442 replies to this topic

[snugg]

eye snugg, i was just playing the same card as you did. i dont even care if youre retarded or not, i wouldnt even say such things without making point to those who are actually stupid enough to call other people retarded for their spiritual believes. wether you like it or not you are spirit aswell. youre just not spiritual advanced enough to understand that yet. what you think and believe is what you create for yourself. what we think and believe is what we create for ourselves. true talk, food for thought yo

either that or you've been smoking too much pot. the second seems more likely.

If i get hit by a bus tonight and my brains are all splattered on the floor (i know you like this image), do you really think some magic spirit or consciousness will stay intact?

[doctorfunk]

Well Snugg do you consider Einstein and Newton less intelligent than random atheists for example yourself ^^ ?

[Activee]

einstein wasn't dumb fool !

[maniman]

either that or you've been smoking too much pot. the second seems more likely.

If i get hit by a bus tonight and my brains are all splattered on the floor (i know you like this image), do you really think some magic spirit or consciousness will stay intact?

Yes something like that, there's alot of articles about it and I also read once about a weight that cannot be discovered in the human body.
http://kottke.org/09...of-a-human-soul
I dont believe youre soul stays consciouss though(would be hard without physical apperance 'brain'). You're energy just renews somewhere ellse or smthg i dunno.. But I do believe something has to 'give' life to the body. I dont believe we are just 'body and mind'. Seems pointless to me aswell.

But its not even relevant to me .. life after death or anything like that isnt even the reason why i hold some spiritual believes. im not religious bro im just very spiritual..

if we were just body and mind how come we are all different individuals in the first place? if i put 100 humans in a cage from birth let them live and go thru exactly the same thing(s) they will still be individuals and different from eachother. this could maybe be partly genetic, but only just a part.

just to edit the link i posted here;s a 2nd link
http://www.salem-new...man-soul-bp.php

Again, in 1988 a group of East German Researchers conducted the same experiment on over 200 terminally ill subjects.

Edited by mani-tzu, 07 January 2011 - 07:58 PM.

[malydok]

if we were just body and mind how come we are all different individuals in the first place?

well then monkeys and elephants have souls as well

[SyLt]

I never believed in any religion ever, but i have a few friends who are hardcore muslims and last year a very good girl friend of mine "found" god. She transformed into one of the most sweet and wonderful girls ive ever met since then and always shines. I see myself as too logic-thinking and too smart for believing such things, but sometimes i'm rly jaelous of their beliefs, because they found peace and guidance, which most people search. At times i feel really lost, and even if religion is an illussion, good religious people found their reason to live

In the end i think its all about finding ur thing and be satisfied urself. Doesnt matter how high ur iq is when you died unhappy and unsatisfied.

Therefore i find it stupid to hate religion like some of u haters do. War is another discussion thats between extremists and closed minded people

Edited by the_king, 07 January 2011 - 09:09 PM.

[Foxdie]

even atheists believe in something beyond their comprehension

if you mean we believe there is no higher power yes

[Richard]

Well Snugg do you consider Einstein and Newton less intelligent than random atheists for example yourself ^^ ?

I think Einstein was agnostic. Your right about the fact you can train for an IQ test tho.

I would like see see a link to this certain study tho. I heard Harvard did a study to this aswell, but I don't have the time to seek. Sounds a bit odd that a religious person would score drasticly lower, maybe an extremely religious person would.

[doctorfunk]

Maybe there's a relation between being well educated and being less religious. I mean if you see
that poorer people(less educated) are more religious than those with better education then IQ
correlation would actually make sense. But correlation doesn't mean causation.

Also Einstein did entertain possibility of God, there are many top-notch scientists who either entertain
admitted possibility of Gods existence or believed in God or were religious to different extent. So how can one claim, that
entertaining possibility or believing in God makes you inferior intellectually??
For example Newton laid foundations of modern physics and was deeply religious person.

[snugg]

Youre talking about 2 specific individuals 200 years ago (as a figure of speech) as a counterargument against that religious people averagely have lower iq's. enough said.

i never said there was a causation, only a correlation. Youre searching for another variable why religious people have lower IQ's but it doesnt change anything about the fact that they have lower IQ's. In fact, I'm wondering, who are you arguing with? Do you read other people's posts before you answer or do you just read what u wanna read ?

and agree with sylt, if religion changes your life beneficially, sure why not. I was happier too when I believed santa existed. What I initally said in this topic was different anyway, I just said that religious people usually decrease the quality of a debate thats concerned with science or religion. Then doctorfunk came and searched 100 problems where there werent any.

Richard, google and wikipedia . its all over

[fastcolt]

wojtek, with all do respect, i would like to point this out once and for all, cuzz u talking about einstein etc is kinda pissin me off

ur making a fundamental error against logic, or at least logic in debate.

where u take a group of people, or a population as statisticians would call it, on which a certain rule applies (in our example, world population, and the rule being, religuous people doing worse on IQ tests then non religious people, aka there being a negative correlation between being intelligent and being religuous) , find the exception to the group or majority of the population ( being einstein, and im sure there are also other people who are religuous and would do on IQ tests, but obviously more dont do good on IQ tests then do, since else there wouldnt be a negative correlation between intellect and religiousness) and then try and claim that because there is this exception to the rule, the entire hypothesis or rule is wrong.


hope that makes some sense, just pissing me off so badly when people argument and make false arguments that are just retarded (not saying u are retarded, and not hating... ) just wrongfull argumenting is wrong and pointless...

[snugg]

Hey I know a dolphin that has a higher iq than a 1 year-old with down syndrome. Therefore, how can any one say humans are smarter than dolphins? :s:s:s
christ...

[doctorfunk]

i never said there was a causation, only a correlation. Youre searching for another variable why religious people have lower IQ's but it doesnt change anything about the fact that they have lower IQ's.

In my opinion it does, because if there's no causation, that correlation is irrelevant

Then doctorfunk came and searched 100 problems where there werent any.

You generlised and called people who believe in God retards,

2. Ofcourse I have a right to refer to those people as retards, even if it is a generalisation. Its my personal right, just as it is their personal right to believe in some magic irrational thing like God. Only difference is my personal view is based on solid objective evidence.

Yes I have a problem with that so I contest that, you don't like criticism, then don't post controversial claims.

@fastcolt; I'm just looking into possible holes in Snuggs theory, he should be thanking me
because if he's right I will make it better for him!

[snugg]

I do like criticism but your counter-arguments are... irrational.
"In my opinion, if theres no causation, that correlation is irrelevant"

Ok, so lets say the cause of down-syndrome is unknown. But there is a correlation between smoking and drinking alcohol during pregnancy and birth rate of babies with down syndrome. In your opinion, you'd let your fiancee do all of those things because the correlation is irrelevant. That's exactly the nature of your counter-argument. Youre right in saying correlation doesnt mean causation. But it doesnt mean the correlations are irrelevant or invalid. Theres some things wrong with your sense of logic.

I could go on and give more examples like that for a long time, but basically, all of your criticism is based on personal subjective viewpoints whilst you're trying to act as if they have (larger) rational value, which is certainly not the case

[fastcolt]

http://www.infidels....tml#composition


This is basically what you do drfunk...

Composition

The Fallacy of Composition is to conclude that a property shared by a number of individual items, is also shared by a collection of those items; or that a property of the parts of an object, must also be a property of the whole thing. Examples:

"The bicycle is made entirely of low mass components, and is therefore very lightweight."

"A car uses less petrochemicals and causes less pollution than a bus. Therefore cars are less environmentally damaging than buses."

A related form of fallacy of composition is the "just" fallacy, or fallacy of mediocrity. This is the fallacy that assumes that any given member of a set must be limited to the attributes that are held in common with all the other members of the set. Example:

"Humans are just animals, so we should not concern ourselves with justice; we should just obey the law of the jungle."

Here the fallacy is to reason that because we are animals, we can have only properties which animals have; that nothing can distinguish us as a special case.

You say, because there are a few religious people that are also smart (einstein etc) all the people in the world that are religious can also be smart, and there is no negative correlation between IQ and Religion...

which is a flawed way of reasoning, for the reason i just pointed out here


obvious flaw is obvious

[snugg]

maybe you should stop looking for holes, because all my "theory" was that religious people have lower IQ's. There's correlations, theres proof. Its not even a theory, its just evidence. Stop being difficult and just accept it? Go argue that 2+2 isnt 4, thats more or less the equivalent of what youre doing

[Rait]

I never believed in any religion ever, but i have a few friends who are hardcore muslims and last year a very good girl friend of mine "found" god. She transformed into one of the most sweet and wonderful girls ive ever met since then and always shines. I see myself as too logic-thinking and too smart for believing such things, but sometimes i'm rly jaelous of their beliefs, because they found peace and guidance, which most people search. At times i feel really lost, and even if religion is an illussion, good religious people found their reason to live

In the end i think its all about finding ur thing and be satisfied urself. Doesnt matter how high ur iq is when you died unhappy and unsatisfied.

Therefore i find it stupid to hate religion like some of u haters do. War is another discussion thats between extremists and closed minded people

amen brother, you totally spoke my mind!

[Activee]

Maybe there's a relation between being well educated and being less religious. I mean if you see
that poorer people(less educated) are more religious than those with better education then IQ
correlation would actually make sense. But correlation doesn't mean causation.

Would it be happyness else ? if you are poor you are more inclined to have problems. And therefor to have a need to hand back up on something. idk if education has something to do with it but of course it can.

[doctorfunk]

maybe you should stop looking for holes, because all my "theory" was that religious people have lower IQ's. There's correlations, theres proof. Its not even a theory, its just evidence. Stop being difficult and just accept it? Go argue that 2+2 isnt 4, thats more or less the equivalent of what youre doing

you made this claim and yes I do have a problem with it; especially with bolded parts

1. Solid proof exists that people with religious beliefs have lower intelligence (measured by globally standardised IQ tests). Believe it or not.
2. Ofcourse I have a right to refer to those people as retards, even if it is a generalisation. Its my personal right, just as it is their personal right to believe in some magic irrational thing like God. Only difference is my personal view is based on solid objective evidence.

- you don't have right to call anyone retards based on their believes or IQ score
- IQ is not only measure of persons intellectual value
- IQ tests are not an adequate measure of intrinsic intelligence
- IQ scores are heavily defendant upon education level

(in our example, world population, and the rule being, religuous people doing worse on IQ tests then non religious people, aka there being a negative correlation between being intelligent and being religuous) , find the exception to the group or majority of the population ( being einstein, and im sure there are also other people who are religuous and would do on IQ tests, but obviously more dont do good on IQ tests then do, since else there wouldnt be a negative correlation between intellect and religiousness) and then try and claim that because there is this exception to the rule, the entire hypothesis or rule is wrong.

I have no choice but to agree with you, but I didn't say this correlation is not true because Einstein didn't exclude possibility of God and Newton was religious.
I said generalization Snugg made referring to believers are retards is an error in reasoning and gave simple proof of that.

2. Ofcourse I have a right to refer to those people as retards, even if it is a generalisation. Its my personal right, just as it is their personal right to believe in some magic irrational thing like God. Only difference is my personal view is based on solid objective evidence.

I gave a proof such generalization can't be made which I thought was convincing.

based on what Snugg said; Believers are retards. Newton was a believer, Newton is retarded.

maybe you can tell me what kind of error in reasoning is that?

Youre right in saying correlation doesnt mean causation. But it doesnt mean the correlations are irrelevant or invalid. Theres some things wrong with your sense of logic.

No with yours;
Because relationship you quoted as your 'based in science right to call religious people inferior' can be merely a coincidence,
only thing these two things may have in common is that they are observed at the same time. It's irrelevant in sense
that makes bolded part above untrue.

And there's even more problem with that as "being religious" and "believing in God" are not the same thing,
also there's a difference how each individual person believes. it can not be so easily generalized.
Perhaps if you shared the study you talk about you could at least say what question was asked
determining who is religious and who not and to what extent?

[Richard]

Also Einstein did entertain possibility of God, there are many top-notch scientists who either entertain
admitted possibility of Gods existence or believed in God or were religious to different extent. So how can one claim, that
entertaining possibility or believing in God makes you inferior intellectually??
For example Newton laid foundations of modern physics and was deeply religious person.

Saying god might excist is totaly different than saying god excist or believing in a god, its free thinking. By saying the amount of less educated people that is religious is higher is basicly saying the same as Snugg said tho

But to give you guys my view, I'm with Sylt on this one. Tho I've never been jealous of people because of religion, I have the feeling being non-religious gives me more freedom.