2 questions for atheists

**Karol Klačansky** · 11-24-2019, 04:44 PM

Originally Posted by JamesBond007

I tried my best not to personally attack you (I am still not 100% certain I actually did) but your question about rocks and dust was mentally retarded. It showed you had no idea what you were talking about from the beginning :

A meta-analysis of 63 studies showed a significant negative association between intelligence and religiosity. The association was stronger for college students and the general population than for participants younger than college age; it was also stronger for religious beliefs than religious behavior. For college students and the general population, means of weighted and unweighted correlations between intelligence and the strength of religious beliefs ranged from −.20 to −.25 (mean r=−.24). Three possible interpretations were discussed. First, intelligent people are less likely to conform and, thus, are more likely to resist religious dogma. Second, intelligent people tend to adopt an analytic (as opposed to intuitive) thinking style, which has been shown to undermine religious beliefs. Third, several functions of religiosity, including compensatory control, self-regulation, self-enhancement, and secure attachment, are also conferred by intelligence. Intelligent people may therefore have less need for religious beliefs and practices.

http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-conte...planations.pdf

if you knew anything about statistics you would know how bs this study is, no serious academic would ever cite such a garbage study.
http://www.randalolson.com/2014/08/2...arter-atheist/

**Aldaris** · 11-24-2019, 05:27 PM

As for your first question. Just assuming that that's what happened would be silly. Yeah, except that's not what biochemists and molecular biologists are doing. How much do you know about their fields in the first place, if you think you're in the position to dispute their paradigm? Go claim your Nobel prize, boy. Or better yet, take a textbook and read something about it. Apparently, it was extremely useful for ancestors of animals to gather and process the data from their environment. What a surprise. Slowly evolving some proto-nervous system is an expected outcome because of that. Consciousness itself is ultimately nothing special, just this proces taken into perfection.

Life strives hard to keep on living because the life that didn't (or didn't do it effectively) was outcompeted by the life that did, for obvious reasons - genes that made you good in striving to keep on living tend to be the ones that get passed. And as there are limited resources, it's usually done on someone else's expense. There is no deeper will, to try hard is just a practical advantage, ultimately on the level of genes. As for conscious beings like us - we have this 'striving' thingy internalized, it's no longer handled by instincts or some automatic process which weeded the ineffective ones out.