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i agree with statements A and B

i don't know if anybody has already said this... but "ignorance is bliss..."

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That, I believe, is the theme of the whole thread. If one can be ignorant enough to believe ni a magical man floating in the sky who watching everything we do for some reason and will judge us when we die and send us to a lake of fire if we don't do it right, they can be ignorant of other things too. Thus is my opinion, which prompted this poll type thing.

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Long live love, and all her glory.

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Quote: from seraphimxii at 9:32 am on Dec. 16, 2006

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i agree with statements A and B  

 i don't know if anybody has already said this... but "ignorance is bliss..."

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 That, I believe, is the theme of the whole thread. If one can be ignorant enough to believe ni a magical man floating in the sky who watching everything we do for some reason and will judge us when we die and send us to a lake of fire if we don't do it right, they can be ignorant of other things too. Thus is my opinion, which prompted this poll type thing.

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You know my response to this. If you're going to talk about religion, talk about religion. If you're going to talk about something else, talk about something else and say as much.

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"Drop to your knees and direct your mouth to my crotch."
-Trent

I don't agree with A almost at all, and I agree with the converse of A only slightly more so.  It has been my experience that when people relate happiness to a lack of intelligence and/or ignorance, they are usually referring to a person's awareness of pressing current events, mostly political matters.  And, yes, if someone doesn't know a whole lot about those, it will usually make them happier in that particular case.

But just because someone is below average intelligence has very little bearing, if any, on how happy they are in real life - mostly because a person's happiness is more directly dictated by personal events/traumas.  The same goes for anyone of any intellect.  How happy will a dumb person be if they just lost their job?  How depressed will a smart person be if they just found the answer to [purely a theoretical example] P vs. nP?

Setting aside the fact that I personally, as well as the smartest kids I know from our crosstown school, stand as living counterexamples to statement B, I would still have to disagree with it.  Granted, there are many below-average-IQ religious people out there.  But I have found that the nonreligious smart people I know are usually nonreligious not because they know better or because they have some killer argument or fact set on their side, but instead, because of their intelligence, they fail to see the need to modify their own ways of thinking or consider opposing points of view.  The same tends to hold true for any other debate I have with them, not just religious ones.

In my experience (and, granted, some of you have had different experiences than I have), it takes just as large a leap of faith to believe in evolution as it does to believe in creation.  There are not really any more real, solid facts to support the existence of a Creator than there are to support the idea that, out of a random ball of liquid rock, suddenly there are cells, and suddenly these cells organize, specialize, diversify, and so on until we just happen to have a perfectly balanced ecosystem with the dominant creatures being capable of previously nonexistent consciousness and self-awareness.

On purely the exterior, sure, I can see how appealing the idea of evolution is.  But a genuine look beneath the surface of both evolution *and* creation has yielded to me a different story.

Just my opinion, of course.

- Kraahkan -

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I'll never understand it either...

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You know my response to this. If you're going to talk about religion, talk about religion. If you're going to talk about something else, talk about something else and say as much.

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Okay look, the first couple times you've defended your point, I was mildly amused, because it's true. Well all know exactly what I am talking about here.

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Long live love, and all her glory.

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Quote: from seraphimxii at 9:32 am on Dec. 16, 2006

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i agree with statements A and B  

 i don't know if anybody has already said this... but "ignorance is bliss..."

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 That, I believe, is the theme of the whole thread. If one can be ignorant enough to believe ni a magical man floating in the sky who watching everything we do for some reason and will judge us when we die and send us to a lake of fire if we don't do it right, they can be ignorant of other things too. Thus is my opinion, which prompted this poll type thing.

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The problem with this statement is that it takes the "I'm smarter than those religious nuts" route. I can provide you with several examples of ridiculously intelligent (and certainly not ignorant) people who do, in fact, believe in "a magical man floating in the sky." Who, I ask, are you to deem them ignorant for holding that belief?

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Let yourself be enchanted,
You just might break through
To ever ever after

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The problem with this statement is that it takes the "I'm smarter than those religious nuts" route. I can provide you with several examples of ridiculously intelligent (and certainly not ignorant) people who do, in fact, believe in "a magical man floating in the sky." Who, I ask, are you to deem them ignorant for holding that belief?

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And as well, I could provide you with just as many examples of ridiculously stupid atheists or agnostics, or really happy intelligent people, or really dumb unhappy people, or whatever else. You can always find data that doesn't fit into your statistics, but I was making a board generalization. I've said this a couple times now, but lets reiterate: this is saying if you were to reach in to the proverbial grab bag of society and pull someone out, they would more often than not fall in to one of these categories. As in, you ask them how religious they are on a scale of one to ten. Based on that answer, you predict their happiness and intelligence. Or reverse it, and ask one of the other two. My assumption is that more often than not you would be more right than assuming the opposite.

I think that makes less sense than it did in my head, but I hope it possibly stated my opinion in such a way that it is more understandable than before.

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Long live love, and all her glory.

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Quote: from Wilder at 10:19 pm on Dec. 27, 2006

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You know my response to this. If you're going to talk about religion, talk about religion. If you're going to talk about something else, talk about something else and say as much.

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 Okay look, the first couple times you've defended your point, I was mildly amused, because it's true. Well all know exactly what I am talking about here.

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The first time I made my point you flamed it. That aside, my point will continue to be made until it is disproven or heeded.

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"Drop to your knees and direct your mouth to my crotch."
-Trent

b = generally true but there are plentiful and very notable exceptions

basically the reasoning for or against religion and for or against happiness becomes more sophisticated but the outcomes vary as much as ever though there is a trend toward less dogmatic religousness among more intelligent folk

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Leaving vapor trails across the bleak terrain: it was the hexagram of the heavens, the strings of my guitar.

It may seem appropriate to point out that potentially crippling mental illnesses such as Obsessive Compulsive DIsorder and certain forms of autism (namely Aspergers Symdrome) are more likely to be diagnosed in people with high IQ's.

And i agree with the idea that people who are more intellegent are more aware of dangers and general 'sadness in the world around them.

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you gotta go there to come back...
i miss her!

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no one noticed the fact that the OP used the term "stupider" when describing those that he accuses of being less intelligent?

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Quote: from Wilder at 1:01 am on Jan. 1, 2007

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The first time I made my point you flamed it. That aside, my point will continue to be made until it is disproven or heeded.

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And it will continue to be ignored. I still don't care. Not to be a jerk, but I really don't care.

Post edited at 3:49 pm on Jan. 2, 2007 by Khadgar

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Long live love, and all her glory.

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Quote: from Wilder at 1:01 am on Jan. 1, 2007

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The first time I made my point you flamed it. That aside, my point will continue to be made until it is disproven or heeded.

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And it will continue to be ignored. I still don't care. Not to be a jerk, but I really don't care.

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By now I couldn't care less what your reaction to my point is. Well, that's not entirely true - I guess I would prefer you saying "hey, you know what, from now on I will stop doing that because it makes sense," but that's not going to happen, nor do I expect/ hope for it to. I made my point to you quite some time ago and you've ignored it. Now I make my point to other people, in this case through you.

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"Drop to your knees and direct your mouth to my crotch."
-Trent