Happy Atheist Forum

I am the first to admit that I am not the brightest crayon in the box.  So I find myself wondering why people who seem so much smarter than I--PhD from Harvard, for example--believe fully in religious texts.  To explain, it's not that one has to have a PhD from an ivy league school to be smarter than I.  It's just that I assume that for one to graduate from an ivy league school, one has taken serious classes in science, philosophy, logic, etc.  So how, after all that, does one still defend the Bible (or other religious text) as "truth"?  

Is it just certain personality types?  Is it that fear permeates so deeply that it overrides reason?  Other thoughts on why some very smart people are very religious?

Emphasis on some. Lots of research has been done and points to higher IQs and general intelligence g factors being significantly higher in populations that are less religious, correlation becoming more significant as the level of religiosity drops. Plus, school doesn't always mean a whole lot...

Unabomber: Harvard grad. Bat shit crazy.
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Craig Ferguson: dropped out of high school, now successfully brings moral philosophy and jokes about Gustave Flaubert to late night television.
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Some very religious people see no conflict between intelligence and supernatural beliefs. Could be because of compartmentalization, could be due to their upbringing, could be for political or social reasons. Maybe it's just Pascal's Wager. Who knows. The main thing is to remember not to equate education with intelligence.  

Why are some very smart people very religious?

Compartmentalization, communal reinforcement, afraid, faulty coginitive thinking skills, etc.

The same can be asked of very intelligent people who believe copper bracelets or crystal pryramids will help them in some sort of way.

The answers are the same. Compartmentalization, communal reinforcement, afraid, faulty coginitive thinking skills, etc.

This notion that Ivy League schools denote smartness is somewhat ridiculous.  Aside from all the pomp and hot air, the only thing that separates the Ivy Leagues from the rest is the fact that they were among the first institutes of higher education to have football teams.  George W. Bush had an Ivy League education.  

There's more evidence pointing to the highly educated and intelligent as being less religious.  If anything, those few smarties who are religious are anomalies, not the majority.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I was not trying to assert that an ivy league education necessarily means one is overly intelligent.  It does, however, suggest that graduates have had solid science and logic classes.  And I was trying to stress that there are others--some ivy league educated, many more not--whose intelligence I recognize as superior in many ways to my own.

So if you want to boil it down to the basic question:  why do some really smart people, regardless of formal education or lack thereof, still believe so fully in religious texts?  It's easy for me to understand how some folks who have only had limited exposure to solid science readings and studies could fall for the young earth idea, for example.  But those who have studied real science?  What enables someone to ignore the science once they have been exposed to it?  Does that express my question better?

I've been to college, just because the course covers the material and people pass the classes doesn't mean that they now know about the subject. In classes where some of my friends were getting 90-100% in the class, I was tutoring them and found it astonishing how little they actually knew but were still able to answer the questions correctly on tests, even essay questions.

So while many people may have been taught good solid classes, what they choose to do with what they're taught is still up to them. The point here is to drop the idea of people getting a solid well rounded education as a prevention to them disregarding the scientific process and findings, or for them to make one irrational decision that they hide while basing a whole tower of logic upon.

There are many reasons why intelligent people remain religious, I'm having a difficult time even creating a stereo type that would encompass most of them while still remaining a useful definition.
An intelligent person could be less logical than someone less intelligent.
A person could be irrational about one one thing and still be intelligent.
It doesn't matter to them really if there is or isn't a god so they don't change their mind.

Many, many more reasons exist. Those are just off the top of my head from people I know that I consider intelligent that are theists.

Human nature is a very weird thing. I am convinced that a person can know a great deal, be extremely educated and possess a great amount of intellectual sophistication and still feel the need to believe.

I guess it's a lot better than such a person becoming a drunk or a drug addict or a child molester or a serial killer, all of which has happened to such people.

Human nature is weird.

Quote from: "i_am_i"Human nature is a very weird thing. I am convinced that a person can know a great deal, be extremely educated and possess a great amount of intellectual sophistication and still feel the need to believe.

I guess it's a lot better than such a person becoming a drunk or a drug addict or a child molester or a serial killer, all of which has happened to such people.

Human nature is weird.

A lot of it falls under social and cultural dogmas, or the need to be apart of a social group.. The need or desire for acceptance can also lead to the forgoing of rationality and logical commonsense reasoning.. Hence, some people will even do stupid things in order to prove something, or be accepted to which at times gets these people that are otherwise intelligent people killed, or put in a wheel chair. There is also the mental addiction or the emotional attachment to their ideological construct to which may result in the denial of contradictory evidence that proves their beliefs as being illogical and irrationally fallacious. It's all abstract perpetual interpretation of life, self, information, meaning, or anything of observation.

Example:

I can say that I love this particular red truck and think it is awesome even if it had the worst safety record in the world. However, you or someone else may neither like the color red, trucks, or this particular truck because you or someone else will have a different abstract opinion, perception, or interpretation of it. And since I love red trucks, and this truck in particular, there is nothing you can say that would sway me from loving it or believing it is awesome even if you point out to me that it's a literal death trap should I ever get into an accident. Now neither of us are changing the observable information in the fact that this red truck is a red truck and dangerous. So we are not changing the reality of it, but rather how we abstractly interpret and perceive it and give it abstract meaning. So I might like danger, red, and truck rolled up in one package deal even if it's irrational and stupid to drive it. You or someone else may dislike red trucks because red is evil, or you may have been hit by a red truck just last week, or have had first hand witnessed how dangerous this red truck is.  It comes down to how an individual perceives and applies meaning to what they experience and observe in life since the day they were born.

So, even if an intelligent person believes in religious text or ideological constructs regardless if they are fallacious, they will tend to ignore any argument against it.

Imagine if you told a lie to your child. For the sake of this thought experiment, we will say it is a relatively harmless lie -- for example, that stars can think and watch us. Now, if you were to tell this to your child every day (or at least, every Sunday) they would believe it and not even question it. So long as no evidence would arise to the contrary, why would your child not believe it? Expand that further: imagine if 95% children are told this lie. Then as they grow up and talk about the stars watching them, their conversations only serve to reinforce their false beliefs. Most of these people will always remain unchallenged, and the only point of view they will ever hear is that the stars watch them. However, this belief does absolutely nothing to prevent these children from developing into intelligent adults. They could develop the critical thinking skills to understand and evaluate complex concepts. But no matter how smart they become, they will likely always believe in the watching stars, simply because it has been engraved in their minds. They cling to their beliefs either by ignoring the evidence against their position (or ignoring the lack of evidence for their position), or by reworking their understanding of stars to accommodate both the scientific evidence behind it and their belief system.

I know very intelligent people who are religious, and they are all very poor at defending their religious stance. But I have learned that whenever I question them, it has next to no effect on their religiosity. While they struggle to answer my questions or defend against my challenges, their beliefs remain unwaveringly strong. If these people chose to face the reality of the situation and really question themselves, they would likely reject religion. But most of them choose not to, and they are comfortable with that. And from my experience, most intelligent religious people are quite liberal in their adherence to their religious dogmas. In other words, you won't see many smart people holding up "God hates homosexuals" signs.

I think that it all boils down to thinking critically. People must be willing to critically examine their capabilities as thinkers. They must acknowledge problems and weaknesses. They must refine their thought processes so they can learn to process information in a more economical and comprehensive way...and all this increases their ability to identify and reject false ideas and ideologies.
So, what does thinking entail?  
•   Analyzing
•   Conceptualizing
•   Defining
•   Inferring
•   Listening
•   Questioning
•   Reasoning
Critical thinking entails using the above skills (and any others I may have not critically thought of...*laffin*) to evaluate information in a disciplined way.
There are only two possibilities: the most intelligent theist either can not or will not follow through on any number of the above. An intellectual person (let alone an intelligent theist) may spend a lot of, even too much intellectual energy defending a flawed position or pursuing a question that actually needs reformulating. But this reformulating does not happen due to various reason (all explored in above posts).

If an intelligent theist never examines possible or known biases and/or flaws behind his approach, he is not thinking critically. He must want to be willing to be better at thinking to pinpoint and minimize any biasing influences on his thought from all external areas. This is most important; he must be willing to find and be guided by evidence that fits reality, even if it refutes cherished beliefs. Eventually, one would hope, when he is thinking critically, some beliefs that are shown to be unfounded, the appropriate response would be a a change of position. Theists cannot/will not get away (for various reasons) from their beliefs/biases to continue onto the other missing levels of higher or critically thinking. Somewhere along the line they stop analyzing, questioning, inferring, etc.

One must widen a perspective and broaden knowledge of it. One must keep themselves properly informed about a subject. One must recognize that explanations must actually explain and be testable. “We got no calves this season because the fertility god was angry” does not explain anything and is not testable. Furthermore, one must understand that legitimate theories clearly define any circumstances in which one will concede defeat.

Add in all the biases, whether they be cultural, familial, racial, what-have-you; this is why you find the lowliest ragamuffin to the highest, extremely successful and most intelligent theist fail at thinking critically.

I had to come back to add...

To be fair, we all fail at times in thinking critically. 'Critical thinking' does not mean to just 'think a lot'. It involves skepticism and I would wager that most of us on this board are skeptics. Criticl thinking has a permanent hug on skepticism. Skepticism does not mean rejecting indiscriminate ideas, as many people mistakenly believe. Skepticism is doubting and suspending judgment about claims; that we simply do not accept claims that might not be justified. Skepticist (is that even a word?) take the time to understand a claim and examine the reasoning and possible assumptions and biases around that claim.

If you never look behind, around or through a claim, you will never see what is on the other side.

I'm curious about this question myself. It seems almost paradoxical, doesn't it?

A conclusion that I've reached is that it isn't actually stupid to believe in a god, I do think it's extremely childish to believe in personal gods and that smart people do so mostly for childish reasons...but on whether or not someone created the universe or not nobody will ever know, and so the atheist claim is equal to the deist claim in validity IMO.

Along with their childish reasons, it's also my opinion that they have a slightly immature approach to existentialist questions.

One particular person comes to mind. She is supposedly smart (phD in the "soft" sciences - psycholinguistics) but at the same time  incredibly stupid when it comes to associative thinking, which is what I think plays a huge part in accepting supernatural reality to explain natural reality too readily. Ignorance of the very basics of how the natural world works also plummets her into supernatural beliefs, and I think that's what plays the major part in the validation of those beliefs. She also has a high tendency towards bias, but I don't know enough about how narrow her world view is to speculate on why that is. Bias, ignorance, poor associative thinking skills (maybe this is where the IQ correlation happens?) and pre existing belief structures act even on intelligent minds.

A "mature" smart theist who believes in personal gods and live their religion on a daily business is difficult to find. Most in that category either believe for the sake of belief, don't believe in personal gods or are atheists.

An old house mate of mine is immensely bright. She has a masters from Cambridge university in chemistry. She is one of the most knowledgeable, conscientious and selfless people I've ever known. She is also a christian. Ok, so she isn't the kind of christian who goes around trying to proselytize everyone she meets and she doesn't have any weird views about things. Natural disasters are natural, for instance. I knew her for quite a while before finding out about her faith. It was all good until we had a fairly in-depth conversation about god over a bottle of wine one time. It ended abruptly with her getting upset and me feeling ashamed for upsetting her. I guess we'd broached territory she didn't want to face and in hindsight, the intelligent part of her brain probably knew it would be the beginning of the end of her faith. I wasn't nasty or anything, I was simply enquiring. My objective certainly was not to offend but it is such dodgy territory for some people, it usually isn't worth even talking about.

Everything was fine after that. I just knew not to question her beliefs which was easy since she never brought it up. The experience revealed to me that belief doesn't have to be logical or rational in the brain of the believer. Enquiring and rational minds can subscribe to it, even in the face of reason and science.

Very good points, Karadan and Silver Sphinx.
This one, however:

QuoteA "mature" smart theist who believes in personal gods and live their religion on a daily business is difficult to find.

While I do not know these people personally, I'll just say that my city council and city upper management are all quite mature and intelligent and successful, yet I'd wager they all believe/worship.
We peons in the lower echelon, you know, the ones that do all the real work..*chucklin*...well, out of the 35 or so that I work with, only two are unbelievers and a third is a suspected unbeliever, but he simply won't discuss it. Another is Wiccan. You just don't see this where I'm from. So it makes me wonder how many upper management are not Christian theists, which is the overwhelming religious flavour of choice here. I know city council members are all Christian believers or liars because you just have to be if you wish to be elected or reelected and you pretty much have to declare it. People here want to know your Christian values.

Their maturity and intelligence simply stops short when it comes to a cherished belief system.

Quote from: "Gawen"While I do not know these people personally, I'll just say that my city council and city upper management are all quite mature and intelligent and successful, yet I'd wager they all believe/worship.
We peons in the lower echelon, you know, the ones that do all the real work..*chucklin*...well, out of the 35 or so that I work with, only two are unbelievers and a third is a suspected unbeliever, but he simply won't discuss it. Another is Wiccan. You just don't see this where I'm from. So it makes me wonder how many upper management are not Christian theists, which is the overwhelming religious flavour of choice here. I know city council members are all Christian believers or liars because you just have to be if you wish to be elected or reelected and you pretty much have to declare it. People here want to know your Christian values.

Their maturity and intelligence simply stops short when it comes to a cherished belief system.

I think I shouldn't have used the word "maturity" there, but couldn't think of a better one. I meant maturity in the sense of people accepting their own deaths without linking the end of their conscious existence to purposeless in their lives. They hold onto beliefs mainly as a sophisticated and multi purposeful security blanket which encompasses and comforts various aspects of their lives. That's why they keep it. It's deeply wedged into their subjective reality, personal identities, how they define purpose and everything else that keeps an existentialistic crisis at bay.

Even smart believers feel like their identities and sense of reality are being directly attacked when you attack their beliefs. What we would see as simply questioning a belief, they see as questioning existence, and that is obviously an uncomfortable thing to have questioned, whether you're intelligent or not.

That's why I think that logical intelligence has nothing to do with it, but I do think there is a correlation between existential maturity (hopefully I cleared up what I meant in this post) and the tendency to hang onto beliefs which deny death and claim that consciousness continues.

As for people wanting to know your christian values before they elect you, that just goes to show how the religious interpretation of moral philosophy can really make people look incredibly stupid. It's easier for me to assume they think that because they really are stupid...either that or the security blanket their religion provides is incredibly stupid. I haven't met a smart person who follows that line of thinking so I can't assert that with certainty.

Quote from: "xSilverPhinx"As for people wanting to know your christian values before they elect you, that just goes to show how the religious interpretation of moral philosophy can really make people look incredibly stupid. It's easier for me to assume they think that because they really are stupid...either that or the security blanket their religion provides is incredibly stupid. I haven't met a smart person who follows that line of thinking so I can't assert that with certainty.

The problem is most of these people don't think it's stupid at all. It's perfectly normal to believe in some guy born of a virgin, dying and then resurrecting when they're voting for, then asking for the 25 million dollars and then designing a recreation centre or "Do we really need traffic lights at this intersection?". Because, you see, every city council meeting is started with a prayer, asking the invisible sky daddy for help in this or that and a blessing for something they are going to do anyway....even though, ironically, it's all God's doing. Sheesh. The walls they've built up to keep their cozy invisible comfort zone would make me laugh if it didn't make me puke first.

Quote from: "Gawen"

Quote from: "xSilverPhinx"As for people wanting to know your christian values before they elect you, that just goes to show how the religious interpretation of moral philosophy can really make people look incredibly stupid. It's easier for me to assume they think that because they really are stupid...either that or the security blanket their religion provides is incredibly stupid. I haven't met a smart person who follows that line of thinking so I can't assert that with certainty.

The problem is most of these people don't think it's stupid at all. It's perfectly normal to believe in some guy born of a virgin, dying and then resurrecting when they're voting for, then asking for the 25 million dollars and then designing a recreation centre or "Do we really need traffic lights at this intersection?". Because, you see, every city council meeting is started with a prayer, asking the invisible sky daddy for help in this or that and a blessing for something they are going to do anyway....even though, ironically, it's all God's doing. Sheesh. The walls they've built up to keep their cozy invisible comfort zone would make me laugh if it didn't make me puke first.

Yeah...it really is disturbing to think that elected officials believe in that nonsense (if they really do believe it). I wouldn't mentally classify them as the mature theists based on only those facts, to me they're stupid people who also happen to be fundamental literalists, and so there's nothing really paradoxical about why they would believe those things.

That reeks more of conservative "us versus them" herd mentality - when the majority will only trust and vote for people who subscribe to their ideologies and leaving out the "devil's spawn", while at the same time not really considering if candidates are actually competent. It's really sad...some people need their comfort zones shaken up a little bit, otherwise we'll be plunged into a second hellish dark age.