Not always, he wasn't. He grew out of it.

that's correct, but what the o/p suggests is also false

It really irritates me; and I'm not religious; how posters on here salivate so much at the prospect of calling religious people 'stoopid'.

It's almost pointless saying it, but 'faith' is so much more complicated and subtle than all these 'well why doesn't God come down and.....' posts. Religion isn't literal for millions of people. It's a source of comfort and strength. As to it 'filling in the holes' of people's understanding; that's some fair dollop of 'stoopid' self-satisfaction right there. There are gargantuan holes in the understanding of the smartest, most scientifically sophisticated people on earth.

It's the intellect of those who smugly believe that our limited human science answers everything that I worry about.

Hebrews 11:1
'Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.'

The full quote, of course, is:-

`I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, `for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.'
`But,' says Man, `The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'
`Oh dear,' says God, `I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly disappears in a puff of logic.
`Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.

Or there is the possibility that some are prepared to say "god did it" and waste no energy seeing if that was true, whilst others will say "we think this is what happened and we're investigating to see if that is actually the case, we'll let you know the conclusion."
I thinks it's wrong to say the religious are stupid, I work with a lay preacher who is anything but, however those that are heavily religious (in my experience) are less likely to accept new ideas, be investigative for the causes of things & open to things that happen naturally that their religion either chooses not to explain or has decided to rally against.

Bit in bold - SOME is the important word in that sentence. It's only some and it's, I would wager, very much a small minority. However, routine, sweeping generalisations (like the OP) seem to be perfectly fine when it comes to religious people.

But when there's so much evidence for it ...


And the holes, though not liked, are recognised to be and are admitted as much. Their response is "Keep investigating; gather more data", not "Goddunnit."


Who actually says that? Specifically and exactly, instead of soundbite cliches instead of reasoned argument, I mean. Don't wave your hands; be specific. Dob them in. Name names.

There are stupid people who are religious; there are stupid people who aren't. There are violent people who are religious; there are violent people who aren't. There are millions of men, women and children who find comfort and peace in the community and ritual of religion who do absolutely no harm to anyone else. They manage to educate themselves simultaneously without getting involved in the extremes of the literal interpretation of doctrine versus the absolutism of SOME atheists. Note - SOME.

Your last point, I clearly said 'those who'; there are no examples on this specific thread, but the history of DSGD is littered with comments about fools who believe in sky fairies. There are SOME posters on here who have expressed the genuine belief that anyone who is religious is a fool. I happen to think that's a very foolish and limited perspective.

To suggest all religious people are thick is nonsense, as is suggesting that all athiests are intelligent, some of them are extremely thick.
Many athiests accept scientfic theories as fact without questioning them, while I think the big bang theory is only a possibility, not a certainty.
Scientists talk about the composition of planets which are thousands of light years away, how can they possibly know? They always say they're composed of gasses and elements which are found on Earth, when there must be thousands or even millions of other elements and gasses in the Universe, yet scientists never even consider this.

I would urge thick atheists, and indeed yourself, to watch Horizon programmes when they come up.

One, in last few days, specifically explained how we know of the composition of distant exo-planets. I didn't know either.

1) You can tell if a planet is a gas giant or small and rocky by measuring the stars wobble as the planet orbits.
2) To see the atmospheric composition, you measure the spectrum of the received light.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode...n-the-universe


There are only 92 natural elements + a some extras that we have great difficulty making because they become more and more unstable and decay in minute fractions of a second.


And you are right, Big Bang is just a theory. Other Horizon programmes have covered various other possibilities recently and over the last year or two.

The latter group don't seem to cause too much bother.

The former, well ...


How sad - and in the case of children, downright tragic and creepy



I dare say.

................................

In some ways the early humans were better off as they didn't know about atoms...I think some modern people are blinded by materialism.

Yes very well put.

materialism of the gaps

How is it ever possible to be better off being ignorant of reality?

I said "in some ways", the same as they were better off because they had no gun crime.

Materialism blinds people so that they don't entertain other possibilities.

There was gun crime before the discovery of the atom. You seem to be of the belief that knowledge of the atom was required for the invention of the gun. You are mistaken.

I was just saying that they were better of in "some" ways....I wasn't talking about gun manufacture.....I think the Early Greeks theorised the atom.

Lots of people entertain all sorts of possibilities.

The problems start when somebody's possibility has no way of being tested, investigated, experimented upon to take it out of the possibility tray and into the more-than-mere-possibility tray. The woo peddlers never seem to offer any kind of methodology by which their pet hypotheses about the nature of reality can be tested.

They should have tried asking questions here.

Plenty of super rational athiests here get all confused and angry about the world, their understanding of human interaction is non-existant and they get terrified of the most natural things - such as the wrong type of person on the bus.

They did - the pre-Socratics got there on a purely rationalistic rather than empirical basis, a pure thought experiment. Take a piece of something - anything - and cut it in half. Take one of the halves and cut it in half. Take one of those halves and cut it in half. Repeat, and keep going. They didn't see it as credible that the process could go on for ever so they hypothesised that there has to be some basic building block which is fundamental, uncuttable - atomos, hence our word.

Of course we now know that they were wrong albeit close - atoms are made of still smaller units. Electrons appear to be fundamental (though at least one physicist to my knowledge has challenged this) but protons and neutrons are themselves made of still smaller 'bits.'

I think they also argued about something like salt could be added to water and spread through the whole content, yet a small sip would still taste of salt.....well I guess that was an argument for how small an atom must be.

The latter group don't cause too much bother? Really? Is this an example of an athiests's superior intellect?