiability but then even that runs into issues, both philosophically (berkeley for instance) and scientifically (heisenberg uncertainty principle).Translation: I'm trying to sound really smart while not dismissing anything you posted in the first place.
Nah I'm jerkin ya, that was a very well put together response, though I don't feel like you particularly addressed anything.
1. I'm not making an argument that "all conceivable ideas are essentially precarious assertions." Have you looked at Descartes argument for why he believes in God? Because it is a conceivable idea that couldn't have come from nowhere, so therefore God must exist because he can be personified or conceived. That is completely stupid. I can envision and comprehend the idea of a magical monster made of spaghetti and whatnot, but that doesn't make it real.
My original point was that these geniuses didn't have the understanding of things like we do now. It's not a coincidence that the vast majority of scientists/physicists/whatever are atheists and the big bang is pretty much accepted as fact in the scientific world. You cannot argue the conditions of today wouldn't affect their understanding or perception of reality and it would probably tip their faith into the favor of atheism. That's all I'm sayin.
as to the old big bang theory, that is running into a lot of issues these days. ergo, the emergence of such wild cosmological notions as multiverses or even the notion that this universe emerged from the worm hole of a larger "mother" universe. the fact that the universe is expanding at a faster rate than the big bang predicted it should is one of the reasons that scientists are so intrigued by dark matter. of course one can not just postulate that the universe is indeed "fine tuned" because that would be unscientific. it just seems that the more one finds the more mystery one discovers.
also, one should not dismiss the more abstract notions of the past merely because they lacked the technology of our times. leibniz and spinoza are not only prevalent in the world of math today but are also being utilized, conceptually speaking, in the world of theoretical physics as well. and the mayan calendar, created almost 500 years before that of the computer based calendar of NASA, was far more accurate than any european model that had to use tricks such as the leap year in order to work.
but i do get the gist that the scientific community tends to be less religious than it was centuries ago. they also tend to be far less philosophical and pragmatic. does this mean practicality was a recent development of the intellect or that philosophy is an atavistic trait of the scientific mind?
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