Why do people NOT believe in God?

Pre-College Issues High School Life
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<p>^ That quote has been put up in the uberthread more times.</p>

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<p>^^If you’ve got something to say, then say it. Don’t hide behind a quote.</p>

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<p>Well I’m sorry that the fact I don’t take the time to check every post in whatever the uberthread is to make sure that I am not making a point that has already been made offends you.</p>

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<p>^ it doesn’t offend me, and I’m sorry, if I’d known HJ was also going to post I’d have been nicer. Not trying to mob you. It is an insightful quote.</p>

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<p>But why God?</p>

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<p>Quote:
BEING AN ATHEIST/AGNOSTIC IS NOT DIRECTLY RELATED TO ONE’S INTELLIGENCE</p>

<p>Statistics say false. Check these out.</p>

<p>[ScienceDirect</a> - Intelligence : The intelligence–religiosity nexus: A representative study of white adolescent Americans](<a href=“http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6W4M-4TFV93D-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=db2ee09bae0195cc1ecbd026da77245c]ScienceDirect”>http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6W4M-4TFV93D-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=db2ee09bae0195cc1ecbd026da77245c)</p>

<p>[Intelligent</a> people ‘less likely to believe in God’ - Telegraph](<a href=“Intelligent people 'less likely to believe in God'”>Intelligent people 'less likely to believe in God')</p>

<p>[File:LynnHarveyNyborg-CountryBelieveGod-Intelligence.svg</a> - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:LynnHarveyNyborg-CountryBelieveGod-Intelligence.svg]File:LynnHarveyNyborg-CountryBelieveGod-Intelligence.svg”>File:LynnHarveyNyborg-CountryBelieveGod-Intelligence.svg - Wikipedia)</p>

<p>So to the original question, why do people not believe in god? Someone said this:
“I’m not saying that believing in God makes you dumber. My hypothesis is that people with a low intelligence are more easily drawn toward religions, which give answers that are certain, while people with a high intelligence are more skeptical,”</p>

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<p>^ That’s only meaningful if you accept IQ as the relevant measure of intelligence here.</p>

<p>However, as I said in the Thread, a higher average intelligence among atheists is exactly what I would expect to see.</p>

<p>Atheism is a fringe group. Therefore, few people are going to just “follow the crowd” into it. To become an atheist usually requires some serious soul-searching.</p>

<p>Atheism doesn’t attract intelligent people because it is more reasonable, it attracts them because any atheist that is not intelligent will be unable to maintain his beliefs against the overwhelming majority of peer pressure.</p>

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<p>I was soo about to take this thread seriously until I read “Jesus Christ our Savior”.</p>

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<p>Note this is a reply to pages 2-3 on the topic of suicide</p>

<p>Suicide is neither inherently rational or irrational. It could only be irrational if one could give the reason why all people must live. Let’s say for the sake of argument that
Jack is apathetic toward life, suffering, and death and that he doesn’t believe in self-preservation.</p>

<p>Why must Jack live? And by extension, why would suicide be irrational (in Jack’s case at least)?</p>

<p>Let me introduce something known as the is-ought dilemma. In other words, one can not go from an is (descriptive) to an ought (prescriptive, or what something should or should not be/do). One can not make the jump from an is to an ought without a telos (or an end goal in mind) --note the telos is my personal “solution” to David Hume’s dilemma. You go from self-preservation is a given (descriptive–although a shaky one, I’ll go with it for the sake of argument. I’m more for saying that the will to live is innate and hard-wired more so than logical) to saying suicide is irrational (prescriptive, and suicide violates the descriptive). If the telos is not given (one values self-preservation), the argument at hand no longer holds. </p>

<p>Even still, the telos is subjective and thusly, the veracity of the argument is subjective at best as an argument is only as strong as its weakest evidence. Outside of a conscious mind, objectively speaking, the very concept of suicide is moot as life is merely one state of existence among others, and is likewise subdivided into other forms of existence. One goes from an organic/conscious to a purely organic existence (and metaphysical for the religiously inclined) upon death. One’s existence is never terminated, only transformed. There is no net destruction, and even if there were, the one undergoing it willingly chose to do so and is the only one to “suffer” the “consequences” of his or her actions.</p>

<p>David Hume also once said “'Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger.”</p>

<p>As for unnatural/natural, I’ve never seen or heard someone utilize a supernatural (or subnatural for that matter) method of suicide, though I admit this is a rather shameless play on semantics.</p>

<p>I wish ETS had topics like this for essays.</p>

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<p>About atheists and intelligence</p>

<p>Correlation =/= causation. In this particular case, how would one account for conversions? If a theist becomes an atheist, does he or she suddenly gain IQ points --assuming IQ is an indisputable quantifier of intelligence for the sake of the argument-- and vice-versa? Such a conclusion would be equally dubious even under the assumption that IQ could fluctuate, greatly, over the course of a lifetime. </p>

<p>I believe what happens here is that converts are more open-minded, analytical, and generally more knowledgeable than a good portion of their “trenchant” counterparts. Conversion requires logic necessary to overcome the emotional and psychological hold religion holds on people. It would be that ability to reason, accrue and analyze all perspectives and make a final decision that explains the higher intelligence atheists (who are mostly converts from my experience) have over theists (who usually stay in the same religion).</p>

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<p>

Absurd claim. Everything is either rational or irrational, as proven in Republic and Nicomachean Ethics. </p>

<p>

To preempt HarryJones’s getting on my case, I’d like to say that direct quotations are often stronger than indirect quotations (because every opinion on the matter is likely one or the other).
From Kant’s Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals:
“to preserve one’s life is a duty…if adversity and hopeless sorrow have completely taken away the taste for life, if one wishes for death and yet preserves his life without loving it not from inclination but from duty, then his maxim indeed has a moral content.”</p>

<p>

Yes, a personal solution to a dilemma that was preemptively accounted for by Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics two millennia ago and also solved by Kant…

It’s also prescriptive, as it’s a duty, so the opposite of which would be contrary to duty and thus irrational.

There is no suicide outside of a conscious mind! Suicide is necessarily interweaved with living things, and, as such, can only be critiqued in its determinate, tampered form (Kant).

The Greeks used psukhe for both mind and life-force. Aristotle’s On the Soul refutes Plato’s transmigration prophecy quite convincingly. The topic has only been revived by devout Neoplatonists (Augustine).

Completely irrelevant.

Yes.

Evidently, no one would understand the prompt enough to answer it.</p>

<p>

Only true for those who convert (or revert).
And no one has said anything on theism and intelligence worth responding to.</p>

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<p>I’d say making an authentic choice requires soul-searching. A lot of people are raised atheist. Furthermore, I’d say it’s a lot easier to not believe in something you’ve never seen concrete evidence for than it is to believe in it</p>

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<p>^You think? Obviously, my experience doesn’t reflect the whole world, but all the self-proclaimed atheists that I know were raised with some religion. Some with uber religious parents, others who only went to church now and then.</p>

<p>I think people’s belief in God and religion just reinstates a very profound truth about human nature: the majority of people need a leader/guiding figure in their lives. It’s the whole reason ancient humans formed tribes and we today form states. People want to feel protected, provided for, and as though they are not “in this” alone. Religion and God are just that same concept but amplified.</p>

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<p>Yeah. Most of my friends are atheists, and I’d been an atheist for 15 1/2 years. It wasn’t until I started reading a lot of poetry and philosophy that I realized that God’s existence was not only not synonymous with those aspects of organized religion which I abhor, but is more compatible with what I’ve experienced than the world would be if a divine being did not exist.</p>

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<p>Atheists in America may have higher IQs than Christians, but in East Asia, it seems that the more intelligent people tend to trend Christian.</p>

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<p>Originally posted by InquisitiveOne:</p>

<p>“Atheists in America may have higher IQs than Christians, but in East Asia, it seems that the more intelligent people tend to trend Christian.[citation needed]”).</p>

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<p>Unfortunately there aren’t any statistics, but the comments thread on [Religion</a> makes you depressed…if you’re Asian!!! | Gene Expression | Discover Magazine](<a href=“http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2008/09/religion-makes-you-depressed-if-youre-asian/comment-page-1/]Religion”>http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2008/09/religion-makes-you-depressed-if-youre-asian/comment-page-1/) might provide some insights.</p>

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<p>I am caught between on this whole issue. I want to be believe in a god. But it is very hard for me to believe at times. I also have come to believe that jesus wasnt any savior or anything. He was just a good guy that spread his belief. So my belief is that there is a god but thats it. When asked about my beliefs though, I readily lie and say that im christian. If i didn’t it would limit my whole life.</p>

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<p>^ False</p>

<p>Don’t force your beliefs into a mold into which they do not fit</p>

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<p>Being an atheist in my shoes would make life so much harder for me. I have a SUPER-religious mom who believes in all these weird superstitions, I go to a Catholic school, most of my bestfriends/friends all believe in religion. </p>

<p>I believe in a higher power, but not religion.</p>