Are theists dumb by default?

Shadow Wolf said:

Was Isaac Newton dumb?

Click to expand...

Certainly not. But that didn't stop him from believing obvious false things like christianity, or pursuing quackery like alchemy - a topic on which he wrote a heck of a lot more then on physics.

Good example.
High IQ doesn't make one immune to irrational or magical thinking.
High IQ or not, you're still human, and susceptible to the same cognitive and psychological traps as any other human.

TagliatelliMonster said:

Certainly not. But that didn't stop him from believing obvious false things like christianity, or pursuing quackery like alchemy - a topic on which he wrote a heck of a lot more then on physics.

Click to expand...

Then we are all dumb by default.

Shadow Wolf said:

Then we are all dumb by default.

Click to expand...

Don't quite see how you concluded that and how it relates to the part of my post that you quoted, but ok I guess.

TagliatelliMonster said:

Don't quite see how you concluded that and how it relates to the part of my post that you quoted, but ok I guess.

Click to expand...

Because we all believe things that are easily proven false. Like how running is bad for knees. Lots of people believe it. I believed it. But about a year ago I became curious, because I couldn't recall many, if any, instances of knee injuries being attributed to running. Lots of "someone who knows someone," but nothing solid. I did some research, and it turns out research does not support the idea of running being bad for your knees. I had an excuse for about the first half of my life and seeing libraries as a primary source of knowledge, but long after the proliferation of the internet and I'm still believing something only a few clicks away from being shown things contradictory of this belief?
And when you say "obviously wrong," this assumes a few possible interpretations. Things like Young Earth Creationism are not traditional Christian beliefs.

Shadow Wolf said:

Because we all believe things that are easily proven false. Like how running is bad for knees. Lots of people believe it. I believed it. But about a year ago I became curious, because I couldn't recall many, if any, instances of knee injuries being attributed to running. Lots of "someone who knows someone," but nothing solid. I did some research, and it turns out research does not support the idea of running being bad for your knees. I had an excuse for about the first half of my life and seeing libraries as a primary source of knowledge, but long after the proliferation of the internet and I'm still believing something only a few clicks away from being shown things contradictory of this belief?
And when you say "obviously wrong," this assumes a few possible interpretations. Things like Young Earth Creationism are not traditional Christian beliefs.

Click to expand...

Sure, everybody is ignorant about lots of things.
But not about everything.

I'm very ignorant about high level quantum physics.
I'm not ignorant about software engineering, which is my area of expertise.
I'm also not ignorant about drums, which is my passion.

There's no shame in being ignorant about something. It's also relatively easy to solve in principle - all it takes is to study up (if it concerns things that other humans aren't ignorant about).
Being willfully ignorant to protect a priori beliefs in which one is emotionally invested - that's another story.

9-10ths_Penguin said:

Worshipping God often leads to trouble, too.


Nobody worships drugs or alcohol. If you think they do, this is likely because you're making bad assumptions about worldviews you don't understand.

In any case, I'm saying that your habit of attending your house of worship on Sundays is just as odd and arbitrary as my habit of eating peas whole without chewing them (which is something I actually do. Started as a little kid).

You deserve as much praise for consistently "honouring the Sabbath" as I do for consistently not chewing peas. If you feel that you need to do it, that's fine, but it's a bit much to demand praise for consistent adherence to an arbitrary rule that you've decided to follow.

Click to expand...

I agree, you likewise shouldn't follow arbitrary rules -- therefore, please work every Saturday and Sunday for the rest of your life -- or praise the Judeo-Christians Saturday-Sunday GOD!

BilliardsBall said:

I agree, you likewise shouldn't follow arbitrary rules -- therefore, please work every Saturday and Sunday for the rest of your life -- or praise the Judeo-Christians Saturday-Sunday GOD!

Click to expand...

Weird that you think imposing your religion on non-believers should be a point of pride instead of shame.

In any case, I'm going to turn down your offer. I'm going to keep your Sabbath and your religious holidays and do as I please with them. If you and your religion-mates didn't want me to take the Christ out of Christmas, you should have kept Christmas in your church.

TagliatelliMonster said:

Sure, everybody is ignorant about lots of things.
But not about everything.

I'm very ignorant about high level quantum physics.
I'm not ignorant about software engineering, which is my area of expertise.
I'm also not ignorant about drums, which is my passion.

There's no shame in being ignorant about something. It's also relatively easy to solve in principle - all it takes is to study up (if it concerns things that other humans aren't ignorant about).
Being willfully ignorant to protect a priori beliefs in which one is emotionally invested - that's another story.

Click to expand...

I'm not talking about ignorance. I am talking about accepting something as true without having critically examined it and it not being true.

BilliardsBall said:

I agree, you likewise shouldn't follow arbitrary rules -- therefore, please work every Saturday and Sunday for the rest of your life -- or praise the Judeo-Christians Saturday-Sunday GOD!

Click to expand...

Excuse me, but the Chinese traditionally celebrated annual solstices and equinoxes with family meals, long before Christmas and Easter existed, just as many of what Christians called other pagan or heathen celebrations, pre-Christian feasts in Rome, in ancient Celtic and Germanic cultures.

Many ancient cultures have their own holidays and feasts that were celebrated annually, including their own calendars, hence their own new year, their own solstice and equinox.

Christians adopted pagan symbols into their Christian holidays, such as the gift giving, decorations of tree and fireplace and hearth, leaving foods for the gods, the Easter rabbits and eggs.

And it was generally believed that Jesus wasn’t even born on December 25.

The names of the months that we used today, were associated with the Roman gods and 2 imperators, Julius Caesar and Augustus, not after the names of Jewish months, and the days of the week were named after Germanic gods.

Why do Christians continue to use names for the days and months of pagan deities?

Shadow Wolf said:

I'm not talking about ignorance. I am talking about accepting something as true without having critically examined it and it not being true.

Click to expand...

That would be "irrational".
Although off course it depends on what you specifically are talking about.

In any case, it seems you have successfully derailed my original statement to the point that I don't even remember what I was talking about myself without going back to the original post to remind me.

TagliatelliMonster said:

In any case, it seems you have successfully derailed my original statement to the point that I don't even remember what I was talking about myself without going back to the original post to remind me.

Click to expand...

I did nothing. It seems you are too lazy to go back and check things.

TagliatelliMonster said:

That would be "irrational".
Although off course it depends on what you specifically are talking about.

Click to expand...

The fact it's something we all do. Every human does this. And if someone believing something that can be shown to be wrong makes that person dumb, then we are all dumb because we all are guilty of believing stuff that isn't true and can be shown it isn't true. There's no getting out of it. It's a part of being human.

9-10ths_Penguin said:

Weird that you think imposing your religion on non-believers should be a point of pride instead of shame.

In any case, I'm going to turn down your offer. I'm going to keep your Sabbath and your religious holidays and do as I please with them. If you and your religion-mates didn't want me to take the Christ out of Christmas, you should have kept Christmas in your church.

Click to expand...

Well, then I'm keeping Festivus! -- So there.

Glad we could work this out.

halbhh said:

Right, Zeus isn't a real god, because of course I can't ask him to do something extremely unlikely or such and then have it happen, against the current circumstances.

Click to expand...

Of course you can. People ask Gods for things all the time. When they don't work out they have pre-set answers - God had something better in mind down the road or I needed to go through thing. There are many ways to account for a non-answer.
But occasionally you get something you asked for that seemed like a longshot. For one thing longshots do happen, especially if you are putting your attention on something. But if you prayed to a God first then it's going to stand way out as a "hit" or as an answered prayer.

When I was religious all amazing luck went to God power and when I wasn't nothing changed I just realized stuff sometimes works out.
Even people with a serious illness that has only 20% survival rate, if there are 1000 people with the disease this year there will be 200 people who survived. Those who prayed will conclude a miracle happened and they were saved by a supernatural agent.
Studies have been done as well on prayer and never produced positive results in terms of mortality rates and illness.

Zeus will answer your prayers at the exact same frequency as any other God if you really believed he could. That's how it works.
When you turn your attention to something things start happening. You make connections, put yourself out there. If one thinks a God is helping them they will ignore dead ends and notice when interesting coincidences happen.

I just heard a fundamentalist police officer say Jesus told him to look behind him while he was in his car looking for a man with a gun. He then saw the man.
Except when you are in a car and looking for a gunman who is on foot your head is looking everywhere. There is no doubt he looked behind him several times. The time he looked and saw the guy he convinced himself that was the time an "inner voice" was telling him. Obviously when looking for a gunman every so many seconds your brain is going to say "LOOK BEHIND YOU AGAIN!"
Then he thought that people being shot in the same spot on the chest and some dying and some living meant a supernatural agent was at work.
somehow he forgot that not all guns are fired from the same distance, angle, the person is moving different and any slight angle change will change the way the energy is dispersed. Causing sometimes a fatal shot and sometimes and near-miss.
This is all confirmation bias.

gnostic said:

The names of the months that we used today, were associated with the Roman gods and 2 imperators, Julius Caesar and Augustus, not after the names of Jewish months, and the days of the week were named after Germanic gods.

Click to expand...

Gnostic, just out of interest, why is it that the months of September, October, November, and December are Latin for seven, eight, nine, and ten, while they are in fact the ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth months of the Julian calendar?

ben d said:

Gnostic, just out of interest, why is it that the months of September, October, November, and December are Latin for seven, eight, nine, and ten, while they are in fact the ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth months of the Julian calendar?

Click to expand...

Because, the Roman calendar actually started off with only 10 months per year, prior to Julius Caesar’s reform, which began with Romulus (according to legend, the founder of Rome, and its first king). And the new year started with March 1, not January, and March being named after the war god Mars, who was supposedly Romulus’ father.

December was the last month, and January and February didn’t exist. July and August actually were renamed for the other 2 months.

I don’t remember who instituted reform to a 12 calendar month, but it wasn’t Julius Caesar. His reform was to add extra day in February, every 4 year, hence the leap year.

gnostic said:

Because, the Roman calendar actually started off with only 10 months per year, prior to Julius Caesar’s reform, which began with Romulus (according to legend, the founder of Rome, and its first king). And the new year started with March 1, not January, and March being named after the war god Mars, who was supposedly Romulus’ father.

December was the last month, and January and February didn’t exist. July and August actually were renamed for the other 2 months.

I don’t remember who instituted reform to a 12 calendar month, but it wasn’t Julius Caesar. His reform was to add extra day in February, every 4 year, hence the leap year.

Click to expand...

The 12 month Roman Calendar was instituted on 1st January 46 BC.

Did you know that the Calendars used by most of the world were based on the Zodiac with the first month being Mars/Aries. Iran still uses that Calendar. What most people do not know it is less than 300 years, 1752 to be exact since England and the British Colonies changed from Zodiacal based News Year's Day on 25 March to the 1st January Gregorian Calendar we use today.

For that and other interesting information about the calendar, here is a old thread I started to find out the answers to these questions.

Questions about our Calendar...

ben d said:

The 12 month Roman Calendar was instituted on 1st January 46 BC.

Did you know that the Calendars used by most of the world were based on the Zodiac with the first month being Mars/Aries. Iran still uses that Calendar. What most people do not know it is less than 300 years, 1752 to be exact since England and the British Colonies changed from Zodiacal based News Year's Day on 25 March to the 1st January Gregorian Calendar we use today.

For that and other interesting information about the calendar, here is a old thread I started to find out the answers to these questions.

Questions about our Calendar...

Click to expand...

You were asking about the names of the months, they were originally named after months from the earliest Roman calendar, and there were originally only 10 months.

gnostic said:

You were asking about the names of the months, they were originally named after months from the earliest Roman calendar, and there were originally only 10 months.

Click to expand...

True, the early backward Romans apparently stopped work during the coldest period which duration covered the eleventh and twelfth months of the zodiacal solar calendar and didn't bother timing it.

Back when I was still regularly adding what I have read and researched for Timeless Myths website, I did some research on various ancient calendars, but they were years ago, and I relying on my memory, posting here from the top of my head, but my memory hasn’t been good of late.

gnostic said:

Back when I was still regularly adding what I have read and researched for Timeless Myths website, I did some research on various ancient calendars, but they were years ago, and I relying on my memory, posting here from the top of my head, but my memory hasn’t been good of late.

Click to expand...

I won't ask you your age gnostic, but I can assure you from experience that memory doesn't improve with age.