There seems to be this idea shared by an unfortunate number of atheists, that anyone who believes in God is automatically less intelligent than anyone who doesn't. This idea is perpetuated by ridiculously unfunny comedians, like Jimmy Carr and this guy I just discovered today, Jim Jefferies, who has this to say:
"Here's the thing about people who believe in God: they're idiots. There's no dancing around it, you're a borderline fucking mentalist. You're an idiot. You're like a thirteen year old who still believes in Santa. Fuck you."
Wow.
Here's the thing: negatively caricaturing a group including billions of people, and reducing their reasons for holding a certain opinion to "they're idiots", is always bad. It is phenomenally unscientific, unless he's actually performed IQ tests on a sizable sample of theists, which somehow doubt. It incites tribalism, by riling atheists up against theists for no good reason. It denies the need to imagine other people complexly. And above all, it denies the fact that many theists have logical reasons to believe in a God or deity. Because who cares about the truth, when we can reassure ourselves about our position by dismissing the opposite view with a few words?
So all this is bad, and what's more, it's the kind of thing which non-religious types criticise religious types for doing all the time. But so many otherwise rationally-thinking people are going along with it; they are lampooning the intellectual worth of their fellow humans, and they are refusing to think deeply about the issues which they claim to have the better understanding of, and they feel entitled in doing so.
The explosion in the popularity of atheism that has occurred with the release of books like The God Delusion, God is Not Great, etc, has caused a great many viewpoints to be rationally challenged when before they were just accepted. And that's fantastic. But for some, it's having the opposite effect, by providing atheists with a kind of zealous entitlement to mock and deride theists and caricature them with their own unfounded assumptions. It's also making people have an intellectual reverence for jackass comedians who want to be provocative for the sake of it, when in fact nothing they're saying nothing particularly intelligent at all.
I mean, are we seriously supposed to accept that someone who uses the word "mentalist" to refer to mentally ill people is automatically more intelligent that Issac Newton, Blaise Pascal, Thomas Aquinas etc, simply because he has rejected the idea of God?
So, no, Mr. Jefferies, religious people are not just "idiots". Some of them are, of course, just as some atheists are. But many of them are more intelligent than either you or me.
Truth is better than an illusion, no matter how comforting the illusion is. This goes for the illusion that everyone who disagrees with you is an idiot as much as for any other.
"Here's the thing about people who believe in God: they're idiots. There's no dancing around it, you're a borderline fucking mentalist. You're an idiot. You're like a thirteen year old who still believes in Santa. Fuck you."
Wow.
Here's the thing: negatively caricaturing a group including billions of people, and reducing their reasons for holding a certain opinion to "they're idiots", is always bad. It is phenomenally unscientific, unless he's actually performed IQ tests on a sizable sample of theists, which somehow doubt. It incites tribalism, by riling atheists up against theists for no good reason. It denies the need to imagine other people complexly. And above all, it denies the fact that many theists have logical reasons to believe in a God or deity. Because who cares about the truth, when we can reassure ourselves about our position by dismissing the opposite view with a few words?
So all this is bad, and what's more, it's the kind of thing which non-religious types criticise religious types for doing all the time. But so many otherwise rationally-thinking people are going along with it; they are lampooning the intellectual worth of their fellow humans, and they are refusing to think deeply about the issues which they claim to have the better understanding of, and they feel entitled in doing so.
The explosion in the popularity of atheism that has occurred with the release of books like The God Delusion, God is Not Great, etc, has caused a great many viewpoints to be rationally challenged when before they were just accepted. And that's fantastic. But for some, it's having the opposite effect, by providing atheists with a kind of zealous entitlement to mock and deride theists and caricature them with their own unfounded assumptions. It's also making people have an intellectual reverence for jackass comedians who want to be provocative for the sake of it, when in fact nothing they're saying nothing particularly intelligent at all.
I mean, are we seriously supposed to accept that someone who uses the word "mentalist" to refer to mentally ill people is automatically more intelligent that Issac Newton, Blaise Pascal, Thomas Aquinas etc, simply because he has rejected the idea of God?
So, no, Mr. Jefferies, religious people are not just "idiots". Some of them are, of course, just as some atheists are. But many of them are more intelligent than either you or me.
Truth is better than an illusion, no matter how comforting the illusion is. This goes for the illusion that everyone who disagrees with you is an idiot as much as for any other.
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