IQ & Atheism

[Ian Livingston]

> I sincerely like you all.

ibid.

On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 8:52 PM, David Meyer <davidmeyer81 at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> -- Sent from my Palm Pixi
> ________________________________
> Ian Livingston wrote:
>
> Seems apparent to me that either belief system would require, at best,
> a significant gullibility factor. It is just as impossible to
> substantiate the absence of deity in the infinite realm of
> possibilities as it is to verify the presence of it. Intelligence is
> irrelevant, except as it determines, maybe, the extent to which
> arguments provided by others shape your experiential narrative. The
> question comes down to deciding what set of metaphors resonates most
> consistently in your thoughts and sensibilities. The truth of either
> claim is both irrefutable and indefensible, except on grounds of
> faith. It is a question of what is beautiful, which is a subjective
> (or an intersubjective) assessment. As a spiritual anarchist, I pick
> freely from all camps, place my faith in none, and see awesome beauty
> and ghastly horrors everywhere, as well as every shade between. I find
> humanism the most difficult view to subscribe to, though, because
> humans are responsible for all the greatest atrocities and only a
> handful of sublime contributions.
>
>
> On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 5:22 PM, alice wellintown
> <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I admit that I'm not smart enough to claim atheism. A product of the
>> secularizing academy my agnostic angel does often wrestle with my
>> Jacob.
>>
>> The great world religions continue to govern the way in which the
>> majority of human beings understand things, and guide their lives.
>> This is a fact that can not be simply attributed to ignorance or
>> stupidity,  or to tradition,  or power,  or history, or even a
>> combination of these.
>>
>> That so many of the faithful are smart, intelligent, creative,
>> brilliant individuals, in fact one could make of list of brilliant
>> people who govern their lives by the teachings of one religion or
>> another, seems to belie the lie given.
>>
>> It's a little more complex than religious folk are dumb.
>>
>> Huck aint religious, but he does decide that Jim is white after Jim
>> does what white Christians in the South are supposed to do but often
>> fail to. There are good and smart religious folk and there are bad and
>> dumb atheists with college degrees. As Forrest Gump sez, "Einstein
>> said we can get from A to B with logic, but to get everywhere else, we
>> need to imagine." Or something like that. Religion, like civilization,
>> I think Freud said this, "Is man's invention, but he made it up for
>> some pretty damn good reasons." Maybe those reasons no longer justify
>> religion's influence on the lives of the majority of humans. Or maybe,
>> we're all black on the inside.
>>
>>
>> "I set down one time back in the woods, and had a long think about it.
>> I says to myself, if a body can get anything they pray for, why don't
>> Deacon Winn get back the money he lost on pork? Why can't the widow
>> get back her silver snuffbox that was stole? Why can't Miss Watson fat
>> up? No, says I to my self, there ain't nothing in it. I went and told
>> the widow about it, and she said the thing a body could get by praying
>> for it was "spiritual gifts." This was too many for me, but she told
>> me what she meant -- I must help other people, and do everything I
>> could for other people, and look out for them all the time, and never
>> think about myself. This was including Miss Watson, as I took it. I
>> went out in the woods and turned it over in my mind a long time, but I
>> couldn't see no advantage about it -- except for the other people; so
>> at last I reckoned I wouldn't worry about it any more, but just let it
>> go."
>>
>>  "Well, den, dis is de way it look to me, Huck. Ef it wuz him dat 'uz
>> bein' sot free, en one er de boys wuz to git shot, would he say, 'Go
>> on en save me, nemmine 'bout a doctor f'r to save dis one? Is dat like
>> Mars Tom Sawyer? Would he say dat? You bet he wouldn't! Well, den, is
>> Jim gwyne to say it? No, sah- I doan' budge a step out'n dis place,
>> 'dout a doctor; not if it's forty year!"
>>
>> I knowed he was white inside, and I reckoned he'd say what he did say.
>>
>
>
>
> --
> "liber enim librum aperit."
>



-- 
"liber enim librum aperit."