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I always hear about the mythical intelligent religious person but somehow, they remain elusive. As a general rule, religiosity goes down as intelligence goes up

I always hear about the mythical intelligent religious person but somehow, they remain elusive. As a general rule, religiosity goes down as intelligence goes up. Consider William Craig. The man is a Christian philosopher and I would say he is quite intelligent. But he also tends to stray from much of what the Christian bible teaches. Now compare him to the highly devout and evangelical Ken Ham who would deny such basic truths like evolution.

MichaelMoser123 10y ago
> I always hear about the mythical intelligent religious person but somehow, they remain elusive You couldn't have met these two guys [1] [2], but you keep on bumping into what they did for all of us. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Isaac_Newton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Isaac_Newto... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Albert_Einstein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Albert_Eins...
- flukus 10y ago
  Newton was a product of his times. Einstein seems to have been more agnostic, at the very least his definition of God is very different to most religions.
- Retra 10y ago
  Newton lived only 300 years ago. Newton is a culturally relative choice, here. Why didn't you pick someone from 3000 years ago to site as intelligent? I mean, the difference between Newton and Einstein is actually very large, and the difference between Einstein and a brilliant physicist today is similarly large. The only things that Newton did that were intelligent were things that modern physicists are still unilaterally willing to do, and holding belief in a deity is not one of them. PS: Those guys are dead. You haven't met him either. They had less information available to them than we do today by a large margin. Their opinions and beliefs are inherently less trustworthy due to that.
  - MichaelMoser123 10y ago
    >The only things that Newton did that were intelligent were things that modern physicists are still unilaterally willing to do ... > They had less information available to them than we do today by a large margin. Their opinions and beliefs are inherently less trustworthy due to that. i for one congratulate you for being smarter and more Knowledgeable than both Newton and Einstein.
    - berntb 10y ago
      I think you really know the obvious counter arguments yourself: 1. You argue through authority, for a subject where believers are infamous for throwing out their reasoning capacity (even becoming creationists)? :-( (Is this some meta level humor?) 2. Do you remember that quote about "standing on the shoulders of giants"? Those two are a couple of the giants we stand on the shoulders of, today. That doesn't imply a claim about intelligence, more than being able to get through a science university education.
      - MichaelMoser123 10y ago
        > You argue through authority, for a subject where believers are infamous for throwing out their reasoning capacity (even becoming creationists)? :-( (Is this some meta level humor?) No, i think that the categorical statement of bleachedsleet (five levels up the tree) is a bit offending, to me it sounds exactly like if he was claiming absolute authority on the subject, which he obviously can't. showing a counterexample is not a bad argument, at least not in mathematics.
        berntb 10y ago
        1. Don't make bad arguments just because you think someone's position is insulting. (As my point 2 noted, it was a flawed example.) If nothing else, you're not helping your cause... 2. bleachedsleet argument needs that intelligence is very correlated with rationality. Sadly, the correlation is probably quite far from 1. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/18/opinion/sunday/the-difference-between-rationality-and-intelligence.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/18/opinion/sunday/the-differe... (Regarding 2: For instance, there is mental disease. For another, if you raise children with one specific set of answers and they don't see any criticism of those answers, you can make most of them believe in anything all their life. Including creationism.)
clock_tower 10y ago
What you're seeing is US Southern Protestant fundamentalism: an evolutionary dead end (is that why they deny evolution?), which would never have come into being in the first place were it not for Henry VIII, William Cecil, and John Knox -- and Cardinal Richelieu taking the Protestant side in the Thirty Years' War. Look at a more serious religion, and you'll see better results: Scholastic Catholicism, or the Mu'tazili and Ash'ari schools of Islam, or almost any form of Buddhism.
- flukus 10y ago
  Catholics reject evolution too: http://www.catholic.com/tracts/adam-eve-and-evolution http://www.catholic.com/tracts/adam-eve-and-evolution Catholic doctrine is to deny random mutation (god is twiddling bits manually) and insist adam and eve were real. That along with a host of other silly stuff the believe (virgin birth).
  - throwaway1892 10y ago
    Well, that page states "Church does not have an official position on whether various life forms developed over the course of time." And for Adam & Eve : "[The Church] allows for the possibility that man’s body developed from previous biological forms" So it's not the case.
sturgill 10y ago
I'm a very religious guy and consider myself reasonably intelligent. As I get older and learn more, I find my faith in God also increasing. Godel was much smarter than me and appears to have believed in some divine being. Kant was also smarter than me and was religious. There are a litany of historical religious philosophers (Christian and otherwise) who belie your point as well. Unless your point is simply that religiousity is currently out of favor with the self-professed intelligentsia. To which I'd respond: so?...
- berntb 10y ago
  I guess that you are smarter than to use anecdotal data points to argue against a statistical argument yourself? At least, for any other subject..? (What does it say about a position that intelligent adherents can't reason about it?)
  - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
    The GP said such people were mythical, that's not a statistical claim it's an absolute claim. One counter-example destroys such a position. Inverse relationship between religiosity and intelligence may be true, just not sure what it tells us. A statistical appeal to authority?? Many more people are theistic or spiritual than are religious -- I doubt any statistics exist for that, but again proving a truth that tells us nothing about the basic proposition seems pretty worthless. You appear to think reasoning about a position requires someone to come to your conclusion. Re the anecdotal nature of the data-points, are you disputing that the mentioned people are intelligent. What in particular is questionable about those data-points, they don't disprove the aforesaid conjecture but they do cast doubt on the implied conclusion being drawn.
    - berntb 10y ago
      >> The GP said such people were mythical An absolute value would mean rationality was totally correlated with intelligence. It isn't. I posted this in another comment -- http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/18/opinion/sunday/the-difference-between-rationality-and-intelligence.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/18/opinion/sunday/the-differe... I doubt that was meant, either. There have been studies, most show that intelligent people are less likely to be religious. The more education, the less religion. Etc. It is, of course, a statistical thing. (I grew up in Sweden and can tell you that to get a large fraction of (mentally healthy) people to be religious, they need to grow up in a religious environment -- without anyone really contradicting that world view. It was a bit of a shock for me the first time I went to Ireland for vacation, since I knew that a large part of the locals were really religious, but they were sane.)
DanBC 10y ago
There are plenty of them. The fact they don't push their religiosity at you is a good thing, no?
throwaway1892 10y ago
Well, I think that Pasteur (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Pasteur https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Pasteur) would apply.
pbhjpbhj 10y ago
>As a general rule, religiosity goes down as intelligence goes up. // Which tells us nothing about theistic belief. It would be foolish to conflate the two IMO; as appears to be happening in this exchange. You say "mythical intelligent religious person" - few people could be considered more religious than Newton, you presumably consider him not to have been intelligent? What's your yardstick for intelligence? Or did you mean "mythical" in the sense of "I'm going to ignore examples I know of because they contradict my position"?
xj9 10y ago
Consider William Craig. The man is a Christian philosopher and I would say he is quite intelligent. That was easy, you answered your own question!

MichaelMoser123 10y ago

> I always hear about the mythical intelligent religious person but somehow, they remain elusive You couldn't have met these two guys [1] [2], but you keep on bumping into what they did for all of us. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Isaac_Newton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Isaac_Newto... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Albert_Einstein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Albert_Eins...

flukus 10y ago
Newton was a product of his times. Einstein seems to have been more agnostic, at the very least his definition of God is very different to most religions.
Retra 10y ago
Newton lived only 300 years ago. Newton is a culturally relative choice, here. Why didn't you pick someone from 3000 years ago to site as intelligent? I mean, the difference between Newton and Einstein is actually very large, and the difference between Einstein and a brilliant physicist today is similarly large. The only things that Newton did that were intelligent were things that modern physicists are still unilaterally willing to do, and holding belief in a deity is not one of them. PS: Those guys are dead. You haven't met him either. They had less information available to them than we do today by a large margin. Their opinions and beliefs are inherently less trustworthy due to that.
- MichaelMoser123 10y ago
  >The only things that Newton did that were intelligent were things that modern physicists are still unilaterally willing to do ... > They had less information available to them than we do today by a large margin. Their opinions and beliefs are inherently less trustworthy due to that. i for one congratulate you for being smarter and more Knowledgeable than both Newton and Einstein.
  - berntb 10y ago
    I think you really know the obvious counter arguments yourself: 1. You argue through authority, for a subject where believers are infamous for throwing out their reasoning capacity (even becoming creationists)? :-( (Is this some meta level humor?) 2. Do you remember that quote about "standing on the shoulders of giants"? Those two are a couple of the giants we stand on the shoulders of, today. That doesn't imply a claim about intelligence, more than being able to get through a science university education.
    - MichaelMoser123 10y ago
      > You argue through authority, for a subject where believers are infamous for throwing out their reasoning capacity (even becoming creationists)? :-( (Is this some meta level humor?) No, i think that the categorical statement of bleachedsleet (five levels up the tree) is a bit offending, to me it sounds exactly like if he was claiming absolute authority on the subject, which he obviously can't. showing a counterexample is not a bad argument, at least not in mathematics.
      - berntb 10y ago
        1. Don't make bad arguments just because you think someone's position is insulting. (As my point 2 noted, it was a flawed example.) If nothing else, you're not helping your cause... 2. bleachedsleet argument needs that intelligence is very correlated with rationality. Sadly, the correlation is probably quite far from 1. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/18/opinion/sunday/the-difference-between-rationality-and-intelligence.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/18/opinion/sunday/the-differe... (Regarding 2: For instance, there is mental disease. For another, if you raise children with one specific set of answers and they don't see any criticism of those answers, you can make most of them believe in anything all their life. Including creationism.)

clock_tower 10y ago

What you're seeing is US Southern Protestant fundamentalism: an evolutionary dead end (is that why they deny evolution?), which would never have come into being in the first place were it not for Henry VIII, William Cecil, and John Knox -- and Cardinal Richelieu taking the Protestant side in the Thirty Years' War. Look at a more serious religion, and you'll see better results: Scholastic Catholicism, or the Mu'tazili and Ash'ari schools of Islam, or almost any form of Buddhism.

flukus 10y ago
Catholics reject evolution too: http://www.catholic.com/tracts/adam-eve-and-evolution http://www.catholic.com/tracts/adam-eve-and-evolution Catholic doctrine is to deny random mutation (god is twiddling bits manually) and insist adam and eve were real. That along with a host of other silly stuff the believe (virgin birth).
- throwaway1892 10y ago
  Well, that page states "Church does not have an official position on whether various life forms developed over the course of time." And for Adam & Eve : "[The Church] allows for the possibility that man’s body developed from previous biological forms" So it's not the case.

sturgill 10y ago

I'm a very religious guy and consider myself reasonably intelligent. As I get older and learn more, I find my faith in God also increasing. Godel was much smarter than me and appears to have believed in some divine being. Kant was also smarter than me and was religious. There are a litany of historical religious philosophers (Christian and otherwise) who belie your point as well. Unless your point is simply that religiousity is currently out of favor with the self-professed intelligentsia. To which I'd respond: so?...

berntb 10y ago
I guess that you are smarter than to use anecdotal data points to argue against a statistical argument yourself? At least, for any other subject..? (What does it say about a position that intelligent adherents can't reason about it?)
- pbhjpbhj 10y ago
  The GP said such people were mythical, that's not a statistical claim it's an absolute claim. One counter-example destroys such a position. Inverse relationship between religiosity and intelligence may be true, just not sure what it tells us. A statistical appeal to authority?? Many more people are theistic or spiritual than are religious -- I doubt any statistics exist for that, but again proving a truth that tells us nothing about the basic proposition seems pretty worthless. You appear to think reasoning about a position requires someone to come to your conclusion. Re the anecdotal nature of the data-points, are you disputing that the mentioned people are intelligent. What in particular is questionable about those data-points, they don't disprove the aforesaid conjecture but they do cast doubt on the implied conclusion being drawn.
  - berntb 10y ago
    >> The GP said such people were mythical An absolute value would mean rationality was totally correlated with intelligence. It isn't. I posted this in another comment -- http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/18/opinion/sunday/the-difference-between-rationality-and-intelligence.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/18/opinion/sunday/the-differe... I doubt that was meant, either. There have been studies, most show that intelligent people are less likely to be religious. The more education, the less religion. Etc. It is, of course, a statistical thing. (I grew up in Sweden and can tell you that to get a large fraction of (mentally healthy) people to be religious, they need to grow up in a religious environment -- without anyone really contradicting that world view. It was a bit of a shock for me the first time I went to Ireland for vacation, since I knew that a large part of the locals were really religious, but they were sane.)

DanBC 10y ago

There are plenty of them. The fact they don't push their religiosity at you is a good thing, no?

throwaway1892 10y ago

Well, I think that Pasteur (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Pasteur https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Pasteur) would apply.

pbhjpbhj 10y ago

>As a general rule, religiosity goes down as intelligence goes up. // Which tells us nothing about theistic belief. It would be foolish to conflate the two IMO; as appears to be happening in this exchange. You say "mythical intelligent religious person" - few people could be considered more religious than Newton, you presumably consider him not to have been intelligent? What's your yardstick for intelligence? Or did you mean "mythical" in the sense of "I'm going to ignore examples I know of because they contradict my position"?

xj9 10y ago

Consider William Craig. The man is a Christian philosopher and I would say he is quite intelligent. That was easy, you answered your own question!