Christians vs. Non-Christians

[Mr. President]

A degree of validity can be asserted to your point mightypeon. However, the religious leader has always been looked to for guidance so it is of no suprise that many non "Christian" men and woman have cloaked themselves with the facade of religious zeal in order to fan the imbedded fears that already lie with the people of that particular nation or population ie the crusades.

Now in order to solidify your arguement we would need an in depth analysis. Let us say that some of the people who say they are Christian say it simply because it is the status quo of society. Can we make a generalized estimation on the level of their IQ based on their religious preference alone?

In the same token if some of the people claiming to be athiest are simply saying that because it is not the status quo and is a means of differentiating themselves; can we draw a near accurate assessment of the IQ of these subjects?

No; the reason being is because since religion is a personal choice the reasoning behind the religious preference may not be as philisophical as one would hope. Instead it may be a way of attempting to coincide with what is percieved as normality. Still yet it may also be a display of rebellion and truly have nothing to do with philosophy or the religion itself.

 

[AllieBaba]

Let me give you some examples here:

"The Jews deserve to be hanged on gallows, seven times higher than ordinary thieves,"
"We ought to take revenge on the Jews and kill them."
"Ungodly wretches"

Thats not Mein Kampf,
That is Table Talk (Tischgespräche) by Martin Luther.

And I've seen things very like that posted here, about Christians (evangelists, whatever).

 

[Richard-H]

Just a point about Stalin - he was from long before he came to be leader of the Soviet Union, a very sick and violent man. Lenin loethed him. Unfortunately, Stalin's gangster tactics are what financed the Bulshevik movement and Lenin had to deal with him.

But even worse than he, his right hand man, Beria (sp?) was the guy who did all the killing. Kruschev arrested and executed Beria in a surprise coup after Stalin's death.

I don't think that atheist's should be judged by Stalin as a standard. But if you did include Stalin in the Statistics it would make atheists competitive with Christian in the category of brutality and murder

 

[Gunny]

Just a point about Stalin - he was from long before he came to be leader of the Soviet Union, a very sick and violent man. Lenin loethed him. Unfortunately, Stalin's gangster tactics are what financed the Bulshevik movement and Lenin had to deal with him.

But even worse than he, his right hand man, Beria (sp?) was the guy who did all the killing. Kruschev arrested and executed Beria in a surprise coup after Stalin's death.

I don't think that atheist's should be judged by Stalin as a standard. But if you did include Stalin in the Statistics it would make atheists competitive with Christian in the category of brutality and murder

People kill in the name of whatever comes handy to them. The US killed in the name of Manifest Destiny. Hitler, Mussolini and countless others killed in the names of their countries. The Catholic Church killed in the name of Christ. Jim Jones killed in the name of Christ. Islamic extremists kill in the name of Islam.

In every case, it is not the religion/nation/belief that is at fault. It's the people misusing it and convincing people that it is okay to kill in the name of _____.

Christianity does not advocate murder. Atheism, as far as I know does not advocate murder. Citizenship in a nation does not advocate murder.

Religion is like politics. People can't keep their loud mouthes shut and not try to force their beliefs on others. Shit would be too easy if we did.

 

[Richard-H]

Most religious people are very nice peaceful people, but organized religion is used as tool by the elite in societies to manipulate the common people into feeling a moral imperative to war against other people.

These elite just can't say: "Hey those other people raised the price of wheat on me, now I can't make the profit, that I'd like, by selling it to you, and if I raise the price of wheat on you, you'll probably go into a rebellion"

Sooo, instead they use religion as a tool to convince the common people that the nasty wheat sellers are fundamentally immoral people, in fact, so immoral that if you don't go and kill them your very soul will be in jeoperdy. And they of course get the land that the wheat was grown on.

The way they do this is to structure organized religion in such a way as to obsure the basics of moral behavior by emphasizing cosmic beliefs (the nature of God) as well as obedience and believing whatever your told: Blind faith. People who are not obedient and do not have blind faith are evil and rejected from their own society.

The incredible thing is that the basics of moral behavior (how people treat other people), which are common to almost all religions, are all but forgotten. Conveniently rationalized away - a simple confession/contrition and all is forgotten. But the cosmic aspects, which no one can know and which differentiate one religion from another are emphasized.

Who knows if Jesus was God? No one. Was Mohammud a prophet sent by God or the devil? Nobody knows. Yet these are the fundamental reason why people and societies are divided.

Martin Luther's break with the Catholic church came down to a question of whether Jesus was impuned vs. infused with the spirit of God. Good reason for a war, huh? Yet the economic and politics of the time were ripe for a division between Germany and Italy.

The brutality of the middle ages came to an end (somewhat), with the age of reason - the enlightenment.

But reason rejects 'belief' and blind faith. Organized religion defies reason, or at least, demands a baseline acceptance by faith, before reason can be employed. This makes fertile ground for the elite to prey.

 

[Inferno]

Most of the Nazi high command was Christian. I guess I would prefer a country full of non christians.

 

[mightypeon]

A degree of validity can be asserted to your point mightypeon. However, the religious leader has always been looked to for guidance so it is of no suprise that many non "Christian" men and woman have cloaked themselves with the facade of religious zeal in order to fan the imbedded fears that already lie with the people of that particular nation or population ie the crusades.

Now in order to solidify your arguement we would need an in depth analysis. Let us say that some of the people who say they are Christian say it simply because it is the status quo of society. Can we make a generalized estimation on the level of their IQ based on their religious preference alone?

In the same token if some of the people claiming to be athiest are simply saying that because it is not the status quo and is a means of differentiating themselves; can we draw a near accurate assessment of the IQ of these subjects?

No; the reason being is because since religion is a personal choice the reasoning behind the religious preference may not be as philisophical as one would hope. Instead it may be a way of attempting to coincide with what is percieved as normality. Still yet it may also be a display of rebellion and truly have nothing to do with philosophy or the religion itself.

My point was: Someone with a strong religious preference who never changed this preference on a freel will can be either smart, normal or dumb, so he can come from the full spectrum of the population.
Discarding ones religion in favor of another system requires a significant amount of doubt. To be able to doubt, one needs a working brain.
So someone who did just that is either normal or smart.
I see active, non missionary influenced conversion as something that should filter out low IQ persons. Assuming that the majority of the atheist population converted into beeing an atheist/agnostican (I was raised in east Germany, land of 84% atheists so that would not be true for me) would lead to the point that atheists should have less low IQ persons than the normal population leading to a higher average IQ. Obviously, someone who, on his own will, converts from something else into christianity can claim the same effect for himself. However, due to the fact that the Christian population is more made of "born" christians and missionarised ones, the effect would not affect christianity as much.


That said, there are more important (confounding) things when trying to guess a persons total intelligence than his religiuos beliefs, like Wealth, the education of his parents his own access to education and other things.
It has been shown that poor living conditions drastically correllate with religiuosity, with the US beeing the big outlier, a significant part of the "atheists are smart" thing may come from the "no atheists in really poor and populous countries" thing that is much better established.
Also just knowing that someone is an atheist does not neccessesary mean that this person converted to it.

 

[editec]

The only way to know whether this is true is to do a statistical study taken from the general population.

My suspicion is that levels of education, rather than simply IQ, might be a deciding factor in prevalence of atheism.

I suspect that higher levels of educational attainment probably do correlate with higher incidences of atheism.

I ALSO suspect that you'll find a far higher incidence of agnostism than atheism in the best educated among us.

Its take as much faith to be a committed atheist as it takes faith to be a committed believer.

 

[mightypeon]

How are you going to seperate Education from IQ? Likely a statistic nightmare.

 

[Mr. President]

I see your point editec however, if we go into seperation of iq and education we may also have to go into field of education and if each field of education differs we would have to look at why that field of education was chosen and see if that reasoning may have impacted why they chose that field. Or if they chose the field because of their beliefs thus leading us back to the question what is the basis for their Agnostic, Athiest, or Christian view. Or like mightypeon put it a statistical nightmare.

Mightypeon as per the issue at hand i dont think there can be a logical conclusion drawn in relation of iq and education. There are far to many variables to link either to religion or vice versa.

 

[ABikerSailor]

Well, you know, most of the Christians and "true believers" today are kinda confused and take a VERY narrow view of the world. And, there are some that take a narrow view on the outside, yet in private go and do the very things they speak out against. Ted Haggard is a good example of that one, and Fred Phelps is a great example of the first. I've found that the more "devout" people are, the less they are willing to look around and see how the world really operates. A good example of that is the "intelligent design" folks, who tell us that the Bible is the truth, it is literal, and dinosaurs and man co-existed on the planet at one time. Is that true? Nope, G-d does NOT operate under the same timelines and rules that man does.

My personal opinion? Uniting science AND theology is the only way to do it. I believe it was Albert Einstein who said "Science without theology is crippled, and theology without science is blind". If you were to talk to a rabbi sometime about the Torah, you would find out that it was written over 3,500 years ago, and there are things referred to in there that are just now being discovered by science.

I've also found that there are a lot of Christians out there who consider themselves to be reasonable people, but, when you ask them why something works, they simply say "G-d did it". They don't bother to find out WHY He set up the rules as they did.

But....you can go too far in the other direction also, because if you simply believe in science only, a lot of people start to convince themselves that there is no G-d. However.....ask anyone who is in the higher sciences if they believe in G-d, and most of them will give you a resounding yes. Astrophysicists, scientists, and biologists are mostly believers.

 

[AllieBaba]

Well, you know, most of the Christians and "true believers" today are kinda confused and take a VERY narrow view of the world. And, there are some that take a narrow view on the outside, yet in private go and do the very things they speak out against. Ted Haggard is a good example of that one, and Fred Phelps is a great example of the first. I've found that the more "devout" people are, the less they are willing to look around and see how the world really operates. A good example of that is the "intelligent design" folks, who tell us that the Bible is the truth, it is literal, and dinosaurs and man co-existed on the planet at one time. Is that true? Nope, G-d does NOT operate under the same timelines and rules that man does.

My personal opinion? Uniting science AND theology is the only way to do it. I believe it was Albert Einstein who said "Science without theology is crippled, and theology without science is blind". If you were to talk to a rabbi sometime about the Torah, you would find out that it was written over 3,500 years ago, and there are things referred to in there that are just now being discovered by science.

I've also found that there are a lot of Christians out there who consider themselves to be reasonable people, but, when you ask them why something works, they simply say "G-d did it". They don't bother to find out WHY He set up the rules as they did.

But....you can go too far in the other direction also, because if you simply believe in science only, a lot of people start to convince themselves that there is no G-d. However.....ask anyone who is in the higher sciences if they believe in G-d, and most of them will give you a resounding yes. Astrophysicists, scientists, and biologists are mostly believers.

I love it when people who don 't believe, aren't educated about Christianity or the bible, and who take a narrow view of Christians accuse Christians of being confused and narrow.

 

[ABikerSailor]

Ummmm....I know that I'm kinda new here, but hey, Allie, you may wish to re-think yourself when you say that a person isn't a believer. I originally started out as a Christian when I was younger, but, with all the foster families that I was in (of which many were religious fanatics), I became disenchanted with Christianity, because of all the hypocrites that I had to live with.

When I joined the Navy, although I wasn't a "christian" anymore, I was still seeking out spirituality. The one that fit me the best was Taoist philosophy. I learned a lot out of that study, and several years later, I saw that Taoist principles could be applied to Christianity, so I took it up again. Several years after that, I met a friend who introduced me to Judaism, and again, I started to use Taoist philosophy as a way to understand it. I then started to learn from Torah Scholars and Rabbis, and started to see where the Christians (especially the Roman Catholics), totally twisted everything up.

So....before you go calling me a non-believer, please take time to get to know me.

 

[mightypeon]

Ummmm....I know that I'm kinda new here, but hey, Allie, you may wish to re-think yourself when you say that a person isn't a believer. I originally started out as a Christian when I was younger, but, with all the foster families that I was in (of which many were religious fanatics), I became disenchanted with Christianity, because of all the hypocrites that I had to live with.

When I joined the Navy, although I wasn't a "christian" anymore, I was still seeking out spirituality. The one that fit me the best was Taoist philosophy. I learned a lot out of that study, and several years later, I saw that Taoist principles could be applied to Christianity, so I took it up again. Several years after that, I met a friend who introduced me to Judaism, and again, I started to use Taoist philosophy as a way to understand it. I then started to learn from Torah Scholars and Rabbis, and started to see where the Christians (especially the Roman Catholics), totally twisted everything up.

So....before you go calling me a non-believer, please take time to get to know me.

A bit like me here, grew up atheistic/agnostic, read all major "religios" books, liked Sidharta most (yay, someone who is OK with people disagreeing with him), was shocked about the violence in the old testament (Reading the Old testament has a higher body count than playing Grand Theft Auto, seriously), in the end I sticked with Kant.

 

[editec]

How are you going to seperate Education from IQ? Likely a statistic nightmare.

It's easy to establish levels of educational achievement.

Probably easier than determining people's IQs, frankly.

 

[AllieBaba]

Ummmm....I know that I'm kinda new here, but hey, Allie, you may wish to re-think yourself when you say that a person isn't a believer. I originally started out as a Christian when I was younger, but, with all the foster families that I was in (of which many were religious fanatics), I became disenchanted with Christianity, because of all the hypocrites that I had to live with.

When I joined the Navy, although I wasn't a "christian" anymore, I was still seeking out spirituality. The one that fit me the best was Taoist philosophy. I learned a lot out of that study, and several years later, I saw that Taoist principles could be applied to Christianity, so I took it up again. Several years after that, I met a friend who introduced me to Judaism, and again, I started to use Taoist philosophy as a way to understand it. I then started to learn from Torah Scholars and Rabbis, and started to see where the Christians (especially the Roman Catholics), totally twisted everything up.

So....before you go calling me a non-believer, please take time to get to know me.

Ok, non-Christian, then. And you've said nothing which makes me think you're particularly educated on the subject.

But carry on.

 

[Gunny]

Most of the Nazi high command was Christian. I guess I would prefer a country full of non christians.

The usual lame "Hitler was a Christian" blah, blah. Tell me, were Hitler's ACTIONS Christian? Where his WORDS Christian?

I'll wait for you to provide scripture where Christ advocated Hitler's/Nazi's criminal behavior -- because it IS the criminal behavior you are trying to tie to Christianity.

Otherwise, you're just blowing smoke.

 

[AllieBaba]

As they say, if you claim to be a Christian but don't actually change your life, i.e., REPENT...then there's always the question of whether you were REALLY saved or not.

A question of course which Jesus will sort out later.

 

[ABikerSailor]

Actually Allie, you obviously didn't read my whole post. What part of Christian, Taoist and Jewish do you not get? All 3 are similar, so therefore, I'm part Christian.

Never ceases to amaze me how narrow minded some people can be.

 

[mightypeon]

The usual lame "Hitler was a Christian" blah, blah. Tell me, were Hitler's ACTIONS Christian? Where his WORDS Christian?

I'll wait for you to provide scripture where Christ advocated Hitler's/Nazi's criminal behavior -- because it IS the criminal behavior you are trying to tie to Christianity.

Otherwise, you're just blowing smoke.

About as much as they were atheist.