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Originally posted by Renegade There's a difference between real, testable and verifiable faith and completely blind faith. Everytime I've thrown a ball up in the air it's fallen to the ground, so my "faith" that it will fall the next time as well is grounded in demonstrable experience. The faith people have that God exists and created the world in seven days is not grounded in any sort of verifiable, objective reality at all and so cannot be compared to the sort of "faith" we have in the empirically verified tennets of gravity.

people didn't make God up, if you know the history behind it and shit, God came to Abraham himself. A person who didn't himself believe in one diety. But that's besides the point. Gravity however is nonexistant on board the international space station. so if you throw a ball up there it'll just keep going. God doesn't know limits of time or days therefore if you look at it this way then it's perfectly normal that it would take him only 6 days. you're derailing this however.

at school alot of my professors in fields of physics and bio are all very spiritual and you cannot seperate science and faith. They look for a way to understand our world not disprove the bible.

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Originally posted by Lepanto people didn't make God up, if you know the history behind it and shit, God came to Abraham himself. A person who didn't himself believe in one diety.

god came to those nuts who killed themselves with koolade before taking that trip on the flying saucer in the sky as well '

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Originally posted by Lepanto But that's besides the point. Gravity however is nonexistant on board the international space station. so if you throw a ball up there it'll just keep going.

not true. the amount of gravity experienced is a great deal less than it would be on earth. and a great deal less on earth than it would be on jupiter. being relative doesnt lessen somethings existance. *cough* theory of relativity *cough*

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Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN where's the proof? they were prolly on the same thing you're on not true. the amount of gravity experienced is a great deal less than it would be on earth. and a great deal less on earth than it would be on jupiter. being relative doesnt lessen somethings existance. *cough* theory of relativity *cough*

hehehehe who said that there's no gravity? he said that the ball would always come down and i said it wouldn't theory of relatvity? ummm ...ok so i guess that's what einstein meant when he wrote it...it was about gravity lol.

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Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN no, becoz asking someone to provide an opinion on a political situation would almost always require some form of previous knowledge to make an adequate assertion. grabbing someone from the middle of the jungle and they are unable to tell you the best course for the US in iraq doesnt prove they are less capable than someone who studied political theory at university. you said as much yourself.

I see your point. But for the sake of argument, let's assume everyone who takes the test is well informed on the subject. Then, it would be an accurate mesure. The religion example is also flawed, because there are a multitude of beliefs that are even less logical and could not be classified under religion. However, my point stands. We should simply say that intelligence is relative to the social situation.

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i totally agree. but being illogical doesnt equate with a lack of intelligence imo. there is more to the make-up of the human condition than just a certain level of intelligence. i have thoughts/feelings all the time that are thoroughly illogical. doesnt mean im stupid. emotion is just as important in our decision making and life choices as our intelligence is.

It doesn't mean you're stupid, but those thoughts and feelings make you do stupid things - hence why I said that a person's intelligence is constantly changing. If you were constantly in that emotional state, then you would be generally less intelligent, because that emotional state impairs your ability to reason. Hence with long-term decisions like religion and political stances. They're not definted by occasional and sporadic spikes of emotion, but by the general (or average) intelligence of a person.

Let me compare it to this; You can be a very intelligent person and say the dumbest things when you're drunk. But if you're drunk 24/7 every week of the year and every year of your life, then you're generally just dumb.

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Originally posted by Lepanto people didn't make God up, if you know the history behind it and shit, God came to Abraham himself.

Wait ... they didn't? You mean there's actual physically documented proof that God visited abraham??? What is it a video? A screenshot perhaps? Fossilized foot print? I must see this convincing evidence!

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Retro ...

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Originally posted by Lepanto people didn't make God up, if you know the history behind it and shit, God came to Abraham himself.

Yes, thank you, I've read the Bible (well... the historical books and the Gospels at least).

It doesn't change what I'm arguing though: even if we could say, with the slightest bit of certainty, that a man name Abraham existed and that he claimed to have made a communion with God (which we can't) the fact remains that we still have no means available by which to validate the existence of this "God". I'm not saying that people just "made-up" the idea of a monotheistic God as it was probably the best, perhaps most rational explanation the people living in the mountains of Isreal 3,000 years ago could have come up with. They had the same questions we still have now, only they didn't centuries of the scientific method to refer back upon to answer these questions. Given the anthropocentric nature of humanity and given that these people had the need to create a force that would allow the scattered refugees of various communities to unite under a common world-view, a monotheistic warrior God was conceived.

I don't think they "made-up" this God, I just think it was a construction that was necessary and in tune with what these people understood (or, rather, didn't understand) about the world, in order to satisfy a present need. Every religion, when you think about it, was constructed with this sort of end in mind.

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Gravity however is nonexistant on board the international space station. so if you throw a ball up there it'll just keep going.

Which is precisely what we'd expect to find if the laws of gravity, as we currently understand them, are true. The laws of gravity don't state that "things will always fall downwards" it states that bodies will be attracted to other bodies of a greater mass. If there is no mass of size to attract the ball in the space-station, then it will "float" rather than fall.

I'm presuming that you understand this already, but - again - I'm just hammering home that fact that gravitational theory has been demonstrated by millenia of verifiable human experience, God has not.

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God doesn't know limits of time or days therefore if you look at it this way then it's perfectly normal that it would take him only 6 days.

What are you basing this on?

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at school alot of my professors in fields of physics and bio are all very spiritual and you cannot seperate science and faith. They look for a way to understand our world not disprove the bible.

There is value in religion and I still think that much can be gained from the reading of religious texts (so long as you're willing to take it all with a grain of salt, that is...). However, the fact remains that there is no possible way that the existence of God (as you've defined him, as a "being" that "exists" beyond the limits of time and space) can be verified and that the factual accuracy of these religious texts, as a result, can be called into question. I'm not doing this because I'm some sadist who enjoys shitting on the beliefs of others, I'm doing it because I think that my own intellectual integrity demands it.

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Originally posted by Lepanto hehehehe who said that there's no gravity? he said that the ball would always come down and i said it wouldn't theory of relatvity? ummm ...ok so i guess that's what einstein meant when he wrote it...it was about gravity lol.

hehe. im the first to admit that i have no understanding of quantum mechanics. but i still love it to death. someone correct me if im wrong, but in my understanding gravity plays a pivotal role in einstein's theories, including that one. relativity also predicted black holes, THE big name in gravity

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Originally posted by Aquarian It doesn't mean you're stupid, but those thoughts and feelings make you do stupid things - hence why I said that a person's intelligence is constantly changing. If you were constantly in that emotional state, then you would be generally less intelligent, because that emotional state impairs your ability to reason.

i guess i just think intelligence is the brute horsepower youre born with. the CPU if you will. letting something other than logic guide your actions, does not mean (to me), that you arent intelligent. im not saying we can adequately test an IQ, but i think an IQ is inherent, and isnt related to how you use it, but the overall *potential* you have for its use.

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Religion is one of the strongest influences in any culture, Intelligence has nothing to do with religousness. They aren't even directly related. While it is true that it's illogical, the idea of a god is far too powerful to reduce to simple logic.

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Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN i guess i just think intelligence is the brute horsepower youre born with. the CPU if you will. letting something other than logic guide your actions, does not mean (to me), that you arent intelligent. im not saying we can adequately test an IQ, but i think an IQ is inherent, and isnt related to how you use it, but the overall *potential* you have for its use.

That's not exactly false. Intelligence exists as two things: Intelligence by nature (what you are born with, under circumstances of genetics and health), and intelligence by nurture, which is basicly what society has made of you (it's also reffered to as 'incident of birth' in the field of psychology). You consider the first. But the problem with that is that there is no way of mesuring the first, because whatever test results we obtain will have been tainted by the second (because all humans grow up in a social environment). So the only thing we can mesure is the sum of both factors. Someone who had the neurological potential to be the greatest genius of all time could have grown up in a very restraint and conservative environment, and as a result, could have turned out less intelligent than someone who was born with a less-than-average brain but was brought up in a very intellectually stimulating environment.

ill go squeeze nicely onto the fence. i would prob argue that those with a lesser intelligence are more likely to believe in god, but those that believe in god arent necessarily likely to be less intelligent.

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Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN ill go squeeze nicely onto the fence. i would prob argue that those with a lesser intelligence are more likely to believe in god, but those that believe in god arent necessarily likely to be less intelligent.

Thank you!


Aquarian made a good point as well.

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Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN ill go squeeze nicely onto the fence. i would prob argue that those with a lesser intelligence are more likely to believe in god,

If you only consider the brain capacity that you're born with, that makes sense, but...

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but those that believe in god arent necessarily likely to be less intelligent.

It's not an association of religion with lesser intelligence, it's a definition of what intelligence is. They are less intelligent because they are religious. They might have been born with great intellectual potential, but they haven't used all of it. If Jimmi Hendrix had never learned to play the guitar - would you still say that he was a great guitarist? Perhaps in his nature, but certainly not practically.