To think that some people conflate being “intellectual” with rejecting anything spiritual?

[BothAndNotEitherOr]

I’ve noticed a pattern, especially in online spaces like this one, where people seem to tie their sense of intellect or rationality to a total disbelief in anything spiritual. It’s like the idea of fate, intuition, synchronicity or even a loose belief in “something more” gets lumped in with being irrational or uneducated. I’m not talking about organised religion necessarily, more the subtle stuff people feel or notice but can’t always explain.

And to be honest, a lot of the responses I’ve seen on here reinforce that vibe. If you say anything even slightly beyond logic or science, there’s an instant eye-roll or a wall of statistics.

AIBU to think that some people over-identify with being hyper-logical and that rejecting anything spiritual has become a kind of intellectual performance?

Three more ‘little people’ for you, @OmNomShiva : the singularly talented late 20th c logician Kurt Godel (my post of 10.49), Rene Descartes, and the living mathematician Karen Uhlenbeck, the first woman to win the Abel Prize, ForMem FRS, NAS, etc etc and a practising member of the Unitarian Universalist Church.

You know, to go with Isaac Newton, Gregor Mendel, Nikolai Copernicus, Francis Collins and the other wee brains…

(Perhaps I should mention for some MumsNetters that Dr Collins is an American MD PhD who first led the project mapping the human genome, then directed the US National Institutes of Health, the world’s largest health research organisation.)

I’m happy to answer your questions but wonder if you would do me the courtesy of responding to my point too? As it makes for a more interesting debate. Do you accept that you display blind faith akin to a religious view, when you assert that science will answer everything? And I wonder when you think it will do/have done this? Like are you imagining a point in 1000 years where everything that can be known will be know by humans?

I’m not sure I see it as you do that science has ‘answered so much’ - as if we have a series of 100 objectively true statements - I’m not sure that we do. We certainly have made a lot of material progress but there is so much unknown.

Buddhism, for example, talks about ‘beginningless time’. A theory that is quite mind boggling in terms of what we feel in the West that science ‘knows’. See also The Big Bang theory, or the theory that God created the earth - both just theories, wide open to debate and postulations by different parties.

Sorry. No-it’s not the same as blind faith because it’s a system which has been shown to work.Repeatedly and consistently. Blind faith to me is believing in something for which there is absolutely no evidence-or which can actually be disproved.

Someone once said;

" The first sip from the glass of the natural sciences will make you an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass you will find God"

It is possible to be both intelligent and learned whilst believing in something higher. I consider myself to be one who does and have an Mphil in one of those sciences.

Agreed that’s a fair description of blind faith. But where I disagree is that there is evidence that science will ‘answer everything’. What can we say the evidence of that is?

As a practicing Anglican, I think there's a load of straw manning going on.
I have faith, but not certainty. That's the whole point.
I don't know anyone who has absolute assurance, spiritually. But we operate within that.
For their own reasons, non-religious people often look down on others. But that's up to them.
I've been in more than one social situation where it's come up that I go to church, and I can see people re evaluating me.

As a practicing Anglican, I think there's a load of straw manning going on.
I have faith, but not certainty. That's the whole point.
I don't know anyone who has absolute assurance, spiritually. But we operate within that.
For their own reasons, non-religious people often look down on others. But that's up to them.
I've been in more than one social situation where it's come up that I go to church, and I can see people re evaluating me.

As a fully paid up Pastafarian member of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (bless his noodly appendage) it's perfectly possible to be intelligent and spiritual.

I didn't answer your question because I didn't see the point having already conceded your point, and added my own, completely separate, very serious challenge. I'm struggling to answer your question because God doesn't fit in the sense that God transcends all. And you can accuse me of copping out here, and maybe it is a cop out. This debate has been hashed out by brilliant minds and the swarm since the initial proposition, an afternoon on Mumsnet would barely cover the introduction.

Evil might be worth discussing but it would need to be clearly defined

See also The Big Bang theory, or the theory that God created the earth - both just theories, wide open to debate and postulations by different parties.

No, both are not just theories. One of them has evidence, the other does not. In fact the second has a large amount of evidence against the theory.

Full disclosure - I don’t believe in God. I’m not advocating that God created the earth. But just because one theory has more evidence - it doesn’t mean it has been answered or proven, does it? Obviously it may be enough evidence for some, and that’s fine, but we can’t call it an objective fact.

Me neither

I am not accusing you of anything.

Quote " This debate has been hashed out by brilliant minds and the swarm since the initial proposition, an afternoon on Mumsnet would barely cover the introduction."

Yup. This is something I have thought about, and I have watched a lot of debates on it.

In the spirits of this thread, I say yes, there are brilliant minds all over. But when it comes to explaining religion and proving there is a God, I have not read or seen a single convincing argument. And trust me, I have looked.

That there is a convincing argument for any God or Gods, bah, I reckon it's a myth.

And it's clever. "Join us and learn, and you will find a higher plane ".

Nah.

As an anecdotal example, when this new Pope was elected, he was described as a brilliant theologian and writer. I went looking. Found nothing. Great academic on Church history for sure. but nothing to explain the whys and what's of his God. And if someone had written the definitive argument for any God, surely we would all know about it?

I reckon much better to do one's own thinking on this. Tons of resource's for gathering info and evidence.

Just last night I was reading a net article on archeological evidence for the Bible. What a load of codswallop. But don't take my word for it, have a look for yourself.

If you are a Christian, I reckon a good place to start is Acts 5:1-11. Ananias and Sapphira. Then ask your preacher, other Christians, read online: why were they killed ? We have just read Matthew Mark Luke and John. And now people are being killed ?

That's what set me off on the path of de-conversion.

The most intellectual people I know are Christians

The other aspect is that religions were used to gain and control power. In fact the patriarchy is an invention of religion or conversely, religion is an invention of the patriarchy.

Those men - intellects that they were - were expected to conform to the power dynamics of their day - religion enforced patriarchy / patriarchy enforce religion.

In our more enlightened times we know better, and have more freedom to discard these stories designed to wield power over others.

Interesting that faith was your starting point. Mine was atheism. For me the two most important arguments for God were to look at what happens when you take God away. I find that irresistibly compelling. And secondly, that "it is enough to will it to be so".

My experience is that, for thoughtful religious people, trying to provide a rational explanation of religious experience is a sort of category error, as is the idea that someone with religious faith is being irrational (a better term would be arational or non-rational), or that this is related to intelligence. I find Iain McGilchrist's work on this very interesting.

Generally I try to avoid threads like this one as I find them extremely frustrating, full of straw-manning and aggressive, empty-vessel atheism (#notallatheists), and I say that as someone who is agnostic at most (I once read someone describe themselves as "a believer among atheists and an atheist among believers" and that describes me very well).

Francis Collins and Karen Uhlenbeck are very much of our time. Neither has the slightest need to use religion for political purposes. If anything, quite the opposite. Several other FRS/NAS members are on record as devout practitioners but I won’t bore you. There are more devout academics in leading STEM programmes than one might expect, though generally people stay quiet about it.

Kurt Godel practised his religion very privately. He was rather reclusive and seems largely to have confined his socialising to his wife and Albert Einstein. Einstein thought that Godel was the most interesting person in Princeton

The religious views of the historical figures I named have been probed by their biographers and are thought deep and sincere. In contrast to many, because I agree that the pro forma practice of religion was a political necessity for centuries.

One can be smart and intellectual, and also have faith. I think they fall into different buckets. What frustrates me is when believers conflate faith with fact and expect atheists to understand. If someone starts to mix up science with spiritual ideas, for example, I will recognise that person as lacking in intellect.

I agree.

PS In no way do I think that possessing faith reflects badly on a person’s intelligence, per se. Faith can be misapplied

This is the type of thing I was talking about. They try and say these things to purposely offend and shock people with how "edgy" and radically honest they are. Really they just come across as pompous.

FTR, I've never believed there is a God. It just hasn't ever made sense to me. I've just never been a cunt to people if I could help it.

But in a lot of conversations, what do you need to understand? The bast majority of the time a person might tell me about how they believe science and spirituality might combine, we are sharing ideas and knowledge and giving opinions. It doesn't matter how factual it is. It's just interesting to know that Rosie believes X due to her belief in a religion/higher power.

And that's what those men do. They act as if they want to know more about people, but really they just want to tell people how wrong and stupid they are and show off what Bill Bryson books they've read this year.

No they are both theories. But in the scientific sense of the word, you have to have evidence for a theory. Without evidence, it's just a hypothesis. And science is prepared to change it's mind with new evidence. If somebody comes along with evidence to show that the entire universe came from an enormous bottle labelled 'Universes', then the Big Squirt would become the prevaling theory. That is quite literally how science works. New evidence creates new theories and new studies. Whereas no amount of evidence ever changes the minds of those that try to explain things using religion. It always just moves the goalposts to "Ok, but God did this bit".

@Squishedpassenger

The context for this in my experience has been where believers have tried to convince me that their faith is the ultimate truth and then have tried to use Christian Science as evidence of this. I am really accepting of all faiths but my patience runs out when others can’t accept me as an atheist. I really dislike these types of conversations because faith comes from a different place and I couldn’t talk someone away from their faith, and science doesn’t need to change their faith. Equally, Christian Science is not going to make me believe in the Bible or in God. Unfortunately I’ve had a bit of contact with evangelicals and they see things really differently.