If faith works how every religion says it works......

[RAD]

[quote='Wikipedia']In 2008, intelligence researcher Helmuth Nyborg examined whether IQ relates to denomination and income, using representative data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth, which includes intelligence tests on a representative selection of American youth, where they have also replied to questions about religious belief. His results, published in the scientific journal Intelligence demonstrated that on average, Atheists scored 1.95 IQ points higher than Agnostics, 3.82 points higher than Liberal persuasions, and 5.89 IQ points higher than Dogmatic persuasions. [4] "I'm not saying that believing in God makes you dumber. My hypothesis is that people with a low intelligence are more easily drawn toward religions, which give answers that are certain, while people with a high intelligence are more skeptical," says the professor.[5]

That's better. Not something Jesus was looking for in a follower, of course. One does not have to be intelligent to love wisdom, or even to gain it, as I'm sure you agree.

The end does justify the means. No other ethical system makes sense. That's not to say that Stalin and Mao were justified in doing what they did, though.

So the end is justified but it isn't if you don't think so? Perhaps you can explain in a more objective manner.

I repeat: 'I'd argue that they weren't true secular humanists or rationalists, as they adhered to an irrational pseudo-scientific theory (Marxism) and followed it blindly, without evaluating it rationally.' So, they weren't true atheists in the sense of being humanists or rationalists. They did, of course, lack belief in a god, which made them atheists in the strictest sense, but Buddhists are atheist in this sense.

OK then they weren't true atheists, as long as you can define "rational" I still win the argument, which was originally that Flew's "fallacy" came out of thin air. NTS is bogus. And of course many of them were quite rational and got sucked in anyway.

Also, as you know atheists don't have any discernable standard of "rational" One says Jesus was a historical figure and fairly wise, and another says he's all made up.

I was never comparing the religious death toll to the atheist one. Now that you mention it, though, we have to factor in the deaths from the crusades, from every religious conflict, inquisition, witch burning, etc. throughout history. This would certainly change the scores dramatically.

Well then you are completely ignoring my argument that medieval Christtans didn't know anything Jesus said, (eg how to handle heretics), and almost everything he said was contramanded by their activitiies. Why would you blame Jesus for anything his most ignorant followers did? That's neither fair nor rational. And you haven't explained why this activity mysteriously stops after Chrsitians get to read the New Testament for themselves. So if we are talking Communists who read Marx vs Chrsitians who read Jesus, what is the ratio then? 10,000 to one?

It's not just contradictions. All of the Bible, even the NT, is morally dubious at best, morally reprehensible at worst. If we followed it literally, the world be a much worse place.

I said you don't know that because, as Chesterton said, nobody has actually tried it if you use the Sermon on the Mount as the Standard. But why don't you give me a specific problem which the Sermon a Sermon on the Mount axiom would create. Maybe we can make progress on that point. You can also perhaps tell me which of the sins Paul listed, other than homosexuality, which claims no innocent victims.

That Fox did so before Mill is irrelevant. Mill still did so, thus women's rights are not an exclusively religious idea (in fact, they have little scriptural basis). You can't deny, either, that women's rights, civil rights for other races, gay rights and animal rights are, by and large, products of a more secular post-Enlightenment world. Certainly that is the case here in Britain.

Right to an extent, but most atheists both believe and peddle complete historical nonsense about who led the enlightenment. They deserve an earful of the truth they claim to care about more than I. And really, it does matter who went first. That's what "led" means. And actually during the enlightenment period, some of the gaps were huge. Do you think one atheist here has ever even heard that Voltaire was justifying slavery at the same time that Wesley and thousands of Methodists and Quakers were demanding an end to it? In that case, one of you poster-boys was way behind, no?

No, because Mill was influenced by utilitarian philosophy, not the Bible.

As if he never heard of Methodist or Quaker objections. You see if your poster boys had beat the Chrsitians, I would give them credit for it. BTW I began studying this stuff to see what the Chrsitians did do, because my secular profs never mentioned anything. Why is that do you think? Aren't they the keepers of the truth? They also forgot to tell me things like how Paine and his "Age of Reason" were dissed by 3 major founders.

Is it possible some Christians reading the New Testament for the first time decided to actually follow Jesus' mission statement in Luke 4?

Certainly, but it appears that rather fewer than you might think have done so.

Well enough to lead the way in the "moral sciences" as Jefferson himself put it.

Jefferson admired Jesus greatly. Of this I have no doubt. But so what?

I was referring to Newton, Bacon and Locke, his "three greatest men in the world" as I said in the beginning. Perhaps you missed it, or I said it in a post you didn't see.

You put great emphasis on the good bits of the Bible, and ignore the negative bits. The Golden Rule existed years before Jesus was around. Confucius came up with it. So, by your logic, Jesus was a copycat.

Well actually he raised the bar much higher, saying for example to keep your giving completely secret, and that calling your brother a fool is roughly equal to murder, probably because you can murder a persons spirit, etc etc. Which has nothing to do with the golden rule.

String theory is a theory of everything, to reconcile quantum and classical physics. Its failure doesn't render all science useless.

I didn't say it was useless. I said that without these working theories, you understand less about the cosmos than we thought we did, and it makes less and less sense.

I don't want to get rid of religion. I merely wish to see it reduced to the equivalent of a knitting club: a social activity which gives comfort, but makes no moral and metaphysical claims that others are supposed to follow or believe in.

That's fine, as long as we can still have massive revivals like the one which moved Franklin to say "it was wonderful to see," and which engendered a Democratic spirit in so many people. And like the one that began on Azusa Street of which Bartleman said, "the blood washed away the color line." Sorry, nobody was knitting in church during those.

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Rad, you believe in an invisible sky daddy. How high do you think that puts you on the scale?

Well no, we believe in a God who came down here in human form, quite visibly. I'm a Christian, not a Muslim.

On what mental scale are those who believe in an invisible force causing enormous leaps in evolutionary species creation because they can't otherwise explain gaps.

And then what was the average IQ of those who thought Piltdownman and Nebraska Man were transitionals?