Atheists are more intelligent than religious people, finds study.

[dueda]

Lies, in the form of fantasies are an absolute prerequisite for human civilisation.

We are still very immature and need bad excuses to skip work, get on the phone, or just avoid some boring question. The bigger the matter, more sophisticate the lie. Primitive societies in general tried to balance nature and reason (but also created horrors like the Aztecs did), but the Roman Empire originated an era of oppression and manipulation of ideas; with most of the world being influenced by it, even outer regions, we have now a lot of religions with that in common.

So we find comfort in our lies while others push guilt, fear, or just scam on us with their lies.

---

It's intriguing what happens when someone just try to live without selling or buying lies. People will avoid such a person or think they're insane.

[waregim]

Freud, at one point in his career - seriously asked whether it was possible for entire societies to go mad. Then fled from the issue as he realized the possible consequences of the answer.

It all basically boils down a quandary:
If a person disconnects from the Matrix, is he not clinically mad?
Furthermore:
If the Matrix disconnects from a person, is not the poor sap just as mad????

Is not the ultimate realist St. Simeon Stylites, disconnecting from a delusional world and proclaiming doom to all within earshot?

Would we, or could we tolerate such a one among us.

I prefer Swinburne over Kafka, any day.

[dueda]

I guess I'm realizing what is wrong with me. I'm doomed one way or another - Is there a gray pill?

[centaur2469]

The numbers are likely scudded by muslims. It takes a certain degree of stupid to think “Muhammad” wants you to cut your daughters vagina off and then suture it up to a small hole for urination (stage 3 mutilation).

Fundamentalist Christians (aka American Taliban) aren't much better.  Jews and Christians also mutilate the genitals of their sons. While not nearly as bad as FGM it is still very harmful, violates medical ethics of informed consent and bodily integrity.

The doctrines of Islam are definitely the most toxic of all current religions, but anyone who lives their life based on ancient texts from the bronze age is out of their mind.

You say that fundementalist christians aren't much better. However, I have to disagree. With the Jewish tradition of circumcision when is the last time you've heard of this being a complication that went horrendously wrong. You speak of that which you do not know of and it is only your view of it that indicates it is wrong. This is a Jewish custom that goes back for thousands of years, long before some doctor decided it was against informed consent. About that. It's not against informed consent if the parent gives that consent now is it? The Muslims I have no explaination for and I do agree that genital mutilation is not following Gods directives. Yes, I am highly religious if you want to know. But most peoples interpretations of the Bible are taken out of context by even the most scholarly Bible readers. I am far from stupid and on that I don't agree with the studies results that athiest are more intelligent than religious people. Let me take the test, I'll surely prove otherwise!

[RobertX]

centaur2469, I don't know if you're aware, but the guy you are replying to is dead; he joined the choir invisible.

[Medbay]

I guess it depends I would assume more religious people have better families than athiests, and if humans where made to reproduce and have families than whos smarter then. Ignorance is bliss and it also makes better families.

[waregim]

Buddhism is an atheistic religion.

And even nihilistic.

Yet buddhist societies have normal family units.

[Medbay]

Watch these retards tested them on the big bang and called them lower intelligence

[soulcity]

And no one was surprised...

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/...83131.html

Religious people are, on average, less intelligent than atheists, researchers claim. 

With the number of people with a religious belief on the rise – it’s predicted that people with no faith will make up only 13 per cent of the global population by 2050 – numerous studies have explored the relationship between religious convictions and IQ.

And now, in a new paper published in Frontiers in Psychology, researchers say that diminished intelligence among people of faith could be because they largely rely on intuition.


“It is well established that religiosity correlates inversely with intelligence,” note Richard Daws and Adam Hampshire at Imperial College London.

Surveying more than 63,000 participants online who indicated whether they were atheists, religious or agnostic, each person had to complete a 30-minute set of 12 cognitive tasks that measured planning, reasoning, attention and memory.

Overall, the research found that atheists performed better overall than the religious participants even when demographic factors like age and education were taken into consideration. Agnostics mostly placed between atheists and believers on all tasks.

While strength of religious conviction correlated with poorer cognitive performance, the data did show that there were only few small differences in working memory compared to tasks that required reasoning. 

As such, rather than having poor general intelligence, the researchers say that religious people's lower IQ test results may be a result of bad performance on tasks only where intuition and logic come into conflict. 

In fact, one of the reasoning tasks which was a difficult version of the Stroop Task known as “colour-word remapping”, was designed to create maximum conflict between an intuitive response and a logical one.


As predicted, this task showed the biggest group differences in keeping with the idea that religious people rely more on their intuition. 

“These findings provide evidence in support of the hypothesis that the religiosity effect relates to conflict [between reasoning and intuition] as opposed to reasoning ability or intelligence more generally,” the researchers concluded.

I don't care.

[kerkunkah]

Atheists have a high suicide rate.