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So atheists cannot be intelligent. How Christian of you to say so. I am fairly confident that if you were to try to correlate intelligence to belief you would find a very poor fit with any simple theory. I have discussed matters with atheists and Christians at all intellectual levels. There is little pattern. What little trend I see points in the opposite direction, those who are gullible and follow the faith presented to them without question tend to be the less intelligent. Converts, who have made their own way into or out of belief systems tend to be brighter. Naturally this means nothing as to whether or not the converts are right. Truth does not work like that, it is not an opinion poll or an intelligence test. There is a truth and whether or not you know it truth still is, whether or not you have faith in it truth still is. That is one of my basic beliefs anyway. It would not matter if everybody in the entire world believed that they were created out of cream cheese by a duck headed god the truth would not care. Belief does not change reality. I do not need to know that I have walked off the end of a cliff before I begin to fall. If you think otherwise then I am sorry for you. The universe is not, the universe does not care about you or me, the concept is misplaced. Reality is incapable of caring or having meaning or purpose. The universe operates on causes and effects, not plans and purpose, such concepts only belong to intelligent agents such as people and animals. The universe has no intelligence, no plan, no purpose. That fact does not belittle the universe, it belittles the lack of imagination of those people who cannot comprehend it. I am not blind. I am not blinded by my beliefs. I look around me and I see a fantastically complex universe, a universe that in no way is centred on mankind. That perception is a common illusion. Not seeing the universe centred on mankind is relatively simple compared to the mental feat of not seeing the universe as an illusion inside your own head, a trick that most four year olds can master. I have never felt at any time that I possessed a thing that could be called a soul or a spirit. I do not know if that is some kind of lack or defect in me, such as my inability to see magic eye pictures or to see certain so-called hilarious cult comedies as being funny. I have never felt disabled by this. I feel quite happy not to suffer from this delusion. By not believing in my ability to survive death I have no fear of your threats of hellfire. To be consistent I should say that I am not certain about it, there is always the vaguest shadow of doubt in my mind about everything. Thank you and your kind for bringing me hell. Without your stories I would have no problems. Religion has probably caused more human suffering than any other invention of the human mind. I do not believe that the universe has to have a reason in order to exist. I do not believe that my life has to have a purpose. I do not believe that I have a soul. I have no spiritual side. I feel no lack. I can understand why religions have developed. I understand why they have spread. I know that the tendency for an idea to spread has very little to do with how true it is, not even much to do with how true it feels. I do not believe that truth feels any different to untruth. I have been reasonably comfortable with my beliefs at many stages of my life, comfortable with the truth of certain ideas that I have later found to be false. I have concluded that there is no reason for truth to feel true, because we have no equipment with which to measure or feel truth. We have no reason to have a gut instinct for abstract concepts, such a capacity cannot evolve. Naturally if you think that you have such an ability then you already feel the truth in your truth organ and know that this proves that you are right. But as a blind believer everything you perceive already confirms the truth of your revelation, just as it would if it was true. |
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