Poor trump - Page 19

@Noitsyou. Are you also aware that you have a habit of changing the goal posts when you don't want to concede a point? The point that you hope I will forget or become confused by, in a flood of "information overload", is that you used Nobel Prize winners as the best example, and without any other further qualifiers and at that time, it was good enough for you. Only when I show how you ministerpret the facts, do you want to change the focus.

This tendency is also seen in this statement, "So no, you didn't prove that scientists are just as religious as non-scientists." The point here, is that the premise never was to prove scientists are as religious as non-scientiists. The point was that you used Nobel Prize scientists as the high bar for who is considered, smartest of scientists. Your second premise was that the smartest scientists are atheists. I followed your premise to make the point with statistical proof, that indeed you are wrong, and that since there are more Nobel Prize winning scientists who self-identify as Christians, then saying atheists are the smartest scientists just is not valid. Maybe now, you will want to make a new theory based on the latest ten years, that are missing in the stats list I linkied, but still it will not matter.

That is because of the other real error in logic that follows, that even if I concede your premise statement, "Most scientists are atheists", it can be rephrased as, "some people are scientists". And then when we consider your claim, "atheists are smarter" than Christians, the logic falls apart because "some scientists" cannot be counted in any meaningful way to all atheists and Christians. Thanks to my mentor who explains it more technically than myself as, "commiting the formal fallacy of undistributed middle term."

So, let us be clear too, if this is to continue, stating one is Christian should not be equated belonging to an organized religion. As for your Wiki research, I can not give you credit for establishing any sort of uniform proof to the effect that validates your claim of superior atheist intelligence, especially when the subject pool is as limited as this:

Controlling for other factors, they can only confidently show strong negative correlation between intelligence and religiosity among American Protestants.

The three Harvard explanations are again, theory, and not proof.

The Pew study, interestingly enough, does not account for all scientists, or all people, and yet if we stay within its constraints, still shows that 51% of scientists do have a spiritual faith, of which 33% are Christian. How is this statistic supposed to support an atheist, superior mind intelligence? Are we then supposed to disregard only spirtual Christian leanings, but also accept spiritual leanings that are not related to Christian tenets? Why the stats on the general population of America, feels on religion is supposed to be a meaningful statistic, again I would say, seeks to compare apples to oranges.

None of which, even takes into the account that the modern view concerning intelligence is not limited to science!

http://bigthink.com/going-mental/what-is-intelligence-2

 

 

Oh too funny and downright frightening.....Trump accuses President Obama and now Hillary Clinton of being the founders of Isis.  Wonder where in the world he dreamed that up?????

How am I changing the goalposts? Because I assumed we were talking about the world today? Answer this, if I said many writers of fiction are atheists when compared to the population in general would it make sense to mention writers who lived thousands of years ago, like Homer?

Of course I would concede, something you are apparently unwilling to do, that if you took ALL scientists of ALL TIME and considered their religious views that the number of atheists among them would be rather small but what does that mean for us today?

There was a time when all humans believed things we would consider silly today. Can someone with a similar silly belief look back to them and say, "I'm smart because Og the caveman, who was known as the smartest caveman, believed that rain was the gods peeing on us,"? It doesn't make Og any dumber because he was wrong but it has no bearing on intelligence today. In other words, because very smart people in the past believed things which turned out to be false doesn't mean if you believe them today you are as smart as they were. So just because a Nobel Prize winner 100 years ago believed in a god doesn't mean that someone today believing the same thing is just as smart.

Looking more closely at your argument: did I say atheists are smarter than Christians? No. If anything I said the average atheist compared to the average Christian. So I committed no fallacy but cherry picking what I wrote is committing one. In fact, you even noted that I said not all Christians are less smart than atheists.

Finally, if I were to say that most Christians are racists, xenophobes, homophobes, misogynists, etc., would I be stating a fact? Using your logic I would since I would be talking about all Christians who ever lived. But there is the grammatical fact that I am speaking in the present tense. Just as when I wrote the scientists who win, not who have won. Or when I wrote the best scientists IN the world which implies they are still alive and part of (in) the world.

Let's further examine your grammatical errors: you wrote, "Your second premise was that the smartest scientists are atheists. I followed your premise to make the point with statistical proof, that indeed you are wrong, and that since there are more Nobel Prize winning scientists who self-identify as Christians, then saying atheists are the smartest scientists just is not valid."

Read your first sentence "are atheists." Are is the present tense, again implying they are alive. So you bringing up dead scientists to refute a claim about the present is wrong.

@beetree, maybe you should have considered this that I wrote, "So maybe the smartest believers are as smart as the smartest scientists but the dumbest scientist is smarter than the dumbest believer. "

Then this, "Factoring in atheists in general you would probably get a similar finding. There are a lot more dumb believers than dumb atheists. I remember reading how in the Congo the Pygmies were being hunted, killed and..eaten because it was believed that their flesh gave magical powers."

You will note that I am talking about believers in general and not Christians specifically. Also, I never said atheists are smarter than Christians or believers in general.

@Mindhunt, it sounds funny but it's scary because you have a bunch of idiots who will believe it. You also have those who don't believe it but have no problem supporting someone who is so willing to be embraced by the dumbest among us.

What's next, Obama invented AIDS and earthquakes?

Simply stick to your own parameters, is all that is required. You previously had set none, except for a scientist having been awarded the Nobel Peace prize. That complete time period, was stated in my copy and paste, as a bit more than one hundred years and includes the modern decades, if not the last one. I conceded that one, already. Any amount of fancy dancing around that can't change what you wrote first, in black and white. Please don't try to do the flip-the-argument-back-on-me thing. It just simply isn't true that I am changing any goal posts. I am trying to stick you to your spot. You want to talk literature, not a problem, it just won't change the fact you used Nobel Peace prize scientist winners as the bar for smartest scientists.

 

You say,

" ...did I say atheists are smarter than Christians? No."

Clearly, you did. It isn't me doing the cherry picking, either.

Now, just because atheists are smarter it doesn't follow that they are right.

.... It doesn't mean that those Christians are smarter than Nobel Prize winning scientists. 

You can go on, and on, all you want but you aren't going to deflect away from the fact you, now, don't want to limit yourself to Nobel Peace prize winners any more— to prove your stated belief, that aethists are smarter. You wanted that thought to be based on proving scientific intelligence, when compared to a Christian, that their mindset is a set-up for being an inhibitor of equal intelligence. That is what you want. You just can't prove it.

Since you failed to address the grammatical errors you made I can only assume you concede that point. You didn't even bother trying to show that I was not speaking about the present. Which brings us to the cherry picking. You did it again. You posted something out of context. You posted, "Now, just because atheists are smarter it doesn't follow that they are right." Had you posted what came before that it would be clear that I when I said, "atheists are smarter," I was referring to atheists as a whole group vs believers as a whole group. In other words, the average atheist is smarter than the average believer. I was not saying all atheists are smarter than all believers. It should have been clear since I earlier stated just that and you acknowledged it.

And making analogies is not changing the goalposts or argument. I mentioned writers in an analogy.

Like I said, I made a thought out argument for why I was speaking about the present. Your response was nothing more than to attack it as fancy dancing. If you can't come up with a grammatical argument to counter mine then an argument without substance is not really an acceptable substitute.

At the end of the day you can play a failed game of gotcha but it doesn't change the spirit of my argument which is, atheists in general are smarter than believers and that more scientists are atheists than the general public. You want to focus on Christians as if to divorce them from the cannibals and witch doctors. When people murder others, commit suicide attacks, cannibalize, enslave, believe in astrology, etc., all in the name of atheism then I will concede atheists, as a whole, are no smarter than believers.

Finally, Christian scientists today (who really believe), can't think about their scientific endeavors the same way they approach faith. They are not the same cognitively. So a real Christian who is a scientist makes scientific discoveries not in spite of his Christian faith but by ignoring it. He can't approach science using the same thought process he does religion. Those believers who are unable to think with "two minds" will be at a cognitive disadvantage. So yes, reasoning modified by religious thought processes will inhibit intelligence as well as scientific and philosophical thought. Thinking about this I suppose I could believe that someone who is very religious might have the potential to have a very high IQ and cure cancer but, if he doesn't develop the ability to think rationally he will never achieve that potential.

How do you change goalposts? I'm familiar with the logical fallacy of moving or shifting the goalposts, but I've never heard of changing them. Paint, maybe? ;)

But then again, if one is actually attempting to learn about logic and logical fallacies, there could be hope after all. Better late than never!

Now let's see. According to intelligent design, "the fool has said in his heart, 'there is no God.'" That must mean that atheists would rather debate the meaning of "fool."

GSDadmin I have not call you ignorant I have called your mixing of organized religion and biblical Christianity ignorant where word Ignorant is in meaning ( Merriam Webster) lacking knowledge, information, or awareness about something in particular. In no means it was meant to insult you.