CogentPhilosopher
Philosophy Student
I guessed that opposing thoughts to what the video is trying to generate is what you meant but contrary thinking literally would mean "The opposite of using one's mind to consider or reason about something."
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"...but intelligent people believe in God" Analysis, Discussion, and Debate
- Thread starter CogentPhilosopher
- Start date
I guessed that opposing thoughts to what the video is trying to generate is what you meant but contrary thinking literally would mean "The opposite of using one's mind to consider or reason about something."
The title doesn't imply content; if it had evidence from Einstein, Tesla, Newton, Kaku, etc, then it could be as you've just suggested.
The video was more on mass indoctrination behavior patterns, and how 'religious claims' are 'ridiculous claims'.
CogentPhilosopher
Philosophy Student
If you keep making posts that are nothing but Ad Homen and add nothing to the discussion I will report you.
CogentPhilosopher
Philosophy Student
The title doesn't imply content; if it had evidence from Einstein, Tesla, Newton, Kaku, etc, then it could be as you've just suggested.
The video was more on mass indoctrination behavior patterns, and how 'religious claims' are 'ridiculous claims'.
The video explicitly states that Marcus was intelligent.
How could you miss this?
Jeremiahcp
Well-Known Jerk
Go for it man.
CogentPhilosopher
Philosophy Student
The title doesn't imply content; if it had evidence from Einstein, Tesla, Newton, Kaku, etc, then it could be as you've just suggested.
The video was more on mass indoctrination behavior patterns, and how 'religious claims' are 'ridiculous claims'.
Also Einstein did not have a religion and only referred to the universe as a god. Therefore he did not believe in a supernatural god.
Einstein didn't believe, he quantified; which was the reason to list all mathematicians/physicists, as we're dealing with the question of the fabric of a reality.
Listing a load of man made religions, which have 'ridiculous claims', as their concepts of God are illogical in many places, is a 'ludicrous claim'.
To repeat, the video is simplistic. "religion" does not "act", some religious people act in a certain way and others don't. Oversimplifying a complex situation is an error and might even on balance be a lie by your definition.
But if you want to talk about how "religion" "acts", include members of a church who go to New Orleans to rebuild houses after Katrina, Mother Teresa spending her whole life serviing the poor, interfaith of all kinds including a pope who gathered members of different religions together.
Albert Einstein: Quotes on God, Religion, Theology
I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know his thoughts. The rest are details. (The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton University Press, 2000 p.202)
It is very difficult to elucidate this [cosmic religious] feeling to anyone who is entirely without it. . . The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man's image; so that there can be no church whose central teachings are based on it ... In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it. (The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton University Press, p. 207)
I see a pattern, but my imagination cannot picture the maker of that pattern. I see a clock, but I cannot envision the clockmaker. The human mind is unable to conceive of the four dimensions, so how can it conceive of a God, before whom a thousand years and a thousand dimensions are as one? (The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton University Press, 2000 p. 208)
Then there are the fanatical atheists whose intolerance is the same as that of the religious fanatics, and it springs from the same source . . . They are creatures who can't hear the music of the spheres. (The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton University Press, 2000 p. 214)
I thought it was very weak. Belief in God is a debatable (not ridiculous) claim. There is a universe and we know not why. That doesn't mean it is the God of the Bible, but I see pantheistic God concepts on the rise in western society. These ideas are not ridiculous.
The video is only an attack on people that believe by just accepting society's indoctrination and doesn't even discuss intelligent people that believe for their own investigated reasons.
In fact today it seems very few people I know are just sheeple followers of their families religious traditions (Maybe 75-100 years ago that was more true).
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Why would that matter? One person's opinion is all we ever get in any book, essay, article, or post, even if that opinion is to believe the opinion of others.
Incidentally, it's the opinion of at least two people, and I suspect many, many more.
That's not what I got from your comments about 'just some random person's opinion.' His argument was rational. Did you care to rebut it?
Children have no defense against indoctrination. Adults that have learned critical thinking and skepticism do. Other adults continue to embrace faith based thinking, and can be indoctrinated by those they trust.
I can attest that that is incorrect. He speaks to me, as did DarkMatter.
But how often does that happen?
Here in the USA we have legal freedom of and from religion. Secular education system and a vast array of sources of information. I think that the huge majority of people never change more than the particular variety of their parents beliefs. A Lutheran switching to Methodism isn't really much of a change.
Some do, but I don't think more than single digit percentage. I think that the video is simple enough for an intelligent 8 year to grasp. But sharply pointed and accurately describes the normal reason for the dominance of religious beliefs.
Tom
SabahTheLoner
Master of the Art of Couch Potato Cuddles
For the most part, it is an interesting video. Intelligence doesn't have anything to do with belief. One can always morph their beliefs to justify the truth, or incorporate the truth into an existing belief, if they don't refuse to believe it. But first they need to know what "the truth" is. No, not know, but experience it. Our beliefs regardless of upbringing and intelligence is based solely on personal experience and how we deal with it, whether it is acceptance or skepticism. Sometimes one followed by the other. And the more positivity we feel being drawn towards what answers to us, the more our beliefs will be reinforced. The more skeptic we are, the more answers we want, the more we learn. And however it is accepted is individualistic, as no two people can ever have exactly the same life experience, as they perceive the world differently due to what surrounds them, what their parents teach them, and how they learn to react to what is presented to them. Even identical twins will each have different life experiences from the other, especially if they become separated at any point in life. So perhaps truth is different from person to person. And if that is the case, is there such a thing as "absolute truth" that the majority, if any, could never touch? I say "nay" but I would like to hear thoughts further expanding this.
The video was about how a person could be intelligent and believe in God. One path is to get to them before they are intelligent enough to question the god claims, beginning with their parents, and followed/reinforced by a church structure, local social structure, and culture at large that all reinforced what was introduced by indoctrination and took root long before this person became educated and able to think well in other areas. At that point, he's an intelligent person who believes in god, but not because he's intelligent. His intelligence didn't bring him to that place of belief.
Intelligence argues against faith based thought. Faith cannot be a path to truth. Any idea or its polar opposite could have been pounded into the central character's (Marcus') head when he was young. How can that be a path to truth? And if it isn't, how can intelligent people endorse it?
When I read the title of the thread, and before I saw the video, I was actually thinking of people from the past like Newton. The further back you go in time, the more reasonable the god hypothesis appears. I believe that I would have been a theist in Galileo's time, and a deist until Darwin (and maybe Hubble). The first wave of scientists presented us with a clockwork universe, excusing the ruler god, but not the designing creator god. The second wave excused that god and gave a firm foundation to atheism. But intelligent people of centuries past would be expected to be theists even without external pressure.
What else could you reasonably think before these scientific revolutions? Before there was evidence for it, what we now know to be the truth was unthinkable. How could the universe build itself, or the tree of life get here naturalistically? Now we know. Then, we couldn't give the idea serious thought.
stevevw
Member
The video is full of misconceptions and fallacies. The voice of the commentator is ridiculing against any belief and the look on the faces especially the eyes of any believers is evil. It's all one sided and geared towards fitting the producer's personal views and has no supporting evidence presented. Intelligent people would realise what he is trying to assert yet they still believe. The video is making out that intelligent believers are so dumbed down that they are robots or something. How do we know that the atheistic beliefs that people have are not something that goes against natural human cognition and that it is atheists belief that intelligent people are being fooled by? There as many logical arguments for having a belief in something beyond what we see as having an influence on things as there are for not.
The research actually points to the opposite of children being indoctrinated with beliefs. Children are born with a natural tendency to believe in divine concepts which has not been taught to them and that it is secular conditioning that knocks this out of people in the end. Even infants who have been brought up as atheists will still hold a belief in divine concepts. People have a hard time denying that there may be something beyond what we see that is responsible for everything and have to work at it to keep that belief away. So belief is not something that is taught and indoctrinated into and out of people.
Belief in God is part of human nature - Oxford study
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/8510711/Belief-in-God-is-part-of-human-nature-Oxford-study.html
Being human: Religion: Bound to believe?
Some form of religious belief seems the path of least resistance for our cognitive systems. By contrast, disbelief seems to be the result of deliberate, effortful work against our natural cognitive disposition.
https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v455/n7216/pdf/4551038a.pdf
Ebed
31102Bible
Intelligent people, compared to whom?
A post from: The Bible by the Numbers of pi
The First occurrence of the number 66 in a Verse: 66 souls
Genesis 46:26 All the souls that came with Jacob into Egypt, which came out of his loins, besides Jacob's sons' wives, all the souls were Sixty-Six; 72 - Hebrew Total 3858
72/6 = 12 Tribes
3858th vs. Numbers 7:7 Two wagons and Four oxen he gave unto the sons of Gershon, according to their service. 14
Two+Four = 6
~
The Second and Last occurrence of the number 66 in a Verse: 66 days
Leviticus 12:5 But if she bear a maid child, then she shall be unclean Two Weeks (14 days), as in her separation: and she shall continue in the blood of her purifying Sixty-Six days. 17 - Hebrew Total 4493
17 = 7th prime
4493rd vs. Numbers 26:3 And Moses and Eleazar the priest spake with them in the plains of Moab by Jordan near Jericho, saying, 29
~~~
46:26
07:07
12:05
26:03
46+26+7+7+12+5+26+3 = 132
66*2 = 132
~~~
Genesis 46:26
כל הנפש הבאה ליעקב מצרימה יצאי ירכו מלבד נשי בני יעקב כל נפש ששים ושש
Hebrew - Word Value
1 כל 50
2 הנפש 435
3 הבאה 13
4 ליעקב 212
5 מצרימה 385
6 יצאי 111
7 ירכו 236
8 מלבד 76
9 נשי 360
10 בני 62
11 יעקב 182
12 כל 50
13 נפש 430
14 ששים 650
15 ושש 606
-> Total 3858
Leviticus 12:5
ואם נקבה תלד וטמאה שבעים כנדתה וששים יום וששת ימים תשב על דמי טהרה
## Word Value
1 ואם 47
2 נקבה 157
3 תלד 434
4 וטמאה 61
5 שבעים 422
6 כנדתה 479
7 וששים 656
8 יום 56
9 וששת 1006
10 ימים 100
11 תשב 702
12 על 100
13 דמי 54
14 טהרה 219
-> Total 4493
Yad 10 Hey 5 Waw 6 Hey 5 = 26 YHWH
1+5+6+5 = 17
Baruch HaShem
Hebrew Bible
A post from: The Bible by the Numbers of pi
The First occurrence of the number 66 in a Verse: 66 souls
Genesis 46:26 All the souls that came with Jacob into Egypt, which came out of his loins, besides Jacob's sons' wives, all the souls were Sixty-Six; 72 - Hebrew Total 3858
72/6 = 12 Tribes
3858th vs. Numbers 7:7 Two wagons and Four oxen he gave unto the sons of Gershon, according to their service. 14
Two+Four = 6
~
The Second and Last occurrence of the number 66 in a Verse: 66 days
Leviticus 12:5 But if she bear a maid child, then she shall be unclean Two Weeks (14 days), as in her separation: and she shall continue in the blood of her purifying Sixty-Six days. 17 - Hebrew Total 4493
17 = 7th prime
4493rd vs. Numbers 26:3 And Moses and Eleazar the priest spake with them in the plains of Moab by Jordan near Jericho, saying, 29
~~~
46:26
07:07
12:05
26:03
46+26+7+7+12+5+26+3 = 132
66*2 = 132
~~~
Genesis 46:26
כל הנפש הבאה ליעקב מצרימה יצאי ירכו מלבד נשי בני יעקב כל נפש ששים ושש
Hebrew - Word Value
1 כל 50
2 הנפש 435
3 הבאה 13
4 ליעקב 212
5 מצרימה 385
6 יצאי 111
7 ירכו 236
8 מלבד 76
9 נשי 360
10 בני 62
11 יעקב 182
12 כל 50
13 נפש 430
14 ששים 650
15 ושש 606
-> Total 3858
Leviticus 12:5
ואם נקבה תלד וטמאה שבעים כנדתה וששים יום וששת ימים תשב על דמי טהרה
## Word Value
1 ואם 47
2 נקבה 157
3 תלד 434
4 וטמאה 61
5 שבעים 422
6 כנדתה 479
7 וששים 656
8 יום 56
9 וששת 1006
10 ימים 100
11 תשב 702
12 על 100
13 דמי 54
14 טהרה 219
-> Total 4493
Yad 10 Hey 5 Waw 6 Hey 5 = 26 YHWH
1+5+6+5 = 17
Baruch HaShem
Hebrew Bible