Not sure how easy it is to compare intellects between Newton and Darwin. But on the religious angle, yes, Newton was intensely religious but also a colossal crank - he devoted far, far more time to his work on alchemy than on science.

I'm never sure about these surveys etc I didn't find my faith until I was 48 years old did I get more stupid ? I don't feel more stupid.

You believe random, highly unlikely stuff without any shred of evidence. Some would say that this is a mark of stupidity

Is suggesting that all religious people are stupid as bad as saying all Brexiteers are racist?

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

and if someone has a shred of evidence? Maybe it isn't the sort of evidence that you can see or touch, and put under a microscope though.

...Like?

No, it isn't as bad. Whilst I don't see the sensible argument for Brexit, an intelligent person could make one and cite evidence in support of the claim.

No one in their right mind can justify religion.


If anyone has a shred of evidence I would love to hear from them. I would be the happiest man in the world if all that stuff was true.

The greatest trick ever pulled off in history, is of Satan getting humanity to forget or ignore that he also exists. Suffering is caused by human choices, Satan's influence, and people choosing to disobey God.

Even Christians founder because they ignore Satan - evil should not exist, but came into the world because of man's disobedience. We are reaping what we have sown. But because God exists and loves us, we survive. Good things happen because of Him. Without God, humanity and this earth would've perished when the first sins were committed.

http://www.amazingfacts.org/media-li...here-suffering

Why evil exists is at the heart of a lengthy conflict between God and Satan, one that God will ultimately win:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQmLVU_nvo8

Where's the rolleyes emoticon when you need it most?

All I can safely say is your understanding of the world is very different from mine.

... so different in fact as not even to merit the term 'understanding' at all.

Given that Satan killed 10 people in the bible, compared to over 2.8million by God, I know who comes across as the evil one...

http://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot....-in-bible.html

Gottfried Leibniz was his contemporary, religious, a genius and even influenced by Chinese philosophy and the I Ching or The Book of Changes. I doubt he was a colossal crank.

Actually if we allow for the alchemical fashion of the day and even royal patronage (I believe Charles the II had his own alchemical lab), and given the amount of mercury in Newtons body in his latter days, which would explain his eccentricity, I doubt Newton was a colossal crank either.

Biographies (of which there are a good number) say otherwise.

Some people feel a need to answers beyond what is known and provable and some people are content to admit ignorance.

There are pros and cons to both. It's somewhat easier to live with certainties rather than doubts -- easier to drive yourself forward. That it might be harder to understand the world if you substitute an asserted belief into the equation rather than rely on observable behaviour isn't surprising.

Yes, great figures from history have been religious but it was at a time when belief was seen as a virtue in of itself, and a lot of the more thoughtful ones were endlessly challenging those beliefs and ending up in some very conflicted positions rather than just take a belief at a young age and parrot it back for the next half century in a ''I believe it therefore it is'' manner which is, in essence, the opposite of scientific study. I do think science and religion are at opposite ends of some spectrum or other. You can be both but they are adapting different parts of your character -- the 'what is' of observation and 'what may be' of imagination carried forward into belief. If a person can make that distinction then I could see how they could carry off both. I don't see it from the people who make such a huge deal of their religion and look to convert but I always thought the quiet, personal believers were the most rational -- pound for pound. They seem far less likely to take everything literally and cherry-pick their favourite parts to suit.

Seriously!

This 'study' carried out in a field that has the highest proportion of atheistic materialists of all scientific disciplines, is embraced and celebrated by some non believers, who would be all over it with a toothpick had the study been done by some Christian organisation showing that atheism stems from autism or something like that.

Just another righteous piety fest from the evangelicals and those who desperately want to believe it.

If you watch the video link I posted, you'll see that Satan has been responsible for billions of deaths, including the deception and future destruction of a third of the heavenly angels. Potentially trillions of murders.

As the main hypothesis atheists buy is that our existence is random and highly unlikely, and with nothing in the way of solid evidence to back that up, I'd say the margin between stupidity and smarts isn't as wide as some might like it to be.

All used up during the back slapping and high fiving from silly atheists who believe that crap.

Our existence is due to evolution by natural selection, which isn't all random.

As for highly unlikely, the probability of our existence is 1 - we're here. You can't say that it's highly unlikely since, unlike tossing a coin or choosing a card or any number of cards from a deck or rolling a die (and so on), you can't know the range of possibilities in advance.

Which crap would this be?

The idea that believing in God or not has any real bearing on your intelligence.

As soon as I have literally nothing better to do than spend 40 minutes watching that nonsense, sure.

The correlation isn't arrow-straight but there has to be some bearing, given the lack of knowledge of some of the woefully bad arguments I've seen people advance - lack of knowledge of why they're so woefully bad, I mean.