There's always so many misconceptions about atheists on this forum. And man, the theists are SO defensive, too. Not that that's surprising or anything...
But anyway, the ultimate fact of the matter is that there's really no such thing as an atheist. There are just people who are willing to accept fantastic claims on little to no evidence, and people who aren't. There's no word for an atheist when it comes to Zeus or astrology, likewise there shouldn't have to be a word for someone who would like some evidence before believing in an all powerful, omniscient deity. It's just called being a rational person. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Fin.

I know I'm jumping back a bit, but:
"In fact, I'd say 99.9999% of people haven't tested the laws of gravity for themselves."
I would have said that anyone who's been educated in the UK has - its the basis for a number of basic physics lessons. Granted all we showed was that the accelleration due to gravity was 9.8 in our classroom, but its still a test on them. Also students are asked to analysis other data, such as comet trajectories and deduce information from these.

I'm not sure what happiness has to do with it, and why it was brought into the conversation. The village idiot is probably pretty darn happy.

@Stratagos, "It's also irrelevant: saying {group x} is {quality} than {group y} is ultimately meaningless, as you don't deal with groups, you deal with individuals. and I've met some brilliant theists, and some fucking moronic athiest vegan liberals."

Stratagos, I normally highly respect your opinion, but I think thats one of the dumbest things I've seen from you. Regardless of whether you deal with individuals, the fact that group A has more X than group B, and 'it is statistically significant' is a big deal. It can be studied and learned from. The fact that children of mothers who smoked live 10 years shorter than those who didn't isn't relevant? Yes, little Johnny whose mom smoked may live to 110, but should you discount that other stat just because of Johnny? Of course not! (Incidentally, I made the stat up).

Well for me the biggest problem is that IQ tests are crap and only really measure how good you are at taking IQ tests.

Stukus, but that would be true of both groups, no?

DaveH thank you, sir

DaveH, am I mistaken, or did you just call all people who believe in god 'irrational'?

"From my experience most atheists have a huge amount of faith in ideas such as the big bang theory which almost none of them understand in the slightest."

I understand and accept the basic idea behind the Big Bang and I am not a scientist . But this does not mean that I *know it to be true because I have personally examined all the evidence. Yes, I accept the authority of the scientists who tell me that they think it is true. On the surface this could look like religious faith, but really its not. I could, at least in theory, educate myself to point where I could then examine the evidence that has convinced the scientists. This is not true of religious faith.
Also if science were to comprehensively reject the Big Bang tomorrow because new evidence had come to light, then I would reject it too. This looks like faith too, but really its not... far more speaks for science that against it. So it's not faith, it's reason.

@DJ, I'm not blanketing all of them as being "completely irrational". Most (modern) people behave more or less rationally most of the time. But many of these otherwise rational people allow their way of thinking about the world to become Balkanized in such a way as to accept an irrational line of thinking in a particular context. People treat "religion" differently than other subjects- as somehow immune to rational critique. I don't think this is true, and so I'd say I'm just calling all those people's specific belief irrational, and fundamentally out of step with the rest of their essentially rational way of living.

DaveH, Do you believe its possible to be a very religious person who came to that belief in a rational way? Can you be a rational Christian? If you don't believe that, I know a few people here who would care to disagree with you.

@spyman Then you are one of the very few who understand the basic idea. The vast majority of people (by people I mean non scientists) who support the big bang theory will then go on to ask a question along the lines of "where did the bang happen?" proving they have missed the point entirely. I get extremely annoyed by people who claim to believe in things despite not having the slightest clue what they're believing in. It is even worse that thiests!

Fundamentally, the issue with attempting to justify faith with reason is that you end up with effectively a cop-out.

The universe had to be created, thus we must have God, to be the creator. But who created God? I mean, if you're going to enter the realm of logic and evidence, God is a serious problem. Its effectively the same thing as an ancient Greek hearing lightning and thunder and thinking Zeus is responsible.

So yes, faith is irrational, by its very nature. It is the belief in something completely separate from any logic or evidence.

At a broad level (and I know people's particulars vary), faith in a divine being comes down to two major things:

Explain the unknowable. Same reason as the aforementioned ancient Greeks, just bumped up a few levels. We don't know, so we have to invent God to explain what we do not know. This contrasts to the scientific reasoning saying "We don't know, *yet*, but we can figure it out, eventually.

The other reasoning being is, that once you start to think about the vastness of the universe and the insignificance of the human race, one might have a tendency to despair, knowing that in all likelyhood, the universe has gotten along just fine without our whole species, and will continue just as fine when we are gone. This terrifies people at a very fundamental level, thus we get the variations on God's Plan. We are special, God as a plan for every one of us. It sounds a lot better than "There is no plan. There is no reason to exist, other than what we make for ourselves." I personally find that kind of thinking liberating, knowing that I have the theoretical freedom to do whatever I will. But I can understand why it would terrify people.

tl;dr: Yes. Faith is irrational. The moment it becomes rational, it ceases to be faith.

@Octavious I would say that a lack of knowledge in the big bang theory - as you are describing it - is the same as a theist believing that they understand what God is doing in the world. We could never even marginally understand the grand design created by Him yet still some people try to. It's the same as Milton saying, in Paradise Lost, "You guys don't get it so here is a huge poem describing it because I understand God's plans and you don't." It's ridiculously prideful and goes against the very foundation of the beliefs of a theist, just like a Big Bang Believer not getting "it."

P.S. I am an atheist but I have a good amount of knowledge about the Big Bang Theory after having watched Einstein's Big Idea based on the book E=mc^2.

@Jack You raise an interesting point. I do not believe in God. I know that there is no plan, there is no reason to exist, that we will eventually cease to exist and that nothing we ever did when we were alive will matter one jot to the universe. This, strangely enough, does not worry me in the slightest. What does worry me a bit is how I can be so totally unconcerned about a fact that should leave me a jibbering suicidal wreck. Either I do not really believe all the things I am convinced I do believe, or I have an instinctive ability to stare a fact right between the eyes and yet completely ignore it. One wonders how many other blatently obvious facts I have learned to ignore, and what the world would be like if I ever saw it how it truely is.

@DingleberryJones, Yes, it's true of all IQ tests. They were designed to be done one-on-one, to find and help students who were performing poorly. And then the tests were brought to America and instantly used in the exact way against which their inventor warned... : (

Its simple egotism. Something that I imagine started back when one tribe of humans beat another tribe of humans to death for some rich bit of hunting ground.

Its not particularly good for a tribe/social grouping/whatever to admit that its just effectively carried out mass-murder, so one has to frame it differently. We're special. Our God gave us that land, and anybody who says differently is acting against God. Therefore, its God's will that they be beaten to death with rocks.

The Old Testament is filled with episodes of that very thing happening. So we start thinking of ourselves as special in the eyes of the divine, when we're really not anything of the sort.

Basically, I think you've started to shrug off about ten thousand years of social programming. Just because we're not particularly important to the universe doesn't mean we should despair. It just means we have to figure this thing out ourselves, and not rely on various bits of bad literature to define ourselves.

@Stukus Small correction, actually, it was invented to predict a student's performance within a classroom setting.

@Turi Not really... It's more like claiming to believe the Christian faith despite not knowing anything about Jesus. It's just general sloppyness and lack of thought. I am fine with people believing in whatever as long as they have given it some thought and at least know what it is they believe in.

1. Many people here are referring to the study, and assuming that it indicates that Atheists are "more rational". However IQ and rationality don't exactly correlate, IQ attempts to measure intelligence, and rationality is only a part of that. What IQ is particularly a good indicator for is ones ability to learn and grasp new concepts.

2. That shifts (somewhat) into my second point. In Japan there has been a small reverse of this trend. Christians in Japan (2% of pop) have higher IQ's than the average Japanese person. The reason for this is generally thought to be that intelligent people are simply the first to break away from societal norms and explore new concepts.

3. The study doesn't take into account that there are many Christians with very high IQ's as well, in fact it probably would stand to reason that if you take the top 16% of Americans (who identify as Christian) based on intelligence you would most likely end up with either similar IQ or possibly even higher than the average American Atheist (16% of Americans identify as non-religious).Yet because there are so many Christians the average IQ more resembles the national average.

@Octavious But then when I get into a simple argument with a theist about what their God is doing, they try to rationalize. Now I'm not saying I understand God's plan but I also know that I cannot respect a being who is willing to "test us" by killing an innocent child. On the other hand, I have never met a Christian who doesn't understand Jesus' story. I'd say Jesus for a Christian is as Evolution is for an Atheist and God for a Christian is as the Big Bang is for an Atheist.

What about Agnostics?

The study didn't really speak to the correlation between agnosticism and intelligence.

@Kaptin Kool So on point three would you say that a median determination of IQ for a group as a whole would be better? Similar to how standardized testing should change their system?

But I would assume that the average agnostic has a higher IQ. However, if we lived in a society that was primarily non-theistic I would suggest that the average Christian would have a higher IQ.

@TuriGuiliano - Well, I don't know... I think that the largest group will always be the least intelligent, you can't really compensate for that.

Sorry, not the least intelligent, but will have the lowest average intelligence.

Yeah, but lots of Christians believe in Evolution, and quite a lot believe in the big bang. To be honest I think the Bible makes a very strong case for evolution. At the start Adam and Eve walk naked like animals and speak the same language as animals, and then they achieve knowledge and start acting more like humans. If I was to write a story myself to introduce young children or the uneducated to the concept of evolution I don't think I could do any better :p

@ Kaptin Well I actually skipped a point in my reasoning there because a lot of American people who believe in God are hillbillies and those people who were not smart enough to get out of the slums and who were raised in a church setting (all races included). Therefore, their scores could lower the average just as much per individual as the highly intelligent top 16% could but the scores on the lower end are lower than the scores on the higher end are higher and I realize this doesn't fit the bell curve but really who can say how well people fit the bell curve.

I agree, we are actually trying to make the same point.