There's no nice way to say this, and I've referred to it all over this site: I think people who surrender their intellect, logic, reason, and common sense in favor of such fairy tales as religion are unfortunate examples of how humans, no matter how our advanced brains have evolved, will ignore basic common sense when it comes to religion. Even people who are otherwise wonderfully intelligent will unquestioningly abandon common sense in favor of a position that exhibits nothing short of uncommon nonsense.

Offending the Xians. Naturally, I've come under fire by some fundamentalist Xians who are absolutely offended that I have such a low opinion of their faith. I'm not sure why this is, since their opinion of my Atheism is just as low. Sure, they may respect my right to have that belief, just as I respect theirs... but the ones who are really offended have the same feelings about my Atheism as I do about their Xianity. It does always seem, however, that they are more focused on despising me as a person because of my Atheism as opposed to despising my Atheism as an ideal.

My Position
I've received plenty of nasty emails from people who are insulted that I think Xians are all stupid. I even received an email from an Atheist who was offended! That individual said it was ignorant of me to proclaim someone is stupid... then he proclaimed that I was undereducated. (Calling someone undereducated sounds to me like the same thing as calling someone stupid, but who was I to argue.) The part that bothered me was that ANY Atheist would write such a tirade, accusing me of making all Atheists look like ignorant, prejudiced, stupid fools. Atheists are generally the first people to respect someone else's right to express an opinion.

So if an Atheist was losing his mind, I thought perhaps I should clarify my position. This won't change his mind, and certainly won't change the minds of the angry Xians; but these people are seeing things one way and their minds are already made up. If I dedicated time to convincing individuals that they got it wrong, I'd be online, typing furiously, 24/7. But to alleviate things as easily as possible, I'm putting this article together. It will give me a quick URL to send to those people who read 5% of the site and send a nastygram email without exploring further.

So let me first make something clear: I don't think all Xians are mindless, brainless, stupid individuals. There are plenty out there who are, but I don't presume to insult them all on a personal level. I'm more interested in pointing out the uncommon nonsense position of religion as a whole, and how the adherents of religion are, as such, uncommonly nonsensical.

I don't despise Xians. Most of my friends profess to be Xians, although most of them hardly practice their proclaimed faith. I do, however, despise the religion. There have been a lot of religions over the course of human history, but few have been so ridiculously silly so as to require its adherents to completely ignore all facets of human intelligence in order to follow it.

The Bible
First things first: there is only one source of Xianity, and that is the Bible. The entirety of of the Xian cult is based on that one collection of writings; there is no other source. And the Bible is so chock full of inconsistencies, contradictions, scientific goofs, historical inaccuracies, and other ludicrous things that one can hardly believe, on close study, that anyone could possibly follow a religion that so completely doesn't hold water. Most of my professed Xian friends know far less about the Bible than I do, and those who are knowledgeable truly haven't delved much further into it than a devout Sunday school student. They usually claim "Well, I'm a Xian, but I don't go to church or read the Bible. But I believe in God."

The hypocrisy factor. The question is, how can someone who doesn't go to church or read the Bible in any way consider himself a Xian? The Bible is THE ONLY source of Xianity; it seems that reading it—in fact on a regular and repeated basis—must be the case if someone is a Xian. After all, without the Bible, there is no Xianity. Perhaps some of these so-called Xians realize the fallacies of the Bible and cannot subscribe to it. If that's the case, they simply can't be Xian.

Truly, it is nothing short of stunning to me how most of my professed Xian friends don't know how many books are in the Bible, cannot find a book right off, can't even name all of the Apostles. They certainly don't know how long Adam lived or other less obvious facts. On the surface, this may sound trivial... but since the Bible is the sole source of the Xian faith, shouldn't its adherents know it more or less inside out and upside down? This is a society in which Trekkies know everything about the entire Star Trek universe (please, don't email me correcting me that the proper term is "Trekker"; I have been a devout TrekkIE since my youth and I like the term) and every detail about every episode... but Xians can't find the Book of Acts on command or know how many Psalms there are? That seems, at the very least, hypocritical; at the worse, irresponsible and downright wrong.

Yet they persist in this belief. These people were generally all raised Xian or under a heavy Xian influence (hard not to in this Xian dominated society). Even if they never went to church much growing up, even if they never read the Bible beyond the typical stories told the children as part of the regular brainwashing regimen of Xianity, they were immersed in it. As adults, they've spent a lifetime believing the stories, so they accept them.

The big question. How can a thinking human being who understands the fallacies of the only source of the entire religion possibly call himself a Xian? The only way to do it is to deliberately ignore the facts, deliberately ignore the illogic, and deliberately ignore one's own intelligence in favor of what is perceived as a good thing. Such a person MUST surrender his logic, reason, and intellect. That's a far stretch to justify belief in such inane fairy tales.

How Does This Compare?
Religion is one of those things that tends to be accepted by someone for one of two major reasons:

Immersion. While I don't have statistical data to prove this, most religionists appear to have grown up immersed in their religion. Think about it: most Xians grew up in Xian families, most Jews grew up in Jewish families, most Muslims in Muslim families. Even denominations support this: most Baptists grew up Baptist, most Mormons grew up Mormons, most Catholics grew up Catholic. There's no magic to this one; it's just common sense. Many people observe their religion because that's what they were exposed to growing up.

Brainwashing. I was actually going to call this "forced immersion," but I'm not a very politically correct person (as you may have guessed from this site). Then I was going to use a softer term like "conditioning," but immersion and brainwashing are both merely forms of conditioning. Anyway, call things by their right names, I say. Forced immersion is just a nervous way of saying "brainwashing." I know, it seems like a harsh term, but that's pretty much what it is. Immersion is usually when someone is exposed to a religion, but brainwashing is when someone who is resistant to religion is force-fed it until they believe it in the same way as if they'd been immersed. Maybe they get tired of arguing, or maybe they get scared to death with stories of burning in Hell and suffering eternal damnation, but they believe in it because they have been, perhaps unwillingly, exposed to it in the most forceful way.

Born Again. Some people discover it all on their own, although I'm sure it takes the help of others to make the choice. For whatever reason, the individual has found God after not ever having him or having abandoned him. This seems to be most prevalent among people whose lives have turned to dirt, such as they're in prison; and what else is there to do but read the Bible and hang on to something they perceive as positive? A lot of alcoholics and addicts go this route, but consider the insidious "Twelve Step Program" used in Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, and others. While recovering from such terrible things is admirable, it is sad that the first step of the 12-step program is to admit that you can't control the problem and that you MUST turn your life over to God. They insist "God" is an abstract term for any higher power, and that even non-believers can benefit. I'm confused as to how a non-believer can benefit from such a program when the first step is to admit that you are powerless over your problem and your life, and that you MUST turn control over to a higher power you don't believe in. At any rate, such people find goodness in the idea of religion and cling to it. (As well, the very idea of admitting you're POWERLESS is ridiculous. Any human being who cannot find the willpower to take control of his own life is shameful. Much of what Xianity, and religion in general, is orients around forgoing responsibility and focusing on mysterious spirits, thereby making life easier. But I digress.)

But what is the one thing all three types have in common? Other people.

Those who are immersed have been listening to other people telling them all the fairy tales about the Bible and all the myths about God and all the fictions about Jesus. There may be no malice intended; for families who are of a particular faith, that's just what they know... and just what their kids grow up to believe.

Those who are brainwashed may be force-fed the tenets of the religion, but they still have to listen to it. There are still people telling them this stuff.

Those who are born again don't do it on their own, either. Whether it's a 12-step program telling them that they must turn their lives over to God or an inmate picking up a Bible, someone else is feeding this to them. Just picking up a Bible seems like there isn't, but don't forget who wrote the Bible. It wasn't God. It was a lot of people. What could be worse than someone who has been mentally and/or emotionally weakened, at the bottom of a metaphorical pit in his life, needing something, anything, to make his life seem better, picking up a Bible promising how all things will be great and wonderful?

My Experiences
Most of my Xian friends are examples of immersion; they grew up with Xianity and so they claim they are Xians. This includes the following (names changed to protect the guilty):

Friend #1: "Bill" grew up in a loosely Xian house. There wasn't a lot of church-going, but the family believed. By default, he believed. Bill is an extremely intelligent individual with a logical mind (most of the time; he has moments where he espouses the most ridiculous things and will defend them to his dying breath unless you prove him wrong with multiple sources, even though sources aren't necessary due to the absolutely ludicrous nature of his occasional digressions from logic). He is prone to a keen understanding of science. However, he "believes in magic" as separate from science despite the apparent logic that magical things must have scientific explanations and are simply things for which scientific explanation has not yet been formulated. He claims he is a Xian even though he agrees the Bible is a collection of silly contradictions. He's a key example of someone who was immersed but not rigidly so; still, he believes it and even, by his own words, considers himself a Xian.

Friend #2: "Woody" grew up in a very Xian house and before age ten was clearly a prodigy when it came to numbers. He went on to college and worked a number of jobs where they only hire really smart people. Although he is willing to admit the Bible has inconsistencies, it is what he was brought up with so to him, Xianity must be right. Despite constant admissions of "Yes, that doesn't make any sense" and "Yes, Xianity was spread by those in power seeking more" and so on, he still adheres to being a Xian... even though he's one of the brightest guys I've ever met.

Friend #3: "Clara" is a fundamentalist Xian because that's what she knew growing up. She didn't even go to church too heavily, but that's what she believed. She believes in her faith so blindly that she had never even read the Bible until recently, when I pointed out an inconsistency in the book of Genesis. She asked me, "Where is that book in the Bible?" I spent a minute, amazed, watching her stumble around the Bible trying to find Genesis. I would like to imagine that any self-proclaimed Xian knew how to find the first book in the Bible, let alone know it was in the Old Testament! When I called her on this, she explained that she didn't know the Bible very well but intended to read it. This is a girl who constantly spouted "Why haven't you accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?" to me all the time (yet didn't know the Jesus story is told four different ways in the four Gospels). Yet she is a Xian? Once again, the Bible is the only source of Xianity... shouldn't people at least read it and consider it before accepting it as their life focus?

Comparisons
The belief in a religion is tantamount to belief in any other number of fictions that we somehow believed in at one time. It's no different than the stories of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy that we're told as children. At some point, as we get older and start learning to think for ourselves, it occurs to us that Santa and company seem a little silly; so, we question it. Generally, nobody tries to convince us that Santa really does exist, and so the belief is excised from our minds.

With religion, that last bit never happens. When we get to that questioning age, we tend to be corrected by those around us who taught us these beliefs or who helped feed it to us. Santa comes but once a year, but religion is an everyday thing. Even families who don't attend church regularly but who claim to be religious wouldn't hesitate to correct a curious child when he asks "If it's so silly to believe Santa can't visit billions of kids on Xmas Eve, why do we believe the flood story?"

So How Does This Display Lack of Intelligence?
It isn't so much a lack of intelligence that figures into this. It's the surrendering of intelligence—the deliberate act of choosing to not use one's intelligence. It may not be a wholly conscious act, but it's a choice to kick intelligence aside like a jacket on a coat rack, not being used but there when you need it.

"Intelligence" is generally thought of to be "how smart someone is." I think it goes further than that. Intelligence covers a whole range of mental processes, including:

• The ability to think. Very self-explanatory.
• The ability to acquire knowledge. How well we learn things.
• The ability to apply knowledge. How we use the things we have learned.
• The ability to reason. The capacity to use logic to come to an end result.
• The ability to apply common sense. This may be the most important point as regards this topic, and it may well be a multifaceted one.

We all have these same capabilities, yet at the common sense level, we differ. Yes, some people learn better than others, recall information better, are better at math and so forth. But regardless, we all have similar measures of intelligence. But when two people have the same information, they can arrive at very different conclusions. A Xian and a Muslim have very different views; so, even if they are intellectually matched, they'll believe different things pertaining to religion. Who's right? (Hint: neither.)

Super brain example. But let's consider a brilliant scientist; we'll say he's a triple-Ph.D. with Einsteinian  computational powers who has read more books than any fifty people you know (and retained the information clearly), has won the Nobel Prize in Physics, and so forth. Clearly, we're dealing with an intelligent man.

But let's also say he's a Xian. Regardless of his astounding mental prowess, it's all thrown out the window when it comes to his religion. He does this despite the fact that the Bible is, inarguably, the only source of Xianity, and one chock full of flaws: massive inconsistencies, outlandish contradictions, and other illogical inaccuracies. Yet for some reason, he believes it. How does this happen? I'd certainly hope such a thinking man was immersed or brainwashed... it would be a sheer tragedy of the evolution of the human brain if he chose to be born again.

The best scientists seek to explain things they don't understand. In the absence of evidence, they tend to continue to seek. Yet often, no matter how intelligent a person is, no matter what other things he is able to think, logic, and reason his way through, some things are too ingrained. Perhaps there is simply a limit to what he will allow himself to accept.

The death factor. Not knowing what happens when we die can be a daunting thing for anyone who is overly conscious of his own mortality. Perhaps the absolute inability that any of us have to answer that question is simply too much for some people to handle. In that event, it is safer to surrender common sense in favor of believing something that makes one feel better.

So Are Religionists Stupid?
Let's be fair: I've met an amazing amount of fundamentalist Xians who are, frankly, as dumb as posts. But I've met plenty of blazingly intelligent Xians (and in all fairness, I don't recall ever meeting any mind-numbingly idiotic Atheists). I am NOT claiming anyone who is a Xian or other religionist is stupid. People can be amazingly intelligent and still fail in the area of common sense. Even when the individual normally has acute common sense regarding most topics, there's something about the importance of religion that cause him to throw it away for that topic.

Having good common sense, they say, is having the sense to come in out of the rain. I'm sure many would disagree with so broad a definition, because a soft rain can be quite pleasant; coming in out of a typhoon might be a better example of exercising common sense, though. But the idea is, basic assumptions are made using such common sense:

• You don't take a nap in subzero temperatures naked; common sense tells you that you'll end up frostbitten or dead.
   
• You don't drive a car blindfolded; common sense tells you might crash into something.
   
• You don't try to jump off a mountain onto a cloud; common sense tells you the clouds won't support your weight if you try.

Young children who haven't amassed enough basic knowledge might not come to these common sense conclusions beforehand, but there is no excuse for adults failing to do so.

Are There Answers?
It isn't a question of what degree of intelligence a person has: it's a question of the basic capacity of common sense. Believing in the Bible is a laughable slapstick show of leaving common sense behind and behaving like a child excitedly leaving out milk, cookies, and carrots for Santa and the reindeer.

The biggest question. Perhaps it's easier to ignore common sense when considering that most holy of all questions: Is there an all-powerful deity? That goes hand in hand with considering things like "Why are we here?" and "What happens when we die?" They're daunting questions, ones often unnerving or even frightening to people. Perhaps it's easier for people to believe in a religion; it makes it easier to accept existence. They key problem with this line of flawed reasoning is that the thinking person who asks "Why are we here?" is already presupposing that there is, in fact, some purpose to our lives. When the question goes unanswered (which it must, even if there is an answer to it), they conclude there must be a God, because there could be no purpose to life if there were no God. They don't consider that maybe there simply is no purpose; our lives are simply what we make of them. Call me crazy.

So, is there an all-powerful deity? I don't know. I don't think so, but there's simply no way to know. But if there is an all-powerful deity, I'm certain it isn't the one highlighted in the Xian religion. Xianity is just one of many religions that have annoyed humanity for the past ten thousand years or so, and probably not the last. With all the gods, goddesses, angels, demons, spirits, devils, and other deities human beings have created over the millennia, the Xian God is just one. Yahweh is just another. Allah is just another. The list goes on and on, and they're all different. There is simply no way the application of basic common sense, especially in the wake of such ridiculous fairy tales like the Bible and the Koran, that any of these would possibly be "The Right Explanation."

Some agnostics claim that the only way to know whether or not there are gods is to die. That, to me, isn't very agnostic; it's assuming there is something after death. Maybe there's nothing and we'll never know anything again. Maybe we all get reincarnated in a never-ending life cycle, and we still won't know if there are gods or not. Maybe we're all part of a universal mind that is, in itself, its own deity.

Musing and considering is one thing; believing in something that you simply cannot explain with intellect, logic, and reason is another. It doesn't matter how well someone does on his calculus test, because if he believes in Xianity, he's deliberately surrendering his common sense.

That's okay. That's allowed. I respect someone's right to be uncommonly nonsensical. But they're still uncommonly nonsensical.
 

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