Jeremiahcp
Well-Known Jerk
Why do you consider it a mistake to "go by feelings"?
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Non-thiests, why do intelligent people believe in gods?
- Thread starter Jeremiahcp
- Start date
Why do you consider it a mistake to "go by feelings"?
They're not logical but I do it anyway.
Jeremiahcp
Well-Known Jerk
I am sorry but why can't "go by feelings" be a rational course?
How can it? Feelings would be equivalent to guessing, logic deduces by evidence not by guesses.
Looncall
Well-Known Member
That is to be expected when the gods con game has been carefully honed for millennia. With the con coupled with the strong temptation to outsource one's thinking, it's amazing anyone escapes.
Jeremiahcp
Well-Known Jerk
Logic is based off a premise, I see no reason that a premise can't be an emotional one. A mother's love could be a logical reason for her to defend her child, but I must point out the OP said intelligent and my last post said rational, which is not the same as logic.
I was thinking more along the lines of things held by faith. For example a mother is worried the son is out too late, any number of "rational" feelings could be true though it takes intelligence to come up with all sorts of scenarios but it wouldn't be wise to go by just feelings. Like the theist question, what would make an intelligent person pick something irrationally? Emotions.
Satans_Serrated_Edge
Deicidal
Cognative dissonance.
QuestioningMind
Well-Known Member
I think you need to distinguish between people not being atheists and those who feared to admit that they were atheists. When admitting that you are a nonbeliever gets you universally despised, it's not something that most people will be eager to confess to.
McBell
Unbound
I sincerely hope you are not thinking there is one all encompassing answer.
Seems to me the answer to your question will vary greatly based upon the individual you ask.
Because intelligence, however you define it, probably can't overcome brainwashed conditioning -- which is what happens during childhood.
Because even intelligence needs something to work on (some basic observations or axioms) in order to derive new insights, and if what you have to work on includes supposed "axioms" that you are conditioned to believe are unchallengeable, then you can't reason your way out.
Because history has provided thousands of years of careful apologetics to try and explain the unexplainable -- in other words, to convince you that there's no reason for disbelief just because something about the belief looks bizarre.
Isaac Newton was unquestionably intelligent -- he wrote a book on optics, another on physics, and invented calculus, all before he was 26. And he believed in alchemy and tried to create a "philosopher's stone" -- how very Harry Potter.
Einstein, so I've heard, possessed a modest amount of intelligence, having come up with special and general relativity, and yet couldn't accept the problem of entanglement in quantum physics, and so wrote (with others) a paper (EPR) proposing that Quantum Mechanics was incomplete and therefore wrong. John Bell wrote a theory, and Alain Aspect proved it experimentally, that Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen were wrong -- even though they were very intelligent. The problem was, they could not give up on their core belief (and this is most true of Einstein) that nothing can move faster than light, and that therefore entangled objects couldn't possibly react simultaneously at a distance from one another.
(If I made any errors above, I'm doing this from memory -- and my memory may not be what it used to be --- if I remember correctly!
)
Another reason a highly intelligent person might be a theist is because he or she has had a religious or mystical experience and has concluded on the basis of it that deity exists.
Many religious experiences, and almost all mystical experiences, come with an overwhelming sense of "realness". Mystical experiences especially, are frequently reported to seem even more real to those having them than normal day-to-day empirical reality. Indeed, there is evidence from the neurosciences that such experiences can activate a region of the brain associated with creating our subjective sense or feeling that something is real. Think of a religious or mystical experience as "the feeling that something is real on steroids".
Now, I think it's easy to see why a religious experience -- that is an experience in which at least some of the elements are derived from a known religion -- might convince someone that deity exists. To illustrate, suppose you saw a vision of Christ accompanied by an overwhelming sense or feeling that your vision (i.e. the Christ you saw) was real. Wouldn't it be easy to assume that, because your vision of Christ feels real, perhaps feels even more real than your normal day-to-day empirical experience, that Christ is indeed real? That is, exists as deity. Even a highly intelligent person might feel all but compelled to make that assumption.
It might be slightly harder to see why a purely mystical experience -- that is an experience in which normal subject/object perception abruptly ends and is replaced by an experience of all things being One, or at least of oneness -- might convince someone that deity exists. That's because in a purely mystical experience, there are no decisively religious elements from known religions. e.g. There's no vision of Zeus, Christ, Shiva, Allah, Krishna, etc., etc. Instead, all you have occupying your perceptual field is either an experience of all things dissolving into One, or an experience of the oneness of all things. But even though neither an experience of the One nor oneness is quite the same as seeing Zeus, etc, it can be fairly easy to conclude that you have experienced deity.
In the first place, the One or the oneness is quite likely to seem even more real to you than your normal day-to-day empirical experience. In the second place, the experience of the One will -- by nearly all accounts -- be accompanied by a sense of infinity, including a sense of infinite power, and even -- in some cases -- a sense or feeling that you are experiencing something sentient. What could more impress a person that he or she has experienced deity? Meanwhile, if your experience is, not of the One, but of the oneness of all things, you will most likely -- again, by nearly all accounts -- still feel a sense that you are experiencing something more real than your normal empirical experience. Which, I think, is very conducive to the belief that one has experienced "That which underlies all reality". And it's not such a great leap from there to the conclusion that you have experienced deity.
Please note, I am not suggesting here that these experiences are logically or empirically conclusive proof that deity exists. For various reasons, they are not. However, I am suggesting that they can be experienced as so overwhelmingly real, that to emotionally -- or even intellectually -- deny they are experiences of deity becomes extraordinarily difficult. Consequently, even highly intelligent people who have such experiences can thereby become convinced of the existence of deity.
Many religious experiences, and almost all mystical experiences, come with an overwhelming sense of "realness". Mystical experiences especially, are frequently reported to seem even more real to those having them than normal day-to-day empirical reality. Indeed, there is evidence from the neurosciences that such experiences can activate a region of the brain associated with creating our subjective sense or feeling that something is real. Think of a religious or mystical experience as "the feeling that something is real on steroids".
Now, I think it's easy to see why a religious experience -- that is an experience in which at least some of the elements are derived from a known religion -- might convince someone that deity exists. To illustrate, suppose you saw a vision of Christ accompanied by an overwhelming sense or feeling that your vision (i.e. the Christ you saw) was real. Wouldn't it be easy to assume that, because your vision of Christ feels real, perhaps feels even more real than your normal day-to-day empirical experience, that Christ is indeed real? That is, exists as deity. Even a highly intelligent person might feel all but compelled to make that assumption.
It might be slightly harder to see why a purely mystical experience -- that is an experience in which normal subject/object perception abruptly ends and is replaced by an experience of all things being One, or at least of oneness -- might convince someone that deity exists. That's because in a purely mystical experience, there are no decisively religious elements from known religions. e.g. There's no vision of Zeus, Christ, Shiva, Allah, Krishna, etc., etc. Instead, all you have occupying your perceptual field is either an experience of all things dissolving into One, or an experience of the oneness of all things. But even though neither an experience of the One nor oneness is quite the same as seeing Zeus, etc, it can be fairly easy to conclude that you have experienced deity.
In the first place, the One or the oneness is quite likely to seem even more real to you than your normal day-to-day empirical experience. In the second place, the experience of the One will -- by nearly all accounts -- be accompanied by a sense of infinity, including a sense of infinite power, and even -- in some cases -- a sense or feeling that you are experiencing something sentient. What could more impress a person that he or she has experienced deity? Meanwhile, if your experience is, not of the One, but of the oneness of all things, you will most likely -- again, by nearly all accounts -- still feel a sense that you are experiencing something more real than your normal empirical experience. Which, I think, is very conducive to the belief that one has experienced "That which underlies all reality". And it's not such a great leap from there to the conclusion that you have experienced deity.
Please note, I am not suggesting here that these experiences are logically or empirically conclusive proof that deity exists. For various reasons, they are not. However, I am suggesting that they can be experienced as so overwhelmingly real, that to emotionally -- or even intellectually -- deny they are experiences of deity becomes extraordinarily difficult. Consequently, even highly intelligent people who have such experiences can thereby become convinced of the existence of deity.
Sha'irullah
رسول الآلهة
Oh then you obviously do not know of theists like me.
ThePainefulTruth
Romantic-Cynic
I'm an agnostic-deist, so I'm not really a theist or a non-theist. I believe the universe came from somewhere and that it's a 50-50 possibility that God created it. I say 50-50 because there's no evidence for or against, so with the two possibilities, 50-50. Being intelligent, I don't say that I believe God exists, since there's no evidence pro or con, I only say that I hope It exists.
Perhaps because
“The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.” - Einstein
The question posed by the OP invites its opposite:
Why do some intelligent people see comprehensibility as an argument against preternatural agency?
Rational Agnostic
Well-Known Member
There are lots of intelligent people who believe in strange things, not just gods, but conspiracy theories without evidence, etc. I think intelligence and common sense are not necessarily always correlated. So, there will still be many intelligent people who hold theistic beliefs. Nevertheless, numerous studies do indicate that the average atheist has a higher IQ than the average theist.
Change 'theist' to 'Jew' and the results look different. How do you interpret them then?