(April 8, 2010 at 4:37 pm)AngelThMan Wrote: I'm not really sure what you're trying to prove with this, other than some religious nut did something crazy. What this person did should not define all Christians, and certainly not the intelligence of the entire human race. Though apparently you're not bright enough to understand that while this person was a nut, it still took a level of intelligence that no other animal possesses just to get into his car, start it, sneak into the airport and ram his car into that plane. He is still an intelligent being, even if he used his intelligence to carry out a morally incorrect and self-destructive act, which is what you're really demonstrating here rather than a lack of intelligence.
I'll bite.
Sure, he is intelligent (if not particularly right in the head). I don't think you can make a statistical showing that religious people are less (or more) intelligent that atheists.
What can be shown I think is that throughout history both atheists and Christians who are sane have done irrational or bad things. The difference being, that the religious use God as an excuse, whereas the atheist has to take responsibility for their own actions or else find someone/something else to take the blame.
Take the crusades for example. The death of thousands or more, suffering, torture, rape, etc, all caused all in the name of god. And the scary thing it, the people they were killing believed in the same god! Just a difference of opinion about the prophets and which books are holy and exactly how life should be lived. Of course, being cynical, it is easy to believe religion was not the only reason for the crusades, just like the war in iraq was as likely to be over oil as it was meant to be over terrorism or WMDs. (although considering Bush's relationship with god it wouldn't have surprised me if he had called a crusade). Ok, the Muslims have their Jihads as well and were perhaps no better, but two wrongs do not make a right as my mum always taught me.
Ok, none of this addresses the point of evidence about God or intelligence particularly, except that intelligent people as well as stupid can be believers or atheists. So, maybe i don't have much of a point after all to make.... thanks for reading.
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