Helping a Christian Fundamentalist Take His First Steps Towards Adulthood

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The Atheist Jew

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Is there a correlation between IQ and religious belief

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Greg Miller

Statistics will show higher IQ for atheists. I looked it up once out of intellectual curiosity. Haha. Also i have an above average IQ.

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Andy Pitman

Greg Miller For all you saying YEP…Einstein, Flew, Keppler, Newton, Pascal, Mendel, Galileo, Robert Boyle, & Frances Collins, among many other brilliant Scientists would disagree with y’all WHOLEHEARTEDLY…..

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Clif Borred

Andy Pitman Einstein was a Diest for one thing, so you people really need to stop claiming he was a theist. Most historians think Newton was also a diest and he rejected the trinity (confirmed). Antony Flew, initially a prominent defender of atheism, later declared himself a deist. So......

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Watson Austere Infinitude Kapachika

Andy Pitman in a time where denouncing faith would result into career or life threatening consequences, who would publicly say he is an atheist?

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Xavier Avila

Clif Borred What do you think a Diest is ?

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Clif Borred

Xavier Avila A "deist" is someone who believes in a God or a higher power as the creator of the universe but does not believe in the supernatural or divine intervention in the world, instead relying on reason and observation of nature. So no floods, no messiah, no resurrection.... no sky daddy up there judging our every action.... no afterlife .. no heaven ... no hell ..

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Xavier Avila

Clif Borred It sounds like you think they are a atheist

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Clif Borred

Xavier Avila no... that is not the same ... atheists don't believe in any creator...

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James Apperson

Andy Pitman

Einstein replied on 24 March 1954:

"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly."

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James Apperson

Xavier Avila

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Andy Pitman

James Apperson yep, he wasn’t a Theist, but he CERTAINLY wasn’t an Atheist, he was a Deist…

“I'm not an atheist and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God." - Albert Einstein

Did you hear that…

“huge library”

THE UNIVERSE

“arrangement of the books”

CREATOR

Who believes in a god…

“THE MOST INTELLIGENT HUMAN BEING”

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Andy Pitman

James Apperson that quote was before the Big Bang scientific findings came out….that’s when He & Flew became Deist

Andy Pitman First,
Greg Miller was factually correct when he said,"Statistics will show a higher IQ for atheists."

This difference is actually much greater when compared to Christian fundamentalists (aka: your dumb cult). 

You don't get to just pretend statistical facts don't exist whenever you don't like them. 

Nor can you really negate them by saying basically "oh yea?! Well, some smart people had some randomly different things they called GOD! Therefore, my specific religion must be smart!". 

Your religion is fucking stupid. 

There ARE some smart people in it. But it's still mostly dumb people. 

The smart members of your dumb cult fall into two categories:

1. The predators who secretly know it's all bullshit. 
and 
2. Sheep with a high IQ but are emotionally handicapped.
Many of those people's emotional handicaps are specific to their Major Personality Disorder(s). 
They have bonded to your religion like adamantium razor-claws bonded to a Narcissistic wolverine. 

As for Einstein, ... 

He was not using the phrase "arrangement of books" as a cryptic way of saying there is a literal Creator-Being. 
 
Einstein refused to dignify the idea of a personal "God", or even a wilful giver of universal laws.

He maintained those were childish; as should we all.

So whenever THAT is how someone (anyone) is defining "God", ...
Einstein (in relation to that definition) was (and forever remained):
an "anti-theist";
which is the strongest form of "atheism".

And yet, when it comes to any possible other DEFINITION of "God", ...
Einstein was "agnostic" in the sense of admitting he didn't know.
However,
he leaned very gently towards 'openness' about using "God" as romantic, non-literal language about
a.) the known universe
and also
b.) the veiled mystery beyond it.

He drew a poetic parallel about The Mystery as a "who" as a source of "books". 

 That's the quote you mined. 

But as he said many times, he outright rejected belief in any literal personal AUTHOR of the universe. 

For the entire rest of this life, he also saw the religions which claim literal, personal, moral-authoritarian notions of "God" as: unkind enlsavers of minds.

Inversely, he saw anti-theists (labeled as "atheists", he clearly meant "anti-theists"; which is a very specific type of atheist)
as a people grievously injured by those (mostly Abrahamic) enslavers.

Again, Einstein was correct about the anti-Theist voices he overheard during his journey.  This doesn't apply to all anti-theists. But it applied to some whom he observed. 

And yet, again, he wasn't very nuanced in how he talked about it.

Those anti-theists were unhealed and angry @ the systems from which they escaped. As a result, they could not make themselves *emotionally* available to a heartfelt REVERENCE about the mystery beyond the dark veil of space and time.
  
Einstein was correct about many anti-Theists.

But he failed to recognize some crucial points. His agnosticism was a form of "atheism".
He failed to realize that because he had very limited life experience, specific to the necessary conversations.

It would be like someone thinking all "Christians" hate gays, merely because someone only ever heard Christians saying negative things about gays.

It's a reasonable limit in someone's understanding of "Christianity". But still ... it's a misunderstanding. Because it does not account for all Christians.

Likewise, he only ever heard the term "atheist" used in a limited range of contexts.
Moreover, he simply never cared enough about those debates to explore the broader spectrum of people's word-meanings and associated sentiments.

He simply wasn't all that curious about those issues.
That's why the only thing he ever read from Spinoza was a work about "Ethics".

All the while, he remained someone who: a.) did not believe in and also b.) actively rejected belief in a literal personal deity.

And that matters here because:
"a.)" means he was an "atheist". and "b.)" means he was an "anti-Theist" ... about the Christian meanings of "God".
To justify the logical fallacy of "Appeal To Authority", your ego needs to secure Einstein as someone so smart that his views about "God" should count as evidence for your views about "God". 

 For that purpose,
in that specific context,
you also cited several other highly esteemed minds. 

And yet, in doing so, you ALSO committed the fallacy of "The Texas Sharpshooter"; 
 dishonesty omitting a much longer list of past, recent, and current highly esteemed minds ... who identify as nontheists. 

You also made sure to cite men who were not ALIVE as recent discoveries (in science and history) have further piled against Christianity. 

Now, to rescue that failed attempt, 
you are adding a fallacy called "equivocation";
so that a/any radically different meaning of "God" can be treated as if it refers to yours. 

Meanwhile, let's realize what an "atheist" actually is.

It's context-dependent. 

This is why I personally do NOT identify as an "atheist".

"Atheist" means "is not a theist".

"Theist" means "believes in some god(s)".

"G/gods" just means whatever someone wants it to mean. 

This is precisely why Sagan pointed out that NOBODY should be using the word "god" or "God". 
 It violates the necessary ethics inherent to the very purpose of communication. 

 Forsaking those necessary ethics = creating opportunities for Bad Faith Actors (such as yourself) to take unscrupulous advantage of that fog.  
--

In relation to the DEFINITION where "God" is any literal, personal, Super-Person(s) considered worthy of that title, ....
An "atheist" is anyone who is not presently convinced about the existence of: any literal personal Super-Persons **worthy of** that title (the title-crown "God").

Whenever a literal-personal-God-ist goes through a "crisis of faith", they are accidentally an "atheist" ABOUT the idea of a literal, personal "God".
But that same person might be "agnostic" OR affirmers about other uses of the word "god".
 
As for Andrew Flew, Gary Habermass was successfully able to manipulate Flew into full-blown, literal DEISM; based on a God Of The Gaps view about abiogenesis [a scientific hypothesis that James Tour recently admitted 'will probably turn out to be correct'; and thus ... which (according to Tour) Flew was probably wrong about]. I'm not sure how much stock we should put into Flew's after-80 writings. As many of his colleagues observed, ... After 80, Flew had grown frequently confused about which other scientists had ever said what things. However, I'll just grant it anyway. Flew maintained that an interventionist "God" such as the God(s) of Christianity and Islam ... are unreasonable beliefs. So if you're going to use him in an Appeal To Authority, you're still committing the fallacy of equivocation, because his Deism-defintion of "God" is only distantly related to your definition of "God". That matters HERE because: The intelligence of men who REJECTED Christianity's definitions of "GOD" ... cannot be honestly used as examples of smart people who agreed with Christianity about "God". Meanwhile, all versions of literal, personal-"God" "Christianity" remain infantile, abusive, mafia-grifting, narcissist-cult, PSY OPS. You should focus on the DATA and ARGUMENTS. Whenever the data and arguments fall within an expert's expertise, then fine. Cite them. I do. We all should. But then it's the weight of the data and arguments that really matters.

You should also try to find a way to BECOME an ethical person. But I realize that's a much bigger "ask". Baby steps. This was the only time I'll be holding your hand. Someone else will need to help you learn how to walk. Good luck.