Do Atheists really consider Christians less intelligent?

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I believe in verifiable evidence, outside of verifiable evidence it's mere speculation. It doesn't mean I think you're "not smart" for believing in speculation, it means I view you as dangerous because people that choose speculation over evidence are easily persuaded or manipulated into doing destructive things, in some cases the very things they claim to oppose. Example: all those religious crusades into the middle east to spread Jesus' message of love and peace at the end of a bloodied sword.

I'm agnostic, and I view all people the same. Yea, sounds like a false claim where I'm just trying to make myself seem morally superior. Honestly though, I don't care what other people believe, as long as it isn't detrimental to myself, my friends, family, or society.

Additionally, many religious people I've met are highly intelligent. More so than me in some cases. Now taking this from a more atheistic perspective, they only use God because they'd get overwhelmed by the possibility of a totally godless or scientific universe, which is actually DUE to their intelligence. I don't consider myself a genius, but I do hold my IQ to be of some value, even if just mathematical, and I personally have to resort to assumptions and quick decisions when my existential crisis get REALLY bad.

I don't think Christians are less intelligent but I think their beliefs are foolish. I've met some very smart Christians. I've met some very dumb atheists.

I've met some Christians who could think of very smart reasons to defend things that were thought of for foolish reasons. Far more intelligence has gone into defending the Bible then ever went into writing the Bible.

lol yeah

Sagan waxed poetically, about the dance of Shiva.

America's founding fathers envisioned the humanistic virtues, in terms of anthropomorphic figures, which could have been called idols, put those in capitals, made in the image of Greco Roman temples.

The goddess of reason --


Apotheosis of George Washington --
(apotheosis -- the elevation of someone to divine status; deification.)


(Libertas is considered analogous to Juneau and Ishtar.)

Atheists have facetiously compared the concept of a hidden cause to a flying spaghetti monster, yet they conceive of gods, in the abstract, to which they show awe and grandeur.

That angel, to the left of Washington, is holding the fasces, as in fascism. Because, he's a god.

Atheists find gods in a particle, or in their own mythical figures, yet see fit to insult the animist or Creationist.

Let me put it like this:
Most really militant atheists were raised in families that shoved religion down their throat, this is the case with me. I used to be very anti-religion.
You can believe in talking snakes and a titanic sized boat fitting two of every animal known to man, but don't expect people to not question your intelligence. Especially when Christians actively brainwash and shelter their children.

Our picture of Dracula is actually another atheistic myth. Some call him the savior of Western civilization.

I think I lead that too much from my head and consequently my 'they' didn't communicate the right target.

What I meant to say is that most of atheists' ire against unknown causes is really political rather than dealing with the facts themselves, whether they realize it or not. I posted the Sam Harris video as an example of people questioning the idea that there should be any 'out-of-bounds' science in this regard, ie. that the results should speak for themselves.

Rather than being so restrictive and doctrinaire, for about the last 15 years, atheism has been accepting every last claim, of every last superstition. You can say that Moses crossed the Red Sea, at just the right moment, and it closed upon the Egyptians, but by accident. They can believe in Santa Claus, just so long as you give it a materialistic explanation.

Besides just appropriating the religion, itself, for the cause of materialism, they also appropriate the holiday. People will be deluged, say, on Easter, with this line of speculation.

The two kinds of atheists, imo --

skeptic on a stick


everything but Jesus


But, ultimately, the lack of critical reasoning can be called religion, not matter who isn't doing it.

I didn't know that I was disagreeing with you but now that you put it that way I'd say I have to.

My understanding of materialism, as a cultural artifact rather than a philosophy of science, is that it's divided into a lot of scattered camps. There are clearly people who just don't like what their religious relatives have to say and so since it's anti-religious they wave it in the air as a self-defense weapon. Similarly you have some in the science and philosophy of science community who've gotten confused over just how sound/unsound the the philosophy of matieralism/physicalism is based on the current facts on the ground and consequently they've entrenched themselves in it somewhat religiously. Technically the later are a block to scientific progress itself because if they'd humbug anything out that they don't like then they're stuck with the measurement problem, dark matter and dark energy, the state of scientific progress as it was in the 1980's or 1990's, and they won't be able to hack something that moves away from them and toward something like a non-reductive or even more purely functionalist (ie. neither quite materialist nor idealist) coming to pass.

A lot of the myriad quantum theories that don't even speak to the same fundamental universe but make radical departures with the same data both tell us how little we know and also seem to suggest that the way we try to hand-wave away certain things that don't meet the current narrative means that the current narrative and interpretation of the data need a critical rethink.


Speaking more directly to culture than to science:

As far as I can tell science is leading away from reductive materialism, ie. it's a dead end. I do think the pseudoskeptics and more knee-jerk antitheists, which the internet is full of, are as ignorant and superstitious as anyone else. They're just betting on the horse that's most bet on at present and consequently they can know even less about the world, about science, or philosophy than a Christian or other theist but feel an unearned smugness or superiority to that person because they have the authority of societal establishment behind their backs.

I think when consensus about reductive materialism failing starts to become establishment-wide you'll start seeing this sort of goofiness go away. It's not that extraordinary claims won't need either extraordinary evidence or very sharp reinterpretations of ordinary claims to deflate the 'extraordinary' perception of a claim.

Mind you I write all of that as someone who, when I really have to evaluate my experiences, is forced to admit that I've had interactions with spirits, possibly even angels or minor deities.

I do think that there are a lot of good theories out there coming up that both keep their scientific rigor and also cease to call religious people, ghost experiencers, NDE'ers, or experiencers of psychic phenomena lunatics. I mean I might rephrase part of that - dogmatic believers in every jot and tittle of 2000 year old books probably won't fare well in that analysis, just that the evidence for the validity of everyone's experiences seems to be growing even if our interpretations of those experiences may be challenged.

The things I'd say about Jesus or the concept of logos from where I stand:

The idea seems to be that you can divide the universe in the active and passive, the active initiates motion and the passive receives this as a medium of reference.

The cosmic logos is seen as the cosmic self-conscious rather than subconscious. This also hearkens back to what I've learned of the Hermetic doctrines in the tarot - ie. the male figures are symbolic of conscious forces, the female figures are depictions of subconscious forces.

The two interact constantly but ultimately its the job of conscious analysis to both inform the subconscious and in the broader sense tame and properly curate nature. Adam's first wife was Lilith, ie. a planet where he was getting eaten by all kinds of large predatory cats, bears, etc.. When Eve came from 'his own rib', and when Cain killed Abel, you have the agricultural revolution where yes - there were still problems, nature was red in tooth and nail then and still is today, just that we weren't being dominated by it rather it was more subservient to us than threatening our existence.

That doesn't mean that we didn't have our own problems in terms of humanity praying on itself through constant warfare, it just means that we have more work to do and more ways in which mind needs to inform nature and vice a verse. People with totalitarian utopian ideas get it wrong in believing that mind can obliterate the laws of nature or it makes the mistake of believing that laws of nature, both physical and human psychological, won't be important - ie. that the land can be bulldozed to conform to the map. It doesn't work like that and so most of Adam's current sins/errors against Eve are in that category, ie. not knowing her well enough and having his actions consequently come back to bite him.

That's part of why I really think our science is important, it's one critical way in which we get to know what you could call the Cosmic Mother on much more clear and precise terms, as well as getting to know the Cosmic Father within ourselves (such as understanding motivated reasoning and all the perceptual flaws and navigation traps our reasoning and logic can fall into). It really shouldn't be taking anything away from us and if we feel inclined to resort to nihilism what we're really suffering from is a failure of imagination more than a failure of options.