I don't think you are being close-minded. However, I do think you are incorrect.

I would argue with your premise that religious people accept that their belief is based on either a holy book or quasi-scientific evidence. It is true that religious people tend to give these reasons when pressed for the reason that they are religious, but for most, they were religious even before they knew that these arguments existed, therefore the cause must be elsewhere. Most people, in my experience, are religious because they were raised religious and it has become a part of their being, or they have undeniable emotional or personal reasons for being religious.

But even if your premise were true, I would disagree with your specific arguments.

1. Whether the Bible and Koran are mutually exclusive is out of my range of knowledge (it is possible that they are not, at least from an Islamic perspective, but I don't know). However, that is not relevant because believers do not consider the books equal. This might be (in a sense) like saying that a science textbook and a creationist textbook are equal because they were written at about the same time and they are mutually exclusive so neither is true. You're right that we can't prove that either of these religious texts is divinely inspired, and that's where you should probably focus your argument. (Also, I'd argue against saying that the Bible and Koran were written in roughly the same era -- there's quite a bit of time involved here, and the books were written in very different ways and circumstances.)

2. You are definitely correct that any evidence for a prime mover (a deist deity, if you will) is not in-and-of-itself evidence for a specific religion. However, there are a number of arguments religious people use, with a prime mover as a base, to show that their religion is preferable. Granted, IMO most of them are pretty bad.

Your conclusion uses the term "blind faith." This is problematic, in that religious people very often don't think they have blind faith. They think they have informed faith, or their faith is based on personal feelings or an "experience of the divine."

I would also argue with the statement that blind faith is "clearly an anathema to intelligence." Everyone has a certain amount of faith -- or, at least, we all assume that certain things are true with no evidence for their truth. For example, I assume that other people exist and that there really is a world outside my mind. It is impossible to prove that this is true.

If you mean, however, that religious faith is anti-intelligent, then I would disagree with that statement as well. If someone "feels strongly in his heart" that Jesus died for his sins, all the proof in the world isn't going to change that feeling. You can't say that someone isn't intelligent because they can't change their emotions -- this would be like me telling an orphan that he is dumb for feeling love for his mother because he doesn't know who she is and she might not even be alive. It's how a person who has these religious feelings acts that shows whether they are intelligent or not.

You should also keep in mind that there are many books out there that make scientific and/or rationalistic arguments for the truth of one religion or another. I have read a good number of these, and although I found them all lacking, they were often lacking not because of the author's lack of intelligence, but because of the author's lack of knowledge, experience, or familiarity with certain logical fallacies. I allow that a person can be very intelligent and still make mistakes -- even very significant ones -- in reasoning.

It all comes down to this. If everyone started life with a clean slate, free from any sort of religious education and bias, and was given the evidence for religion based on today's scientific knowledge, then I would tend to agree that most intelligent people would choose, at most, deism (although I admit a bias in saying this). However, we don't start out that way, and people have all sorts of different needs and ways of thinking. In my opinion, some people just don't have the potential to be atheists, and I can't condemn them for that.

In closing, let me address the statement, "you cannot have a rational conversation with someone that believes in your stupidity for no logical reason." That's true. It's also why I avoid assuming that anyone I speak with is stupid.

(By the way, I think you should be careful when you talk about "most intelligent religious people" and then only mention Christians and Muslims, since that might unintentionally imply a bias against other religions.)

Wow -- someone who writes responses as long as mine! <G>

In an attempt to make this discussion more clear, let me make a number of statements to summarize my position:

1) I agree that there is no logical, scientific argument that seems sufficient to prove that a specific religion is true.

2) There are religious people who disagree with statement #1.

3) I don't think that the people mentioned in #2 are necessarily unintelligent.

4) Even so, I find science-based arguments for religion pretty much doomed to failure.

5) I also find that most people who make science-based arguments for religion would be religious even without those arguments, so the arguments are essentially just word games to them.

6) Non-scientific (e.g., emotional or "faith") reasons for being religious are impossible to refute.

7) Even if a faith-based reason for being religious in general can't be refuted, certain religious statements (such as biblically literal creationism) can be refuted, so long as the possibility of supernatural deception is discounted.

8) In order to prove that religious people are unintelligent, you must prove it within the context of a person who has a strong religious predisposition.

9) It doesn't matter if a person is religious, so long as that person acts morally and intelligently with religion as a given.

Now that that's off my chest, let's look at specific points you bring up in your letter.

You say that you base your assumption of the lack of intelligence of religious people on their own logical analysis of their beliefs. I think that this may be the crux of the whole problem. Faith-based belief generally does not do well when subject to logical analysis. If it did, it wouldn't be faith-based. There are a lot of people out there who make quasi-scientific arguments for faith, and as sincere as these people are, their arguments are generally either really bad or uninformed. However, as loud as these people are, I don't believe that they represent the majority of religious people. Religious people may find comfort in these arguments, but in general the arguments really have nothing to do with their reason for being religious.

Are the people who make the arguments unintelligent? It depends on the argument. I'd say that in general the foolishness most often shown by religious people is the need to try and justify their religious beliefs rationally when they'd do far better saying that they have faith for personal reasons and letting it go at that.

You ask, "If you are born into a racist family, or just 'feel' that black people are inferior, and you accept this despite any argument to the contrary, does that not in itself point to stupidity?" This is an excellent question. If someone is born racist, how would you convince them not to have an emotional reaction when they see a person of the race that they were raised to hate? You can convince this person not to act racist, you can convince this person that racism is wrong, but you can't convince them not to have feelings that they were raised to have. True, those feelings might go away in time, but even though you can say that the feelings are stupid, you can't say that a person is foolish for having feelings --only for acting foolishly based on those feelings.

Applying this to religion, there are some people who, after being shown the best possible proof in the universe, will still feel that there is a loving, personal god out there and that Jesus died for their sins. These feelings are part of their being and not subject to cancellation by logic.

It's very important -- both for us and for religious people --to keep in mind that any belief based on feelings of this sort is necessarily limited. You can't convert someone based on your personal feelings, and you are on morally shaky ground trying to pass laws or compel others to action based on these feelings. I'm guessing that this (and in some cases insecurity) is why so many religious people look for justifications for their beliefs outside of their personal emotional context.

I think that if we look again at your example of someone born racist, we can see something of the future of religion and atheism. Let's say that there is someone who was raised racist and can't get over those feelings, but is convinced that those feelings are intellectually incorrect. That person will raise her children without a racist context, even though inside she is still technically racist. Her children will be free from racism both in thought and deed. I think we are seeing the same sort of thing happen with religion in the U.S. There is still a religious majority, but their degree of devoutness is (on average) on the decline. Therefore, more children are being raised without that internal need for religion, and for that reason their potential to be convinced at some point that religion is unnecessary is much higher than their parents' was.

As an aside, some religions do try and keep up with science while maintaining elements of faith. The modern Catholic church, for example, does not believe that the entire Bible is literally true (Catholics are not creationists). They still aren't perfect from a science perspective, but I'd say that they're a lot more intellectually defensible than some fundamentalist religions.

On another point, I think my textbook analogy was fairly accurate -- it was just looking at the problem from a religious person's perspective. You and I would agree that the Bible and Koran are not divinely inspired. However, to a person who believes in the Bible (for example), the Bible is inspired and the Koran is not. For them, any argument based on similarity of the books is going to fall flat -- not because they're unintelligent, but because they have a different context. (This gets even more complex because Moslems and Christians consider some of the same texts to be holy.)

Yet another aside, I like to avoid pointing out that religion could be based on lies. The Bible is the religious book I'm most familiar with, and it's entirely possible that it was written by completely sincere individuals. If you disagree, we can talk about this in more detail some time if you like.

You are right that the "worship no false gods" commandment is common to Christianity and Islam. However, how this commandment is interpreted varies quite a bit depending on the specific religious group. For example, some religions believe that if you do not agree with their exact beliefs you are doomed for eternity, while others believe that even if you are wrong about god (or lack there of) you can still achieve paradise. You are correct that all religions are pretty much mutually exclusive in the sense that they all think they are correct and others are at least incorrect. I have read many arguments for a specific god (namely the Christian god), and although I found them badly flawed, I would at worst call them ignorant.

Where your point is best made, I think is when we get into discussing different sects and how a religious person without other bias would go about deciding which was "correct." I think it has to come down to how one feels, as I have never seen an argument for (for example) Southern Baptist vs. Catholic that was both worthwhile and not based on pragmatism.

Your four-step process for deciding between Islam and Christianity is pretty much correct (although I would quibble with details -- for example, some Christians believe that the Bible was divinely inspired if not actually written by God, and the Ten Commandments were supposed to have literally been written by the divine hand. The problem is that in step 1 you talk about how one would go about choosing between the two religions, and in the vast majority of cases that's an artificial circumstance. Almost nobody sets out to decide between Christianity and Islam in this way, and if they did I'd guess that their needs are such that they will either end up deist, atheist, or choosing a religion based on fulfillment of social needs as opposed to metaphysical fact.

You challenge a Muslim or Christian to show that they have logical grounds for their respective beliefs. If you mean that you dare a religious person to show you a compelling argument for your converting to their religion, then I think you are pretty safe. However, I'd say that, "When I read the Bible I can feel God's love and I know in my heart that Jesus is my personal savior," is not an illogical statement, it's just not a rational statement (that is, it's a statement of faith and emotion as opposed to one of pure reason). A religious person could also say that they asked for a sign that their religious belief is true and soon after received a sign, therefore demonstrating that they are correct. Again, this is a logical argument, even though a non-religious person would not find it compelling because there are probably non-supernatural explanations for the "sign."

Regarding "blind" faith, again you are correct from a non-religious person's perspective. A religious person may very well have a reason for their faith, it's just not a rationalist's reason. There is also a lot of range on this subject -- I have met many religious people who are happy to grant the plausibility of other logical explanations and yet are religious either because they don't find those explanations sufficient or they can't stop feeling that religion is true.

Next we come to my discussion of whether everyone has faith. If I was offered a separate, plausible explanation for reality, would I disregard it? No, but I might consider it irrelevant. For example, what if I'm really unconscious in some laboratory and everything I perceive is being fed to me electronically by a computer? It could be, and I have no way of judging the likelihood. However, this possibility that we're all living in the Matrix is irrelevant to me because without knowledge of the metaphysical truth I will not change my behavior. I make the same kind of argument in the face of the possibility that there is a deity out there despite my thinking it highly unlikely.

Continuing with the Matrix hypothesis, it is irrelevant that the falsity of this possibility is stated by my contemporaries (since if the hypothesis is true they may be computer simulations), and your typing proves nothing since, if the hypothesis is true, you aren't typing.

I treat the universe as a given because it is convenient to do so. I do the same for the immutability of the laws of science and the existence of the past. You can't prove any of these things, and there are alternate possibilities, but I take these as given because they make sense to me and are consistent with the world I see. I have no problem with people saying I have faith in these things. To me, faith isn't a bad word -- it's just something people should strive to have as little of as possible in order to defend against being convinced that something unreal is true.

Now we come to my favorite sentence in your letter: "What I am saying when I make the sweeping statement that religious people lack true intelligence is this: these people base their whole perception of the universe and the way they live their lives and treat others on the holes in their own logic, and when someone shows them their mistakes they refuse to budge."

I like this sentence because it so clearly outlines everything we're discussing here. We've already covered my belief that religious people generally aren't basing their beliefs on logic at all. But what' really important here is that you discuss they way that religious people live and how they treat others. That, I think, is where we should measure their intelligence. If a religious person recognizes that religion is based on faith as opposed to reason, it is completely possible for them to be intelligent and logical in their world view, actions, and treatment of others from that point. In fact, as atheists I think it should be one of our goals to strongly encourage this kind of behavior, both because it will lead to the elimination of those facets of religion that are truly illogical and self contradictory, and because it gives atheist the greatest chance to thrive in the future.

I said before that some people do not have the potential to be atheists. The fact is, some people very desperately need religion to be true. If someone's emotional health depends on their believing that there is a "higher power" out there, is it illogical for that person to believe in the higher power? That is a very difficult question, and it would be hard for me to either say that we should try our best to show such a person that there is no god or to condemn that person as unintelligent. Instead, we should at most help that person deal with the difficulties that cause the need for a concept of god -- and in many cases even that might not be a worthwhile effort.

Finally, let's look at whether lack of rational thinking has led to world horrors. I'm going to pretty much agree with you on this. Where we differ is in the solution. I believe that people don't have to give up their need for religion in order to be intelligent and behave rationally and morally. In fact, there are plenty of atheists who don't behave intelligently, rationally, and morally. That's why our focus should be on behavior and developing good thinking habits, as opposed to on the detail of whether one is religious.

I think that for religious people the key to this is getting them to stop trying to make logical arguments for faith and start admitting that they have what you call "blind faith." Everyone should learn how to have a logical discussion on a topic, and right now (at least in the U.S.) there seems to be a fear of science and reason among some groups because they see such things as a threat to their faith. If we can convince people that they don't have to give up faith (which they may desperately need) in order to be rational, if we can show them that it is no sin to examine your own beliefs, and if we can convince them that they should make their own decisions based on reason instead of blindly following the words of a religious leader, then I think we can eliminate the very problems you mention without pulling the rug out from under those who can't live as atheists.

Welcome to what may be my longest response ever! Here we go...

Regarding arguments for specific religions: I really don't like to cite other people's work on this board, but if you would like to see examples of arguments for Christianity, take a look at some of Lee Strobel's books -- The Case for Christ, for example. I don't agree with his arguments, and I think that they are seriously flawed, but I could see an intelligent person being swayed by them (or at least having their beliefs reinforced by them) under certain conditions. In fact, if I remember correctly, the author says he was converted to religion by these arguments.

Back to the racism analogy. You ask whether it matters if a person is racist if they act non-discriminatory towards racial minorities. Well, that depends on whether they act racist at other times and how they feel about their own racism. It is possible to be emotionally racist but realize that these feelings are wrong.

Regarding your discussion of prejudice in religion, I'm going to get really picky on you <G>. First, women aren't minorities (although this doesn't impact your point, I thought I'd mention it). Second, there are very many Christian (and Jewish, for that matter) religions that allow women to serve as ministers. Your statement that, "I am aware some sects of Christianity allow this, however, I have already stated my belief that Christianity is based upon the Bible" confuses me a bit. Does the Bible actually say that women can't be ministers? I can't recall such a statement, but it might be there. And if you are going to say that this discussion should only be about religions that take every word of the Bible as law without interpretation, then I think we run the risk of eliminating most branches of Christianity. Catholicism would certainly be eliminated from the discussion, and ironically that's the group that is most famous for not allowing women to be priests. It seems to me that followers of Jesus who do not give up all their material goods would also be eliminated from the discussion. So far as Islam is concerned, yes that religion is known for marginalizing women, but not all sects of Islam are the same on this subject. In fact, there is a great range.

But the real question you have for me is whether I think that someone who is sexist but acts according to non-discrimination laws is the same as someone who is not sexist. No, I don't. First, you can act sexist without breaking the law. But even if you are asking whether someone who is sexist but doesn't act sexist is the same as someone who isn't sexist, I'd still answer no. Really, though, this is beside the point. The point is that if a person is sexist at their core, you can't necessarily do anything about it. You can change their behavior, but you can't argue them out of their emotions. Fortunately, if you can change their minds their emotions may follow. And if you can get them to change their behavior, their children are less likely to be sexist and the problem is taken care of in a generation.

You reiterate your point that, "The point of my original and subsequent essays was to prove that belief in specific religion does NOT stand up to logical dissection and is therefore based on faith; and that this faith is NOT intelligent." Yes, I understood this to be your point. Where I think you are incorrect is that you do not draw a distinction between "not rational" and "not intelligent." My son's love for his imaginary friend is not rational, but I wouldn't say that makes him unintelligent. However, if he started trying to use science to prove that his imaginary friend existed and refused to examine scientific evidence to the contrary, that (depending on the specifics) might be evidence of unintelligence. However, it might also be a sign that there are emotional issues disrupting the logical processes in an otherwise intelligent individual.

Now we come to our big disagreement. You say, "The point of these essays have been to scrutinize the intelligence of those that believe in specific religions, and thus we must ONLY look at their logical arguments. These arguments are the only ones that we as fellow people can examine, and that have the chance to sway us. To look at any of the three main reasons for choosing religion that you have mentioned inn another argument would be straying beyond the point." I think you are unintentionally constructing a straw man here. You say that we can only examine the intelligence of people who have logical arguments for their religion, and then you seem to apply the results of that examination to all religious people. You also seem to only want to consider logical arguments that are compelling to outsiders; that is, ones that are intended to convert people to a specific religion. The problem is that there are plenty of people who are religious without having been swayed by a logical argument, or who are religious for personal reasons that are not compelling to others.

You say that looking at non-logic-based reasons for choosing religion is beyond the point, but these reasons are my point. I'm saying that even if you can prove that everyone who attempts to use logic to prove religion is unintelligent, you can't use that to prove that all religious people are unintelligent. I feel that this would be akin to an argument in which someone said, "There is no logical reason for humans to be vegetarians, therefore someone who is a vegetarian because eating meat makes him sad is unintelligent." (Not that I think it's necessarily illogical to be vegetarian, but I think you see what I mean.)

You disagree with my statement that emotional reasons for faith are impossible to refute. If someone says, "I believe in God because I can feel his love all around me," I think you're going to have a heck of a time refuting that belief. At best, you could argue that the feeling is all in the person's head and meaningless, but then you get into the problem (one that theists love to bring up, by the way) that love can be refuted the same way. You can, of course, point out that the feeling isn't sufficient proof of God's existence, but in a way that's just defining faith.

Your example of Galileo is an excellent one. Let's look at this priest who takes the earth's flatness as a matter of absolute faith. This example is a little unanalogous to the belief in god because it can be tested, but I think it works for our purposes here. Assuming that the priest is able to understand Galileo's argument, should that argument have changed the priest's feelings? I say, not necessarily. The argument should at least have shown the priest that an intelligent person can have a difference of belief on this matter and made him realize that his own belief that the planet is flat is based on faith alone and is therefore not compelling. So even though logic might change the way the priest acts in regard to his belief, it can't necessarily change an ingrained emotion. The priest may feel "in his heart" that the earth is flat to the end of his days.

Where we get into trouble is when someone sends someone off to be executed based on a belief such as this. Because faith-based belief isn't compelling, it can't be the basis for punishing those who do not hold it.

Continuing, you ask, "If I claim that I have unerring faith that religious nuts are idiots, would you refute this, or claim it irrefutable because it is my feeling?" I would say that I disagree with you and I would try and show you that you should not act on these feelings because they may not reflect reality. However, I can think of no argument against how you feel if your feeling is purely emotional. Similarly, if you are afraid of moths I might argue that your fear is irrational and I might try and help you overcome that fear, but there are no words I can say to convince you that you are not afraid of moths.

To clarify my position, I am not saying that something someone has faith in should be treated as true, or that faith is any kind of proof for anything. I am just saying that we need to draw a line between faith and science/rationalism and keep ideas on their correct "side of the fence." I also believe that the vast majority of things in the world fall outside the realm of faith, and that those that belong in the realm of faith are good for comforting individuals and that's about it (atheist bias showing here).

You say that it is pointless to argue with those who accept no logical argument. Entertainment value aside, I agree. But then, I would never get into an argument in which I tried to use logic to counteract faith. The fact is, though, that almost nobody who approaches me to argue religion does so on the basis of faith. They usually want to argue using science or logic, and because I am fairly knowledgeable about this issue, they are pretty much doomed to failure. But the reason they are doomed is that they are not making statements of faith, but statements of science and logic. Those I can argue against.

You say that if someone won't listen to reason, "that makes them stupid, not justified." I know I say this a lot, but I think it's important to remember (particularly since some of the concepts here are pretty hairy) that someone can disagree with -- or just plain not understand -- an argument and not be stupid. They can just be ignorant or unable to deal with the implications of the argument.

You're right that faith isn't a grand, romantic thing. I'd say it's something we need to minimize, as your Galileo example illustrates. You're also right that it's not an "irrefutable matter of personal choice" -- if it were a choice, then the reasons for that choice could be argued with. I have often had theists tell me that I will see the rightness of religion if I'll "just believe" in Jesus. Well, I can't. I can't turn on an emotional belief in Jesus any more than a religious person can turn it off. Emotions aren't light switches.

By the way, I was raised religious, and although I am much happier now that I'm free of the baggage, I can still sort of feel the remnants of my upbringing rattling around in my head sometimes. I don't feel the need for religion anymore, but I do remember what it felt like and I remember how long it took to get rid of. I also find it very interesting to watch how my son behaves, since he is the first generation in my family who is atheist from birth. His thinking is, interestingly, much more like yours in that he doesn't understand how intelligent people can believe in religion (or Santa Claus, for that matter). I'm not trying to imply that your thinking is "child like" or anything like that (because it isn't) -- it's just interesting to me.

Now, where were we.

I think your statement that faith, "is simply a childlike refusal to accept the possibility of your incorrectness, or an immovable belief in the correctness of your instinct" does not apply to everyone. Certainly it applies to the creationist who has to go to greater and greater lengths to distort the insurmountable scientific evidence that their beliefs are incorrect. But I don't think it applies to someone who can't help but feel that God exists, particularly if that person admits that they might be wrong.

Regarding my Matrix analogy and faith: I think there are plenty of religious people who have faith because it makes sense to them and is consistent with the world as they perceive it. There are also plenty of religious people who have faith and try to rationalize the world as they see it to fit their faith. It's these latter people I think you should be concentrating your disdain on, since they are the ones crossing the faith/science line.

I disagree with your statement that a racist person's knee-jerk reactions last only so long as they think their parents infallible. Emotional development is much more complex than that, and I have met people who have to fight very hard to get past prejudices they were raised with. Can a person's feelings change in the face of reason? Sure. But they may not, and even if they do, it can take a long time. I think you are incorrect when you say that once someone knows intellectually that racism is wrong their feelings change. Intellect and feelings are not always in sync -- there are plenty of people who stay in relationships because they need them emotionally long after any reasonable person would have left.

You say that you would be surprised to find a person who knows that religion is illogical but still believes in God because of feelings. I have known many such people (this may be a difference in experience due to our different cultures). Most of these people eventually stopped feeling the need for a deity, but it took time. I would not call these people unintelligent just because their emotions didn't agree with their intellect.

You say, "If a person is a Christian, and believes that women have no place in the ministry and they will go to Hell if they attempt to, then how is it possible to continue their life unnbiased?" I don't know if there is a religion that has this set of beliefs. For example, Catholics don't allow women to be priests, but they also believe that you don't have to be a Catholic to avoid going to Hell, so a woman who preached would not be accepted as official by the church, but she wouldn't necessarily be damned. It's also important to ask whether a church in which only men can be ministers is biased against women. In some cases (in fact, the majority of them in my experience), they are. But it is possible to have a religion that divides roles by gender but does not imply that one gender is better than the other.

I agree that religion will impact someone's thinking. But I think it is possible that an intelligent religious person can live an examined life within the context of their religion. Such a person would know what parts of their beliefs they have because of faith and what parts are based on reason, and act accordingly. If their faith tells them that they can't do work on Saturday, then they don't do work (so far as their religion defines it) on Saturday, but they also don't try to use the law to force those with differing beliefs to take Saturday off because they realize that their beliefs aren't compelling.

Looking at your extreme example: "if you believed you were going to Hell if you didn't destroy sinners, how could you continue to act rationally?" Well, to be brutal, the rational thing to do in this situation is to destroy sinners. But if a person with this belief knows that it's based on faith, then that person realizes that others with different religions could have the same belief and that he might be one of the sinners targeted. Thinking like this has caused religions to change over the centuries, and although it hasn't stopped people from being religious, it has changed how they are religious.

You say it is a rare religious person who does not strive to act according to their scriptures. I'm going to be really, really cynical here and say that it is far more common in the U.S. for people to look to their scriptures for justification for their actions than to look to these books for inspiration. These people are not even being intellectually consistent within their own religions, and that's just tragic.

You mention avoiding arguments with people who need religion for emotional stability. The problem is, from my perspective, that most religious people fall into this category, and most of them aren't interested in arguing with us, either. At least not in a worthwhile way.

You make some qualifiers on your earlier generalization. I agree that you can't judge someone stupid until you know that they have the tools to examine their own beliefs. At least in the U.S., these tools are sorely lacking. The educational system is set up to disseminate facts for memorization and does a very bad job of teaching people to think critically. And even when critical thinking is present, people here are not in the habit of applying it liberally to all areas of their lives. It's tragic, really.

I also agree that the person must have access to knowledge and logical arguments before being judged unintelligent. Again, this is not nearly as common as we might hope. There are plenty of arguments for and against religion out there, but the vast majority of them that I run into in daily life (outside of when I'm seeking such things) are very weak on both sides of the issue. Most religious people only hear atheistic arguments from other religious people, so these arguments are presented incorrectly or in a biased way. Other than that, all they hear from atheists are protests over religion-based laws and discrimination, which may actually make them resistant to atheism.

I'd still hesitate to blanketly say that anyone who is religious and meets these qualifiers is unintelligent until I heard what they had to say. I would be very surprised, however, if they had extreme religious beliefs or if they tried to say that their religion was based on reason alone.

To your qualifiers I'd add that the person must not have any emotional issues that are preventing them from applying logic and reason to the subject of religion. There are people who feel that they need religion just to get through the day, and they will become very defensive in the face of arguments for atheism just as a starving man would fight if you tried to take his bread away. These emotional issues need to be dealt with before we start assessing intelligence.

As an aside to all this, I want to point out that there are plenty of atheists in my neck of the woods who are atheists for irrational reasons. I know people who are atheists because they had a bad experience in church or they are mad a their parents for taking them to Sunday school. I have met atheists who condemn or disdain religious people as a group without trying to look at the subject rationally as you do. I have met atheists who don't just think that the Bible isn't holy, but actively hate it to the point that they refuse to recognize it as a cultural source or an important historical document. I'd say that these people are just as bad as religious people who do not examine their beliefs rationally. They aren't doing anyone but themselves any good.

I, too, have read more about religion -- and read more religious texts -- since becoming an atheist than I ever did when I was religious. I wish more religious people took this kind of interest in their beliefs. I think we would all be better for it.

Yes, it's true that there is a wide variety of belief in Christianity. Catholics believe in the Bible, but it is understood that some parts of scripture are spiritually true if not literally true. So, for example, the creation story was written for people who did not have a lot of scientific knowledge and therefore is not to be taken literally as science. Interestingly, it looks like the Catholic church has also taken a narrower view of miracles and such things in recent decades. They still say such things occur, but they are not quick to call something a miracle. As religions go, they're fairly progressive and non-judgmental. By the way, there are some Protestant groups who do not consider Catholics to be Christians.

Regarding your statement that anyone who knows the Catholic Church's past and still follows it is an idiot, I'd say in Catholicism's defense that at least the Church is willing to admit its mistakes (albeit slowly). Also, the Vatican II council some decades back made sweeping changes to the church, so it is a very different institution than it was a century ago. The church also has a lot of ceremony and history that some people find attractive.

One last word about Catholicism: so far as I have seen, this is also the religion in which the largest percentage of followers specifically do not follow certain rules of their religion. For example, Catholicism condemns birth control, but use of birth control by Catholics is rampant.

You ask at what point did a Christian group start claiming that parts of the Bible were untrue. There has been disagreement since almost the beginning. There was disagreement about what books belong in the Bible (Catholics and Protestants still don't agree). In the fifth century (if I recall) there was quite a famous controversy over the nature of Jesus. Today, there's still disagreement among Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish beliefs about what the Ten Commandments are. So, to sum up, if you look at the history of the Bible -- and at all the gospels and other religious texts that were written but didn't make it into the official book -- you can see that disagreement about what is holy word goes right back to the beginning of Christianity.

Do Creationists think we made up dinosaurs? No, they think dinosaurs were created along with everything else and went extinct.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled discussion.

I think we're getting very close to agreement on how to look at people who are religious because of emotional imperative. You say that when a person has access to the facts but still goes with their emotions they are at least ignorant, if not unintelligent. I still say that there are many people whose emotions are so strong on this subject that they effectively are unable to use the information that you would have them understand. It would actually do them emotional harm to disbelieve because they have so much mentally invested in theism. Atheist bias time: I feel that these people use religion as a crutch, which, if pulled away, would cause them to fall. They could probably get back up again, but most of them aren't up to taking the risk. There is also a certain segment of the population that is intelligent but that is either not intelligent enough to see the weight of atheistic arguments or does not find them sufficient (particularly in the area of the origin of the universe).

You are right that there is a danger of believing bad things or being led to immoral behavior once you put your trust in a religious organization. This is where, as I've said before, religious people have far less excuse for not behaving rationally.

By the way, there is disagreement about whether the Bible says that owning slaves should be legal (at least in the new testament). These days, most people would say it does not.

You say that you would have little quibble with someone who bases their religious belief on an immovable feeling and that you might not even consider such a person religious. We're very close to agreement here. The big difference is that I think that most religious people fall into this category. The problem is, they don't realize or won't admit that they fall into it. I think we need to educate people so that everyone in this camp knows that they are in it and stops trying to say that they are religious for scientific or rational reasons. That will be a big step forward for everyone.

Another big difference remains our definition of faith. I consider belief due to emotional need to be faith. You mention other flavors of faith -- faith in one's own feelings, for example -- that are irrational. I would agree, but then I consider all faith to be irrational, even when it's pragmatic. I also don't see faith in post-life justice to be any more irrational than faith in the existence of a deity. It's something some people need emotionally so that they can face an unjust world.

Let's look at the example of someone who has faith in the correctness of their feelings and feels that someone in their parking place deserves to die. If that person recognizes the source of their faith (emotion), then they realize that the source is not compelling, and although they may be convinced that the mal-parker deserves death, they will know that they are not justified in killing that person themselves. Once again, the problem isn't the emotion that leads to faith, it's not recognizing that faith is based on emotion.

You say, "believing in God because the Pope tells me to is not scientific but I hope still possible to refute." Small quibble here -- you can probably prove that the Pope's word isn't sufficient for belief in God, but I don't think you can prove there is no deity. At best you might be able to prove that if there is a deity it does or does not have certain qualities.

You say, "But maybe your point is this: it is okay to be irrational as long as you recognize this irrationality, and show that you recognize it by changing your actions." Exactly! My only caveat would be that one should strive for as little irrationality in life as possible.

I agree that the person who lets irrationality win in the face of obvious evidence might be called an "idiot." I disagree that introducing the concept of faith to explain their stance makes someone an idiot (since that is what I'm doing <G>), but I will say that it is foolish to use faith to justify a religious stance. That is, to use faith as proof, to treat it as compelling, or (bias showing big time) even to say that it is something everyone should have.

Now we get to the big question: how do we determine which religious people are unintelligent. We're getting into "lest you be judged" territory here, but what the heck <G>.

I don't think that there is any rule that is going to apply to everyone. However, you may have seen in my previous posts that I have two rules for acceptable philosophy, and I would say that anyone who disobeys these rules runs a serious risk of being called unintelligent.

The first rule is that your beliefs can't contradict themselves. I see religious people contradict themselves all the time. For example, when a religious person says that killing a baby is bad, and God would never allow an innocent to come to harm, but when God kills a baby (say, in a natural disaster that was sent to punish sinners), it's not bad (or it's actively good). There are tons of examples like these.

The second rule is that you can't blame others for thinking in the same way you do. If I believe in God because I have a strong emotional need, I can't blame you for believing in Allah because you have a strong emotional need. Again, examples of violations of this rule are numerous.

Violators of these two rules include an enormous number of people. I hesitate to call anyone an idiot because idiocy implies an inability to learn, but people whose philosophy doesn't at least meet these two criteria certainly have their work cut out for them if they want ot convince me that their beliefs make any sense.