Is "Faith" the refuge of the intellectually lazy?
605799
Your question refers to science filling in knowledge that had once been attributed to God's doing.  The latest controversy being Intellectual Design/Creationism.  In years gone by, it might have been simply the weather that the gods/God was responsible for.  This concept of God is generally known among clergy as the "God of the gaps" That is, "if you can't explain it, then God is responsible"\n\nThis makes for a fairly small concept of who/what God is, as far as I'm concerned, and one that leads eventually to a vanishing God as science progresses.\n\nBelief in god in whatever form (Allah, Christ, Hindu, etc) has existed in every culture in every time period. Many smart people have spent their lives trying the impossible, to figure out God.  And indeed, some, don't try to understand God, but to simply try their best to follow what they see as God's will for their lives.
555940
Faith is not logical.
880458
In short, yes. But it also enslaves people to irrationality and denial.\n\nOne thing I have learned about most religious people is that, facts, reality, commonsense, rational thinking, and the like, have no place in their lives. You can not reason with them - it's the great mystery of human behavior.
1096879
Yes, and the world is that asylum.  It takes great effort and discipline to cure yourself of the delusion of faith.
543854
Well, faith can be derived through an authoritarian or a rational approach....although one understands that it starts out as one and moves to the other.  One can use reason to butress faith (as many religions do).  \n\nAgain, one must juggle the semantics of the question.  What does one mean by "reason"?  If one accepts that a person who reasons would use an empirical approach to gaining all knoweledge, then there is a conflict between the two terms based on epistemology.\n\nIn my opinion, the conflict between faith and reason lies entirely in the fact that faith requires a man to forgoe reason and rely on dogma.  This prevents a human being from using all of his/her senses to find out for themselves.  So, in short...the answer is yes, although with reservation as I also believe that reason is used with faith-based systems as well.
93719
Faith does not rely on reality. It is a willingness, even desire, to believe in that which cannot be proven to exist. You can literally create any reality you want to, and if you have enough faith in it, that reality will appear solid and indisputable, to you, regardless of how unrealistic it is, or how little sense it makes. A lot of religious people don't really grasp this concept.
957473
Only if they had felt the faith/belief in their heart. They can understand intellectually but not completely.
695457
Yes.  If you are strong in your faith, you are willing and able to consider the alternative without fearing it will shake your faith.  Only the weak-willed and weak-faithed hesitate to answer 'what if' questions.
1145381
Faith is belief without proof. I can't speak for all Christians, but I don't think I'm any better than anybody else. For that matter, I don't KNOW that I picked the right religion, I just believe I did. Can't prove it, can't disprove it, I just believe it. I do agree with some of the "idiots" that CONSTANTLY question religion, though. Some of the pseudo-christians on here are more conceited than saved.
644015
No.  Freewill was created by religion to explain why an all-powerful god can't do something.
1046107
Exactly. When it comes to religion, the word "faith" means believing in something you know isn't true.
813386
okay ...now where is your list of believers huh???\n\nchristopher columbus, abraham lincoln, galileo, issac newton, and on and on.\n\n\nbiased flawed reasoning...yet once again. no i have found just the opposite. when i put too much faith in my finite mortal flawed self...my achievments are limited.\n\nfaith in God is the greatest weapon ever.\n\nbut i am guessing yo don't even understand what i mean.
1027764
Fear motivates fools to faith.
640335
I think I am just a little bit dumber for just reading that. seriously. You should spend your time becoming better educated. once you have a pHd, then I will read your foolish questions. \n\nAnd about my belief in God...it still remains.
769295
No offense, but I don't think any serious scientist would believe any paper whose principal evidence came from 1951 and earlier.    In fact, aptitude/intelligence studies of the kind that you have cited are very much out of vogue right now, because they can be used to stratify people inappropriately.  Many similar studies have tried to show that black people are less intelligent than white people, for example.\n\nAnd actually the study you've listed with number 6 doesn't really support your point, because "little or no relationship" doesn't mean that religious people aren't intelligent, it means that you can't make any connection between religion and intelligence, in either direction.\n\nAnd IQ, by the way, does not appear to be a valid measure, since it's supposed to be invariant over a person's life, but is obviously affected by things like listening to music before taking the test.\n\nAll these points aside, I think what you're trying to say is that you have to be stupid to believe in God.  That's not true.  Unfortunately, many intelligent people these days are misled into believing that they shouldn't believe in God because they can't see him.  This is a mistake.  In fact, science is actually a very similar process of projecting hypotheses about things we don't yet know, and then testing them.  This is very similar to exercising faith in God.\n\nIt's good to be educated if your education helps you to progress.  It's only a mistake if your education leads you away from God, and from understanding the true purposes of life.  My church encourages its members to get education and to find truth wherever they can.  In this way, education and religion do not conflict, because they are both ways of finding out truth.\n\nMany people can create a list of well-respected people in the arts and sciences who believed in God.  Surely you wouldn't claim that people like Henry Eyring, the developer of the field of kinetics, was not intelligent.  And, by the way, he was a devout member of the same church that I belong to.\n\nPlease don't be misled.\n\nP.S. I'm a scientist and I have a Master's degree.  And I'm a devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  (I don't actually know my IQ.)\n\n(If you'd like to discuss the research design of the studies that you've listed, feel free.  I have serious issues with studies about intelligence that only use college undergraduates as research subjects.  As a scientist, I know that college undergraduates are a convenient research population, but there are some serious flaws with this design for a study like this.)
289763
You can have both.While intellect uses reason and logic It is not at all a contradiction to have faith or hope or wonder about the mysteries of life .Scientists cannot measure some things so they cannot be proved or disproved.Yet.
141231
By having faith,is that so bad?