A Reliable Negative Relation Between Intelligence and Religiosity

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Or to put a less negative spin on it: Science doesn't 'lack ethics', it simply has no innate ethical components. The months I spent on ethics-related courses during my study testify that science is conducted based on a code of ethics within cultures. but those ethics are based on cultural values. To think that science should have innate ethical components is a misconception. Not every philosophy needs to have an explanation for everything, unlike religions do.

So, Biology, Chemistry, and all the others, were created at the same time? They have an active message to promote and disseminate? I liked how you turned everything around, it was definitely clever. I'd need to rehash all the similarities between world religions, but I don't feel like doing that. It would be actively ignored anyway.

By the way, this seems to be a well-prepared counterargument for an argument I never made. Nobody held you accountable for any immoral actions committed by members of OTHER faiths at all. Only Christianity.

There are also quite some scientists who follow a religion, so I don't know what that means for your "science is the atheists' religion" views: Do they lose their piety points to get to heaven, or should we cut up their Atheist Discount Card?

You're just broadening the scope of responsibility that science can be held accountable for to a ridiculous level. Do you perhaps think that religious family values might contribute to extra population growth, which in turn leads to CO2 exhausts and other pollution? The unwanted Catholic children begging on the streets in the Philippines (to Hell if you use a condom) - is that religious pollution or suffering?

Ad hominem hyperboly. Putting words in my mouth. Victim card pulled. No further comment on your 'revalations' here.

 

I'm not sure what this "scientific method" thing you keep mentioning as a near-religious principle could possibly be. The "Scientific method" I know is simply a systematic evaluation of a problem to determine a solution -- the same principles used by accountants, attorneys, doctors, social workers, construction workers (the good ones), and any number of other occupations that need problem solving capabilities. It is not some magical process taught in occultistic science classes in the dungeons of the chemistry building.

Now you're just getting ridiculous to the point of absurdity. Please, take a deep breath, look back in your life, and try to find that moment when you decided to hate one entire population of people for absurd reasons. Your comments are absolute bigotry.

 

Well said BTA, one should study volcanoes and the effect they have had on balancing the earth's atmosphere for millions of years.

 

Sometimes natural disasters like earthquakes dump huge amounts of CO2 into the air, but this shopuld not be compared to anthropogenic CO2 production. Conservation and environmentalism has been expanded into the financial realms now, so everybody has their opinion on the subject.

But before the advent of carbon credits, and other financially relevant aspects, scientists were already warning about this phenomenon. What possible motivation could they have had to 'fool' us all? I've heard people claim they did it for the attention, recognition and merit alone.
On the other hand, I can imagine all those polluting companies having a very good motivation to disseminate obfuscating stories on the matter, simply to slow down environmental protection. Because they are being taxed. Perhaps you should think about who are the 'rubes' being fooled here.

Some of those natural disasters were catastrophic to life on our planet, and our race might not survive such a large event. Not without Fallout-type scenarios. Saying that our CO2 production is much less than a cataclysm, is a nonsensical comparison.

 

noone is denying that emissions have an effect on the planets atmosphere and its ability to reflect the harmful radiation from the sun, all that can be debated is the effects that they will have, the planet has kept itself in a natural equlibrium for millions of years, it gets hot, it gets cold etc...
The human race has been producing harmful emissions for thousands of years, live stock have been producing harmful emissions for longer, if anything all we do is speed a natural process through our simple existence.

 

The Earth will balance itself out eventually, but that process well exceeds the timeframe in which human civilization is capable of waiting out such a disaster. Thankfully, they are exceedingly rare occurrences.

And we are not speeding up a natural process, we are artificially warming the planet in a speed that has never been seen before. Entire ecosystems are in turmoil, because they can't keep up. All the natural gas and oil that has accumulated in the earth's crust over hundreds of millions of years is being pumped as CO2 into the atmosphere in a matter of decades. This carbon was previously captured in rock, and should only have been released sporadically.

The thread has taken an environmental turn, but I'll happily take the bait. Please state your sources for this evidence you claim to have.

Yes, plants use carbondioxide in photosynthesis, but it's a bit cheap to close the book on global warming based on highschool biology 101, and leave it there. Read up on the crock first. If you take some time to look at greenman3610's youtube site, it will probably debunk every crock you heard that has you convinced environmentalists, meteorologists, NASA and all the other climate researchers are rubes.



We're experiencing a reduction in the Ozon layer, which exposes us to more harmful radiation. The CO2 itself dissolves in water, raising the acidity of the oceans. This acidity + radiation is causing coral bleaching (coral reefs die out, leaving pale white 'fossils' behind), which is disastrous to these hotbeds of marine biodiversity.

The melting of the ice caps raises sea levels, causing flooding and many otrher effects. It also accelerates warming, because the dark sea absorbs sunrays, where white snow and ice would bounce it back into space.

There are also large amounts of tundra, where methane is frozen under ancient peat bogs. If they thaw out, the methane will be released. Methane is even more harmful to the atmosphere than CO2.

There are so many detrimental effects to global warming, that it definitely outweighs the 'plant food' crock. And we know about it - there's little uncertainty in the scientific community (scientists tend to keep their predictions conservative, so time and again the reality turns out to be worse than the predictions. and the predictions are bad).
The only thing that's keeping us from taking proper action, is that carbon-credit-tax-paying companies have convinced the public that everyone's opinion on the matter is equally valid, and we should talk about things like a bunch of 1st grade high school kids.

It's very comforting to think you're pumping plant food into the air when you drive your car, but should we all doom ourselves just to confirm your feel-good bias?
"CO2 levels have been much, much higher in the far past and everything was just fine." Everything was fine in the far past - nothing to see here move along. oh, gimme a break. If you're trying to get me mad, it's working! You have quite some gall to call others rubes on this matter.

 

I linked to the best Climate Crock debunking YouTube page I know of. Did you actually look at it? It might help you wipe that egg off your face.

You link to Anthony Watts pseudoscience website? Wow, you're very well disinformed. I looked it over as a courtesy, and I must admit that the presentation style is very appealing. It almost looks like real science. I can imagine why you were convinced.
I won't try to discuss the other things you mentioned about CO2, because I'd have to double-check every claim made with actual reliable sources. Did you do that? Why should I have to do what you were too lazy to?

You discredited what could have been a reasonable debate position by linking to a very untrustworthy source. The website is not scientific, but intended to persuade layman audiences of the harmlessness of CO2 with biased, scientific-sounding language. That audience would be YOU, rube. Anthony Watts and friends make lots of money this way.

"What's up with that?" "I'm just sayin'."

More bunk.

 

Well here's something me and Coin can agree on. When the vast majority of the scientific community agrees that some scientific fact is true, it usually can be trusted. It seems to me that the financial interests lie on the denialist side and even then they can't muster up much scientific support. That tells me something about the validity of the science.

Apparently that source is tied to ALEC. How anybody could believe anything even remotely associated with that corporate-front group is beyond me. No offense to BTA of course.

 

If this youtube vid also doesn't work, i'll stick to links instead.
Sorry about this - in China I can't check to see if YT vids work, coz it's blocked.

It's an understandable mistake to make. If you look at those websites, they often have very well-presented papers. Lord Monckton writes a lot of them, actually. He's a bit of a science reject, but he knows where his lectures and papers will get rewarded. With his research background, he has no problem making articles look convincingly scientific. Enough to fool the rubes, and that's why it's so important to check sources very well.
I'm inclined to say it's equally possible that there are pseudoscience articles out there that are saying the opposite, but the reality of global warming is so strong and well-documented, that there's really no need for anyone to go the pseudoscience route to spread awareness.

In conclusion, there is an overwhelming scientific consensus among *experts* that humans are causing global warming, and that the consequences are very, very bad. There is a disturbing lack of awareness about this consensus among the general public. Carefully manufactured news reports have put such a negative spin on the global warming debate, that laymen will (often angrily) recite the scandals they've heard, and link to pseudoscience sites. I think BTA's opinions on the matter have been manipulated this way.

It's an excellent example, that brings us back to the main topic: Religion.
I'm glad damedog and I could agree on something, but we're still at odds about the main topic.
It's quite a shock when you realize that people you thought you could trust have been taking you for a ride, altering your beliefs to suit their interests, and ultimately making you look like a fool. It's a serious test of a person's character when this happens. That's why I think it's cruel for parents to introduce their children to religion. It was your mistake in your life, but don't incorporate religion into your child's identity and personal pride, just so you don't have to face facts. Let them choose for themselves, honestly, no pressuring, so it becomes their own choice in life.

 

Just a couple of items:

- The "vast majority of scientists" have been wrong in the past; the universe constantly expands while the earth does not (both theories at one point), there is no network of canals on Mars, the earth is not flat, and the sun does not revolve around the earth. Just because a majority of scientists like a theory does not mean it is correct.

- Absolute statements like "humans are causing global warming" tend to be wrong. Absolutes should always set of a meter whenever seen. I believe the 'consensus' among *experts* is that human influence is a significant contributor to global warming. It is the level of contribution where the *experts* differ; those who claim global warming is "solely caused" by humans are the fringe.

 

Not in the Artic-one of the two major areas known for sea ice on this planet.

Chart to back that up.

Using the interactive parts of the National Snow and Ice Data Center graph you can not only see it is below average but has typically been so for the last 8 years. Generally within the Standard Deviation, yet if there is a trend here it looks to be on the below average side.



Also the thing about Ozone doesn't (I believe) relate to Global Warming or CO2 but it does point to a situation where humans-thanks to more widespread CFC use in earlier days-were able to have a large scale impact (compared to when a factory-or specific group of them-only polluted a single river or something like that) on the atmosphere through pollution.






Anyway we were sort of getting back to religion and this study.


@Coin

When I when I last posted on this thread you were quite happy with agnosticism-the argument that we cannot prove to each other if God exists.

But that is very different from saying there is no "Sky daddy" (a term that can be and can be meant to be taken as demeaning by religious folks). At some point(s) I think you will have to choose between the two.


Also there are some historical and logical points I take issue with relating to the cartoon image.

1. The "author's note" is disputable as it is proven that Hitler was untrustworthy and he both praised and attacked religious beliefs. So we don't know what he was. Thank you Morgoroth for touching on this ealier.

2 (More important). Stalin did (this has been documented) have people imprisoned, tortured, and killed because they were religious. These actions were done to both enforce and spread atheism.

3. Atheism different than math as we generally think of it. Like strongly held religious beliefs it involves a set of unprovable (to many agnostics) assumptions and beliefs about the universe and beyond. Unless talking about really high level advanced math that generally goes beyond what most of us typically studied in high school this is apples and oranges (and red herring).

4. "in the name of" I've often found that specific phrase often popping up along side claims atheism has never been associated with something terrible. Now not only is that claim provably false it is an idea favored by Sam Harris-whom I've already referred to as an informal leader among some atheists who spreads ideas and beliefs. I don't know if Harris came up with this particular belief/idea himself but he publicly claimed it and, in so doing advocated it. I don't know if the person who came up with the cartoon was a devotee of Harris's or not but even if he or she doesn't think of him/herself as such the cartoon may show the influence of certain leaders and/or ideas/beliefs within atheism. That this specific phrase and the related idea/belief pops up multiple places.




@about this study

I wonder if one of the things this study touched on was a measure of the likelihood people would change their beliefs. Those people who have the easiest time changing their mind on something may have become atheists, in part, because religion was a default initial setting for most of the people in it. Scandals related to various religious leaders may have aided this but it is a thought.

If atheism was a larger segment of the population and organized/run by people like Sam Harris with the flaws in his (and their) thinking being pointed out on a wider scale would we see a drift away from atheism within this subgroup?

 

Part of the problem with this discussion, as I see it, is the insistence of some atheists (or let's just say non-believers) that everyone use the same method they do - rationality (never mind for the moment whether rationality actually tells us conclusively that there is no god, or if it simply says there is no evidence of a god) - to determine whether there is a god or not, while Christians by definition don't use that method. The very concept of faith is that you believe something without any evidence, and in Christianity, faith is not something you decide to have. No genuine Christian has a heart-to-hearter with him or herself and says "Okay, I have decided to believe in God." According to the tenets of faith, they have been given that faith by God.

Non-believers may see that as pat and very convenient, because it basically exempts believers from having to justify their beliefs. Believers on the other hand, who may maintain that faith basically happened to them, likely see dismissive comments that their faith is not real because they haven't arrived at it scientifically as demeaning and narrow-minded, as if the non-believer somehow claims to know everything instead of only what evidence of the senses tells or doesn't tell them.

 

I suggest that this thread can now be split into 3.

1: the original
2: animal testing
3: global warming

 

Considering it was me who brought up all those subjects, I apologize for the thread derailment of epic proportions.

 

As the thread originator I don't mind the derailing ... it makes things a bit more spirited.