Tag: unbelief

Two Kinds of Truth

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Atheism, Truth

Two Kinds of Truth

There are two kinds of truth: a truth that is developed by reason[i] and self-evident truth.  If we allow the latter to be pulled into the former, the latter and former are both lost. The very idea of knowing anything to any degree of certainty would be lost.

If a man denies that there is a cosmic order, i.e., a God, which I believe to be a self-evident truth,[ii] what grounds does he have to believe that his reasoning can be trusted?  If his reasoning is nothing more than a bundle of atoms interacting with each other in his brain, how can he trust it? Can he use reason to prove reason without first assuming that his reason can be trusted?  He may say that reasoning can be trusted because it was perfected by natural selection, but that is to say that a mindless force we called nature created reasoning and then perfected it by another mindless force, natural selection.  The atheist must trust or have faith in a blind force in order to trust his reasoning.  If he believes in reasoning, he must believe in it through a leap of faith in a blind force, which in my thinking begins to look a lot like a God hypothesis called by the name, reason.

To really be consistent with his atheism, he must maintain that everything (including his reasoning) is a mere illusion of his biological illusion maker that is in his brain. Then in order to function in the world, he must split the world into what is real and what is an illusion, and he must choose to live in and out of his illusions for it is impossible to live in the world he thinks is reality.  On top of this and at the same time, he must cling to the belief or the illusion that he and his beliefs are reasonable and everyone else’s (believers) are unreasonable.

He is like an actor on stage pretending to live out an imaginary story but believing at the same time that backstage is reality, which is meaningless and chaotic.  Of course, if he pretends long enough, he may begin to believe that the play is real, or if he gets really caught up in the story, he may even forget that it is all just make-believe.  The paradox is that often while playing out the story, he holds his audience in contempt for not knowing that the story he is performing in, is not real, or for not knowing what’s going on behind the curtain.

I have found that few atheists have the courage to take their beliefs to their logical conclusion for fear of the life it would produce.  So, they proclaim one set of beliefs while living by another. They claim to find meaning in a universe, which they say has no meaning, and they claim to have a purpose in a cosmos that they claim has no purpose.  They claim to be rational, in fact, the most rational of humans; however, does not rationality demand a willingness to take your own thinking to its logical conclusions and in turn, live out those conclusions?  Yet, I have never met an atheist who has consistently lived out his own thinking. Now, this is not to say they do not exist, but rather I have never met any.

Without a cosmic order, does not reason take you to the point of questioning reason itself?  Does not pure skepticism demand that you become skeptical about your own skepticism?  Should not a true doubter, doubt his own doubts?  Without self-evident truth, reasoning will, in the end, chase its own tail.  You must have something to reason from; you cannot reason from doubt.  As William James said, “You must have a will to believe something.”  Reason must start with something and cannot start with nothing.  Even the atheist must start with something: “I believe there is no God.”  Here he starts with assuming that his reason is sound.  Then he moves to himself “I” and his belief there is no God.  However, he cuts off the limb he is sitting on when he says, “no God.” Can a finite “I” make such a statement without being the very thing that he denies exists, i.e., God? [iii]  Moreover, can he make such a statement without having blind faith in reason?

[i]  These are truths that are formed by deduction and inductive reasoning. However, these truths are not the facts in themselves but are ideas that are inferred from the facts. Believers believe they can trust reason because it is the reflection of a reasonable God in whom image, we are created.

[ii] Some might raise the objection, If the existence of God is self-evident, why are there so many who do not see it? Jesus said, “Some people have eyes but do not see.”  Sometimes overexposure deadens our sensitivity to a thing. We are often actually insensitive to our senses until they are impaired in some way. We seldom think about seeing or our eyes until something threatens our sight. When looking out a window, we will not often see the glass unless we focus on it. The reason for this is that we have given our full attention to the things that we are watching outside the window. However, if the window is dirty or has a crack in it, we see it immediately.  The problem with modern man is that he is too focused on things to see God. However, his lack of focus does not mean that God does not exist.

[iii] To make an absolute statement that there is no God, a person would have to know everything in this vast universe and be everywhere at the same time. For if he did not know everything, the thing he might not know is that there is a God, and if he was not everywhere at the same time, the place he was not at might be the very place God exists.

Can You Be good Without God? 

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Atheism

Can You Be Good Without God?

Can you be good without God? Of the various questions raised in the theist/atheist debate, this question has, I believe, occasioned more witless commentary than any other. That witlessness is again on display in an essay for the Daily Beast, “Can you be good without God?” by Brandon Withrow of the University of Findlay. Withrow interviews a bunch of ticked-off atheists, who get the answer wrong.

He discusses a study titled, “Global evidence of extreme intuitive moral prejudice against atheists”:

“If God did not exist, then we would have to invent him,” said the French philosopher Voltaire. His point: that without a divine being to check right and wrong, any number of atrocities are possible and could go unpunished.

A recent study (of more than 3,000 people in 13 countries) published in the journal Nature Human Behavior echoes Voltaire’s maxim. Looking at intuitive thinking — presumptions drawn by individuals through unconscious biases — researchers led by Will M. Gervais, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky, discovered that most individuals intuitively conclude that a serial killer is more likely to be an atheist (approximately 60 percent) than religious (approximately 30 percent).

From the study’s Abstract:

Preliminary work in the United States suggests that anti-atheist prejudice stems, in part, from deeply rooted intuitions about religion’s putatively necessary role in morality. However, the cross-cultural prevalence and magnitude — as well as intracultural demographic stability — of such intuitions, as manifested in intuitive associations of immorality with atheists, remain unclear. Here, we quantify moral distrust of atheists by applying well-tested measures in a large global sample (N = 3,256; 13 diverse countries). Consistent with cultural evolutionary theories of religion and morality, people in most — but not all — of these countries viewed extreme moral violations as representative of atheists. Notably, anti-atheist prejudice was even evident among atheist participants around the world. [Emphasis added.]

The issue is simple, though. The answer to the question we started with hinges on what you mean by “without God.” Let’s take a look.

  1. If God does not exist, you cannot be good. You cannot be evil. You can’t conform or fail to conform to anytranscendental standard, because if there is no God, there are no transcendental standards. There is no Moral Law if there is no Moral Lawgiver. If there is no God, there are merely opinions and consequences of acting on opinions. We may label certain opinions “good,” but that’s just our opinion. What we really mean by calling something “good” is that we like it. Which is fine, as long as we understand that “good without God” is just a metaphor for “something I (or we) like.” If there is no God, all of our “moral” decisions are just opinions — perhaps opinions we like, or opinions we don’t like — but neither good nor bad.
  2. If God does exist, but you don’t believe in Him, then of course you can be “good without God”, in the sense that you can be good without believingin God. It is central to the moral theology of all the great faiths that non-believers may act in accordance with Moral Law without belief in God and even without knowing Moral Law in any formal sense. The Moral Law is written in our hearts, theists universally agree, and we feel the weight of morality whether we believe in God or not.

Now of course an additional question can be asked: Do theists actually behave better than atheists? I think this is the question that ticked off the atheists in the essay. If theists do, on the average, behave better than atheists, there are certainly many exceptions on both sides, and arguments can be made that particular groups of theists/atheists behave better/worse than other groups of atheists/theists. Mankind is a confusing mess.

Atheists, however, are on quicksand when they argue about “goodness” and “evil,” given that their metaphysics, if taken seriously, utterly rules out the existence of either. Also, it would seem to me that atheists could be a bit more contrite in light of the fact that whenever they have assumed state power — from the Reign of Terror to the gang currently launching missiles from North Korea — atheism has brought hell to earth.

The godless would garner more respect if they took their own metaphysics seriously, and if they showed at bit of contrition for what real atheists have done when in power. Author unknown.

The Great Atheist Illusion

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Atheism

 The Great Atheist Illusion

The greatest illusion embraced by the atheist is not that there’s no God but rather that they are free from illusions.  The belief that you are free of all illusions is the most dangerous illusion of all for it opens the floodgates to the acceptance of unreality in a multitude of forms.

It is evident that atheists have not experienced God but how in the world can they deny that others have not experienced Him.  Seeing that experiencing God is a personal matter that cannot be judged empirically by outsiders, as no one can get into another man’s mind or body to know how or what he is, or has experienced.  However, this is the very thing that an atheist must claim.  This claim springs from an illusion of omniscience and an assumption that the only true knowledge must be objective knowledge.

We know that human beings experience pain to various degrees, and that it is impossible for one to experience another man’s pain exactly and to the same degree.  The same thing is true of our experience of God.  People experience God in different ways and to distinct degrees.  Therefore, the atheist claim that there is no God is totally unreasonable and contrary to the experiences of billions of people. Have they tested empirically everyone’s experience of God?  The only real claim that they can reasonably make is that they have not personally experienced God.  Even so, in their arrogance they go one step further and say that no one has, or can experience God and if they claim they have, they are delusional.

The most that atheists can honestly claim is that they have not experienced God. However, that might be saying too much for they could have encountered God and not recognized it as a God experience.  This could be a very likely theorem seeing that their preconceived biases could keep them from recognizing a God experience if they had one.  The most that an atheist can say is that they have not had an understandable experience of God.  Of course, many atheists will say, if they have not experienced God, that he cannot exist or that God in some way is obligated to reveal to them himself in such a way that he would be undeniable.  They seldom blame themselves for accepting an ideology or world view that will not allow them to experience God.  It could be that they’re like a blind man who denies the existence of color because he cannot see it or has not experienced it and then blames color for their inability to see it.

In the end, the old saying that a man with an argument will never convince the man with an experience is true.  The only person in whom the atheists experience will stick and will move to their unbelief are those who have never experienced God and are already in a sense in the atheist camp. The atheist will never be able to argue that God does not exist, with a man who has experienced Him.  That would be like telling a man who was rescued from the sea, by an other man in a lifeboat, that the other man did not exist.

Humans come to know things through many ways.  We learn through our mind, but we also learn through our other senses.  In actuality, our mind processes the information that we get through our other senses.  However, if some sense has been crippled or damaged, we may become dead to that sense and no longer be able to experience it or the things that it was created to sense.  It could be also that some knowledge requires more than one sense and channel.  I think this is the case with the knowledge of God.  The knowledge of God requires the whole man.  If any part of the man has been damaged or disabled it becomes increasingly hard for that man to experience God in any meaningful way.

Therefore, talking to a hardened atheist is like talking with a handicap man who doesn’t know that he’s handicapped.  I once talked to a young atheist who I knew growing up, who had grown  up in a very dysfunctional family where there was a great deal of brokenness.  His parents claimed to be Christians and for whatever reason they could not work through their dysfunction.  This environment caused him to be bitter towards his father and somewhat towards his mother.  The bitterness not only hardened him from having a relationship with his father but it also hardened him to having faith in God.  Being an intelligent person he had to come up with a rational explanation for his lack of faith.  His self-justifying mechanism is the source of his unbelief and not his intellect.

Rejecting the God of the Child

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Atheism

Rejecting the God of the Child

I have had a number of people tell me that they rejected God when they were a child.  When someone says this in most cases what they rejected was not the true God but rather the wrappings of religion or a child’s view of God.  For a child, most of religion does not make sense, especially the so-called worship service where the seated child’s feet are hanging in midair, and someone is preaching a message above their heads about a subject they are not much interested in.

Some children as they grow into adolescence confuse or equate the rejection of religion with the rejection of belief in God.  However, it is quite doubtful that any child would have the intelligence and the experiences of life to reject a mature view of the deity which their young minds are incapable of conceptualizing.  In most cases, what they reject is an anthropomorphic or personal corporal view of God, i.e. God is a man sitting upon a throne in heaven.  Of course, this picture thinking of God as a man would’ve been rejected by many if they had matured in their faith anyway.  The adult mind understands that the spiritual (unseen), and the physical are linked by metaphors and symbols that cannot be taken literally.  This is not only true in religion but in science as well.  I am still astonished at the number of atheists who cannot or refuse to look at these concepts metaphorically.

It may be time to rethink your beliefs about the unseen with your adult mind.  Try to think of God as pure spirit or pure personality.  If you are into reason try super consciousness.  If you’re into morality try thinking of him as the highest good.  If you are into relationships try thinking of him as pure love.  The Apostle John did refer to Him as love.  “God is love”.  However, remember that anything that we compare God within our human experience will fall short of the reality.  God is greater than any mortal mind can imagine so at best we must use metaphors and similes to speak of him.  Otherwise, he would not be God. If you want to know more about the true God check out my blog lyleduell.me

The Atheistic Criticism of Religion

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Atheism

The Atheistic Criticism of Religion

When an atheist criticizes religion for the most part  they are simply criticizing the human condition; which is one of ignorance, sinfulness and hypocrisy.  These characteristics can be found in any society, culture and civilization and for that matter in every person.  They are found in religious cultures, secular cultures and atheistic cultures.  They are common to all men. Pointing these things out in any culture modern or ancient does not take a great deal of intelligence nor understanding.  It reflects a pretentious self-righteousness when criticizing others to exalt oneself.  Given the same circumstances and conditions most humans will react in  similar ways.  Much of the criticism of religion by atheism is nothing more than posing self righteous virtue at the best, and total moral egotism at its worst.  Their criticism proves nothing other than humanity is ignorant, sinful, hypocritical and poisons everything he touches.

The truth is that atheism as an ideology or as a foundational philosophy for a culture, has demonstrated itself to be totally inadequate to support a virtuous culture any more than religion.  In fact, all atheistic cultures have led to totalitarianism and even Europe as it embraces the secular is moving towards totalitarianism.  One should be careful in tearing down the poor man’s house unless he has something better to offer.

Moreover, the atheistic criticism of Christianity represents a shallow understanding of the message of Jesus.  A casual reading of the New Testament would demonstrate to any rational person that Jesus never intended his teachings to be the foundation of any large society, for his teachings are too demanding for the masses.  Yet, many atheists continue to attack the teachings of Western Christianity as though they were the pristine teachings of Jesus; in this they demonstrate their ignorance or their dishonesty.  In the majority of cases it is ignorance, at least from my experience most atheists are quite ignorant of Christian theology and often depend on a vulgar interpretation of Christianity to justify their criticism.

https://lyleduell.me/2015/12/18/the-making-of-an-fundamentalist-atheist/

Faith Versus Reason

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Atheism, Biblical doctrines, Faith

Faith Versus Reason

To have faith is to confess bias.  However, all beliefs are grounded and based on faith, at least initially.  Our very language supports this, “I believe in reason.”  You must have faith in reason before you attempt to use it.  In the end there is a faith element in everything we believe and do, it all begins with faith.  But, in many cases the faith element is tacit, hidden or so small it remains unnoticed.  Sometimes it is referred to by other names such as a hunch, intuition or hypothesis, but however small, it is there.  Faith is the beginning of knowledge.  The affirmation “I believe” is the beginning of all thought.

Some seem to believe the way to true knowledge is by endless questioning and doubting.  However, this is a belief that in itself requires faith.  Should we doubt everything except our doubts?  Now, do not get me wrong, there is a place in our thought process for doubting, but doubting cannot be the beginning, goal or the end.  It must lead to faith, for it is faith that leads to truth and action.  For example, the agnostic is frozen between belief and unbelief by their doubting and in turn doubting their doubts, while the atheist believes their doubts, and is going nowhere.  On the other hand the theist believes their beliefs and should be open to the future of truth[1].  If skeptical-ism is taken to its logical conclusion it could lead to a stalled intellectual progress and a cynical view of truth and learning. If you question everything in the end you must question your truth and when your truth is overthrown by doubting “the truth” is not far behind and you are close to being thrown into the abyss of relativism.

Some might reply. what about science and the scientific method?  Do you not need faith in reason to believe in science and the scientific method?  Does not science have to assume (have faith) that nature has her laws for scientist to do science?  I believe this is called the uninformed of nature.[2] This belief cannot be proven because to prove it you would have to believe in it to attempt to prove it. This seems to point to the fact that all human knowledge must begin with faith on some ground (foundation) which is also to accept it by faith.

[1] If skeptical-ism is taken to extremes it can lead to a stalled intellectual progress and a cynical view of learning. There is a tendency for skeptical-ism to lead to radical relativism which guts the meaning of existence and leaves people cynical.

[2] The scientists claim they test everything by the scientific method. However, the scientific method is based on faith in the uniformity of nature and reason. Some have questioned reasoning but I know of none that have questioned the uniformity of nature, for to do so would be to question the whole enterprise of science.

Faith

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Atheism, Faith

Faith

“Without faith it would be impossible to eat stew”

Faith is to believe or not to believe[1] in something on the ground of something other than objective evidence[2]. Many of our most basic beliefs are subjective without us even realizing it. However, once accepted by faith, most beliefs can be given  some evidence to support them.  A large percentage of our beliefs are actually based on the authority of people whom we trust or have faith in. This trust represents a subjective element in the majority of things that we believe. Our beliefs can also be strangeness or weaken by inference and reason. Outside the religious spear say as in science faith might be like what we call a hunch or a vision. Hunches and visions like faith have various degrees of intensity and clarity. These degrees are as numerous as individual.

For example, my neighbor goes to post office ones a week to pick up his mail and I have faith or a hunch that he will do it tomorrow. So, my expectation of seeing him at the post office grows to almost a certitude. I could say I have faith that I will see him at the post office. If he fails to show up I begin to look for a reason. I do not say he does not exist because he doesn’t act according to my expectations.

Like my experience with my neighbor, when the Bible speaks of faith it taking about a belief based on experiencing God. This experiencing of God is referred to by believer as having a personal relationship with God or being born again, which is completely non-understandable to unbelievers or even to the religious person that has not experienced God in a meaningful way. In view of this a person might be what we call religious and not have true faith. In this context faith is trust-based on one’s prior experiences.

My point is that if God does not show up as you might expect do not give up on God, rather take a look at your experiences and your interpretation of those experiences on which your faith is based.

[1] I had to add this  expression for my atheists friend who make a big deal out of atheism be a non-believe and not a faith. Faith is simply trusting ones beliefs and I would hope that atheists have at least a little trust in what they believe in or what they do not believe in.

[2] The idea of the objectivity is somewhat of an inflated idea. Most human knowledge has some aspect of subjective-ism. This is the reason there is no end to questioning and doubting.  It is the miserable lot of the skeptics to be doubting and arguing all the time and never coming to the knowledge of the truth.

Cognitive Pathology and Consensus

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Atheism, Science

Cognitive Pathology and Consensus

What is cognitive pathology?  It is the study of the source or origin of a belief, in other words, why people think the way they do.  You have probably experienced someone informing you, that you believe a certain view because of some hidden motives.  For example, someone declares that you are a Republican because you believe in capitalism, or you are Democrat because you believe in big government.

Atheists often use cognitive pathology to explain away the validity of the believer’s faith.  This has been the case from Feuerbach to Bertrand Russell.  Both Feuerbach and Russell seemed to believe like many atheists, that if you could explain the source or cause of peoples belief, that basis would invalidate those beliefs as being rational.  Of course, this kind of thinking is not unique to atheism.  It is a method used by many to attack or dismiss any arguments made against their beliefs on any subject.

I have run across this thinking in politics and science.  For instance, if you are against the theory of manmade global warming, you must be a capitalist or own stock in an oil company, For that reason you cannot face the truth about climate change therefore, I need not to bother myself with answering your arguments.  Another example would be; if you believe in smaller government, you must be a libertarian, therefore, all your criticism of government must be untrue and comes from your prejudices.  This is not to say that climate change is not real nor is it an endorsement of small government, it is simply an example of how people will use cognitive pathology to win an argument, or to avoid any possible argument against their belief system.

The problem with cognitive pathology is that it is often used as a form of reductionism  to reduce human emotions and thoughts down to one source.  This kind of thinking is common in a scientific age that has tried to reduce everything down to cause and effect; believing that everything can be reduced to one cause.  Another problem is that even if you could reduce a person’s belief on an issue to a single cause, that would not itself nullify a person’s belief or prove it to be false.  The belief itself must still be examined for its truthfulness.  Otherwise cognitive pathology becomes nothing more than a personal begging of the question, which I find often to be the case with those that continually use this kind of  circular reasoning.

A similar concept to cognitive pathology is the argument from a consensus.  In this form of argument, the person simply asserts that their position is correct because that’s what the majority believe.  This is usually done without proof as to what the majority actually believes.  Furthermore, proving what the majority believes in, is a massive job, which most people are not willing to undertake.  So, if someone uses the argument of consensus simply ask for proof, if the consensus is not self-evident.

I have run across a number of atheists who use consensus arguments to try to support their unbelief.  They say something like this, “the majority of scientists do not believe in God.”  To begin with, this is a pretty large blanket affirmation to make without any hard evidence to confirm it; and without the evidence it is nothing but  dishonest propaganda.  In fact, if you Google the question, you’ll find a lot of polling data on the subject and in my study of different polls, it looked pretty close that those  who believe in a higher power edged out the unbelievers by a couple of points[1].  One of problems with polling of this type is that it usually does not consider the difference between the types of scientists that are being interviewed.  What is called the ‘soft’ sciences like psychology, psychiatry and sociology, would to encompass a much larger number of unbelievers because much of their studies are based on a methodology other than the scientific method, which for many put them outside of a true science.

Cognitive pathology and consensus arguments are the preferred tool of the pseudo-educated class and status quo class to cover up their bias and to discredit the arguments of their opponents without answering the argument.[2]  Using these two techniques, they can dismiss arguments with little or no thought, much less a good argument.  Some use them to support an ego that has run amok.  Sometimes, I myself have practiced it, though hopefully noting it in the context of my writing, that in the end it proves nothing other than a person has the analytical skills to dissect the motives of others; and let me hasten to point out that in the majority of cases humans have more than one motive for doing or believing something.

The closest explanation, to explaining the source of faith and unbelief is William James book “The Will to Believe”[3].  In his book, James who was a psychiatrist and a philosopher postulates the theory that people basically believe what they want to believe about God.  James believed that a man’s will was their source of faith or unbelief as much as reason.  However, it is seldom reason alone that dictates whether a person believes in God or not.  He also points out that conditioning and temperament can make a person dead to a particular belief.[4]  By the expression “dead to a belief” he means that a person will not even consider looking at it or engage his reasoning to examine it.

[1] According to the poll, just over half of scientists (51%) believe in some form of deity or higher power; specifically, 33% of scientists say they believe in God, while 18% believe in a universal spirit or higher power.  By contrast, 95% of Americans believe in some form of deity or higher power, according to a survey of the general public conducted by the Pew Research Center in July 2006.  Specifically, more than eight-in-ten Americans (83%) say they believe in God and 12% believe in a universal spirit or higher power.  Finally, the poll of scientists finds that four-in-ten scientists (41%) say they do not believe in God or a higher power, while the poll of the public finds that only 4% of Americans share this view.  Pew Research Center for the People & the Press survey, conducted in May and June 2009

[2] This is done in political debate by inferring that one’s opponent is racist or homophobic.  This infers that their statements or arguments come from a racial or gender bias.

[3] “The Will to Believe: and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy”

[4] James believed that temperament and disposition are some of the major factors in what people believe about things and especially metaphysical things.  You can read about this in his book on pragmatism.

The Assumptions of Atheism

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Atheism

The Assumptions of Atheism

The atheism faith is based upon two assumptions that cannot be proven.  And yes, it is a faith because it is an ideal that exists in the human mind and is supported by other human beliefs.  The ideal that it is a non-belief is nothing but atheistic sophistry.  Calling atheism a non-belief is like calling it a non-idea.  It’s just more nonsense.

Let’s look at their assumptions.  The first one being that there is no God.  No one can prove that there is no God, for in order to do so they would have to be everywhere in the universe at the same time and also outside of the universe at the same time for in the very place that they were not, might be the very place that the uncreated one is present.  They would also have to know everything in the universe for if there was one thing that they didn’t know it might be that there’s a God.  In essence, they would have to be God in order to say with certitude that there isn’t a God.  The atheist always has to leave a small possibility that their might be a god, which possibly in itself negates the very idea of atheism.  However, out of their fear of the camel getting his nose into the tent many pretend to deny the possibility altogether.

The second assumption, which I have found in most atheists, is the belief that they are smarter than those who believe in a God.  I have found this trait even in those who seem to be friendly towards religion.  Of course, this is an assumption that has no scientific basis.  In fact, a recent polling of scientist’s indicate that the split is about 50-50, as to whether or not they believe in some kind of higher power[1].  There is also evidence that at higher levels of IQ there is about equal numbers of people who believe in a Higher power.  Some believe that the American philosopher and psychiatrist William James was the most intelligent man in recent times, and of course he was a believer.  He had an estimated IQ of twice that of Einstein.  Christopher Michael Langan is considered by many to be the most intelligent human being alive today, he has a confirmable IQ of somewhere between 195 and 210.[2]  Christopher Michael Langan does believe in a God.  Of course, this neither proves nor disproves the existence of a God, but it does prove that the atheists second assumption, that they are smarter than believers, is completely and utterly wrong.

[1]“The stats say that the split is about 50-50 of those who believe in God and those who do not. A survey taken by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in May and June of this year and reported by David Masci in the Los Angeles Times, found that 51% do believe in God and 41% do not.  These numbers haven’t changed much over the last 100 years either,  despite the numerous discoveries in evolution and biochemistry over the years.”  Suzanne Kennedy; bitesizebio.com 12/21/09

[2] Depending on the source or reference either in news articles, blogs, interviews, Scientific Journals or magazines over the years, Christopher Michael Langan is quoted as having a confirmable IQ of anywhere between 195-205.  He has developed a “theory of the relationship between mind and reality” which he calls the “Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe” (CTMU)