Looks about right to me.

I concur…

haha…very true…
nicely made.

So religion and stupidity are two different things? The can be religion without stupidity? It’s only when religion and stupidity meet that we have a problem = fundamentalism? Religion in itself is then completely “fine”, free of stupidity? I definitely do not concur.

@Nebol

What about Buddhists? They study themselves and others incessantly in order to improve their essence and the world as a whole. What of Tribal religions we’ve never encountered?

Perhaps it should read ‘Ignorance’ in place of ‘Stupidity’?

And where exactly does intolerance fit into this? Or is it to be assumed that the entire motive of this diagram rests in a stupor of intolerance and bias.

p.s.

The Republican party is dead, it died right after the Democratic party was overcome by socialist and mindless conspiracy theorists.

Buddhism *was* a philosophy, it was elevated to a religion to support the caste system that was in place in India at the time by the political elite, as a method of suppressing the ignorant and superstitious.

Hey Nebol…I think you’re confusing stupidity with ignorance. It does depend what you mean by these terms – you can’t just hurl them out and hope, simply by calling religious people stupid, that (a) you’re intrinsically correct, or (b) you’ll get all us atheists going ‘woo hoo’ etc.

What is stupid is unquestioning adherence to the dicta of any structure, whether it’s religious or – in some cases – atheistic. I’m against Dawkins on this one I’m afraid; when atheists become too contemptuous of the thoughts of anybody who might simply believe in something beyond life (despite the fact that I do not believe in any such mythoconstruct) then you’re simply becoming a religion, which requires unquestioning belief, personality cults, and pursuit and attack of anyone who questions the word of the Great One (Dawkins). Dawkins sadly, has clearly let this go to his head a bit. Which in itself is useful – you can see how easily rabid followers, a set text (The God Delusion), disciples (Hitchens et al) and a target can make a religion happen, without even noticing it.

There are now, and have been all through history, plenty of enlightened people who happened to believe in a god, or gods. Were they simply all stupid? Of course, it occurs to many of those people that God/gods might not be a good idea – hence the sub rosa atheism of many in the Renaissance and the clear paganism of supposedly Christian people such as Hawksmoor, etc. Many of the Renaissance Humanists at least examined the root of their faiths. But a roll call of all the brilliant people who believed in a god of some sort would run on for hundreds of pages – does their faith implicitly make them idiots? That seems…how should I put it…amazingly stupid and ignorant as a position to take.

Perhaps we don’t mean that. Perhaps it’s simply that in the age of accepted science, we’re saying that anyone who believes is stupid. Well, that’s fine – but firstly, what about all the (again) brilliant people in our current age who still believe. It’s ignorant, and stupid, simply to call them stupid. It reflects a fear, an exclusionary tendency, and a need to persecute those who do not share our enlightenment – and to conjoin others to mock and deride them – which is surely what we distrust and abhore in organised, persecuting and blinkered religious groups.

Religion is a perfectly reasonable explanation of the world in the absence of any clearer mode of analysis. It helps to form groups and concrete societies. It’s like any human grouping; it’s capable of terrible things. What we hate so much, what we fear as secular people, is the unquestioning nature of people’s belief, and their willingness to sacrifice their own judgement and responsibility as humans. But that’s about the structure, the organisation, and the application of religion – not belief itself. So attacking it merely because it’s stupid is…stupid.

The diagram, however, is fab.

Thanks, Quiet – a sane, balanced, sensible comment. Bet you get some stroppy posts from the Fundamentalist Dawkinistas, though.

Hey Quiet,
I think that you have misconstrued the position of people who agree with (not “follow”) Dawkins. My understanding is that his main argument is that less respect should be given given to religious *ideas* not that less respect be given to religious people. I don’t think that having religious beliefs disqualifies someone from being intelligent or thoughtful, especially in areas other than religion, but this does not mean I should respect religious beliefs, or refrain from debating them openly. Anyway, I love the graph, it seems pretty accurate the way it is.

I LOVE the guys who argue “what about all the people that believe?” or “80% of people believe, they can’t all be wrong.”

Apparently the Earth used to be flat, since most people believed it. And insanity was the result of possession. The god people don’t get it: reality isn’t something that you vote on.

As to Quiet’s contention that religion is acceptable because it creates groups and cements social relations: is he kidding us? Whether there is a god or not is irrelevant so long as good comes of it? WOW. Didn’t Nazism do the same thing for Germany? It created groups, and solidified social relationships. It is ridiculous to say that Nazism is acceptable because it achieves social goals. Ditto religion.

Let me take on a meta-argument. I just don’t see that discussing serious things with god people serves any purpose. They neither embrace knowledge, nor understand logic. They live in the information age, want all the benefits of a modern society, yet desire simple, bronze-age answers to their deepest questions. What’s the point of talking to them? I’m not even sure that they understand the words we use when we speak to them.

Just give them a lollipop, pat them on their heads, and send them on their way with a smile.

I do agree with Nebol. Wise enough. I suppose stupidity is a set where religion is a subset of it. And to Ian. You are right. There have been lots of intelligent, or maybe geniuses all over the world and throughout the history. Let me tell you something. I think stupidity is conditionally independent from being a genius. Galois such a genius that according to many if he lived for 20 years more, the science of mathematics would be far more improved. But he died at his 20s for dwelling sb over the honor of a girl. Every one is stupid. Me in wasting my time and not knowing what I want, Galois in loosing his life and almost everybody I know in believing in religion.
I can not deny that stupidity brings calmness and relaxation. The less you know, the less you suffer.

I am an atheist and have been one for the biggest part of my life, but i really find this atheism hype extremely immature and up noxious. I am tired of you people transforming atheism into a movement. This really contradicts the idea of atheism.

Up noxious.

This string constitutes further evidence of my hypothesis that Atheism is on it’s way to becoming a religion. It’s faith-based. Belief in the absense of proof is faith, regardless of what you believe. There is the same amount of hard proof for both the existence & non-existence of a god, none. So, Atheism is a faith.
Like any good faith-based movement, Atheism is acquiring iconic leaders who are attracting some number of followers who are superficially latching onto those aspects that support their own prejudices without a thorough examination of the belief system. (A la Mr./Ms. Garrison) That has given us any number of Atheists who sound every bit as foolish as any bible thumper.
Time to grow some and admit there is only one answer that can be given to the question “Is there a god?” that does not rely on faith. The problem with that answer is that it consists of the three most terrifying words in the English language: “I don’t know”.

I think Lamont’s comment misses the point. Many people identify as both atheists and agnostics; the boundary between the two concepts is more semantic than to do with the real world. I’ve never heard of any atheist who thinks they, or we collectively, know all there is to know about the nature of the universe. The only thing that really unites us is the sureness that the ancient texts don’t represent our best understanding of the world. Atheists can have faith … there’s nothing preventing them from having “a spiritual experience” if they want to; we just don’t base our idea of the laws of physics on these experiences.

fuck this shit, ur fuckin stupid

u need to get a life and get over ur stupid selfishness and lose that huge ass head for creating this piece of shit website

“that huge ass head”

At least it’s big enough to understand the Bible is a piece of shit, even compared to contemporary writing.

How very short-sighted. Calling religion stupidity (as near as makes no difference in this diagram) is not what
I would expect from an intelligent person (and atheists claim to be intelligent, don’t they?). This reminds me of aggressive propaganda used by religions to convert ‘heathens’. Or do you simply feel the need to justify your beliefs? Do you need a bunch of people to tell you how clever and superior you are? Pathetic. I am an atheist as
well, and it pains me to see such nonsense spread.

Spot on. To all you haters out there, if you think that belief in any religion that involves sky-dwelling ego maniacs and uses a book as the word of “god” isn’t stupid, then you fall into that grouping as well.

The Religious are insane and nothing they say should ever be considered as a rational thought as through their own admission of being religious are unable to separate fact from fiction. Religion and the mindless fools that follow it are truly a plague upon the entire human race and have truly been the most awesome and devastating weapon of mass destruction this planet has ever seen. There has been no Political Leader, Army, Bomb, or Virus that has even come close to the sheer death toll caused by Religion. As a matter of FACT the only thing that has ever topped the deaths of Religion was the six mile wide meteorite that slammed into the earth killing everything on it some 65 million years ago, thats it, nothing else has ever come close.

Unlike other mental illnesses, Religion mimics that of a viral infection, as it, if left unchecked will spread like wildfire infecting everything uneducated in its path. See, It’s very difficult to convince an educated person that there is an invisible man living in the clouds, this is why children are injected with Religion at a young age. Their innosense and lack of knowledge of how the world works leaves them defenceless against the attacks of Religious infection often resulting in a devastating lifelong sickness that leaves the infected indoctrinated with a mindset that has taught them to reject fact in favor of fiction. This way the infected never becomes educated and loses faith as it always rejects anything thats logical as an attack upon their God by some unseen demon in the night. That person then grows up, had children of their own and looks forwards to infecting their children with the sickness as well.

Religion and those who follow it must be stopped, at any cost.

@Matt-Cas
There are very few socialists in the Democratic party; that’s just what Fox Noize has programmed you to believe. And there are mindless conspiracy theorists in the Democratic party? Oh please; as long as Glenn Beck, Michelle Bachmann and Rush Limbaugh exist, the warped pseudo-stupid mantle of “willing to believe anything” is a right-wing prerequisite.

“Belief in the absense (sic) of proof is faith”

Congratulations! You fail the internets! I guess it goes like this: there’s nothing to make me believe that giant squids fly through the ionosphere at supersonic speeds. Since there’s no proof either way, you’re a crackpot for believing it, but you’re also a crackpot for not believing. That makes good sense…

Everything liberals say they are, they in fact are not. They are not open minded. They are not tolerant. They are certainly not enlightened. Put circles around extremely hateful, racist, bigoted, arrogant, and ignorant, and the overlap will be liberal.

Stupidity and religion are the same thing, delusional people thinking that there is some kind of invisible god living in the sky… This is why the world is such a screwed up place!

Unfortunately, there’s not much difference between the intelligence of atheists and religious people. This comment section proves that beyond a doubt.
Lots of Christians, Muslims and such are extremely intelligent. They just haven’t been shown proof there isn’t a god out there. Lots of atheists are very smart and have become so convinced that there isn’t a god that they stop rationally thinking about it. And unfortunately the smart people are too smart to leave comments on boards like this, where they know nobody will pay any attention except to attack it.
The world isn’t screwed up because of religion, and it isn’t screwed up because of a lack of religion.
To Tomb: it isn’t that not believing is there makes you a crackpot, it’s that believing it isn’t there does. It’s a fine distinction, but the difference is: if you don’t believe it’s there, then if somebody presents you with proof, you’ll then believe it’s there. If you believe it isn’t there, then you won’t acknowledge any evidence, you won’t listen to explanations, you don’t want to hear it. That’s the kind of position serious atheists take: it isn’t that they don’t believe in god, it’s that they have a strong belief that god does not, cannot exist, and if you try to say otherwise, they’ll ostracize and ignore you for threatening their beliefs.
Know what’s caused more deaths than religion has? Greed. Also, anger. Mostly born of greed. And envy, also usually born of greed. Also accidents, and every known force of nature.
Science can’t answer deep questions, like why we’re here or where the first matter came from. So some people come up with a belief that god made the world, just like some scientists come up with a belief that…well, there currently isn’t a believable explanation. The big bang explains nothing, honestly. It isn’t that faith and science are incompatible. Is it incompatible or incompatable? I can’t remember right now. Anyway, there are questions to which the most sensible answer is a god. And yes, there are a lot of religious people who try to apply outdated religious answers to questions with modern answers, but not the majority. See, there’s no possible scientific explanation for a meaning of life. According to pure data all existence is utterly meaningless. Therefore we need something else to give it meaning. Some say “Why can’t we just agree that the meaning of life is to help each other?” or “To make the world a better place?” or whatever, but all those ideals are utterly meaningless until you find some irrational concept like god to tie it together. So religion is a good source for a purpose in life. And atheism is becoming another religion, in that it gives people an alternative purpose in life: to destroy religious people’s purpose in life. Which seems kind of sick and pathetic to me, but whatever. Cheerful nihilist over here. I’m cool with whatever you want to value.
Somebody up there disputed Quiet’s rather well-reasoned comment by likening it to saying that since people used to believe the earth was flat it must be true. First off, I hate when people say that. Most people never believed the earth was flat. That’s just a popular story. It was well-known even among the common people two, three thousand years ago that the earth was spherical. More importantly, he didn’t say that because lots of smart people believed in gods there has to be a god. He said that because smart people believed in gods, it’s obvious that smart people CAN believe in gods. See, I’m betting that there is not one person reading this comment thread who is as smart as, say, Isaac Newton was. Or even close. But he believed strongly in the existence of God. He looked for answers in this world because he thought he would learn more about his god by studying His work, which is a commendable life’s goal, I’d say. He discovered a lot of things, but nothing that made him decide there was no god. Does that mean that there is a god? No. But it means you don’t have to be an idiot to keep your mind open to the possibility there could be.
Me? I must be proof that faith = stupid, because in spite of my Wonderlic score of 44 and IQ of 149, because of my (admittedly weak) faith in people’s ability to listen to reason, I’m getting involved in this debate. Oh well.
Try not to flame me too much for this. Please remember that neither my mother, my weight, nor my sexual orientation is significant to this topic.

Dear god that was a long comment.

Isaac Newton had serious doubts about your god before he died, it was told by his lifetime friend alexander pope in his biography.I like the way people ramble on about faith as if it was something that can be quantified. with apologies to voltaire “I believe therefore its true”.we could discuss this forever, the devout will not change ,it has been that way for thousands of years with all the different gods and dieties and this god has just stuck around a bit longer.

well islam and politics didn’t create any sort of “dark age”

in fact quite the frikin opposite!

http://www.1001inventions.com/