I feel sorry for a friend of mine...

Alyeska · Post by **Alyeska** » 2003-06-01 12:34pm

One of my best friends is what you could probably call a fundamental Christian. He believes in the Bible to a strict sense. He believes that Witches are bad. He believes there are evil warlocks that are powerful shap shifters. He believes there have been countless miracles in which people have been rendered bullet proof by god. Strange thing is he knows I am an Atheist and has yet to show any real problem with it.

He is one of the smartest people I know. Very good with computers and is going into medecine. But I just can't understand why he puts his intelect asside and believes in all this weird stuff. My mother who is a Christian (moderate and believes in science fully) can't understand why my friend believes in this. Another of my friends is very good with science and is going into Electrical Engineering and is a YEC, although I don't think he believes in quite the same far reaching things my other friend believes in.

I just can't understand how people can completely pyt asside their inteligence and believe such wierd things. They go so far as to believing cited evidence from sources that are so worthless I could wipe my ass with them.

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-06-01 12:36pm

Emotional distress is often possible of making people believe. As is pressure from friends.

Alyeska · Post by **Alyeska** » 2003-06-01 12:39pm

kojikun wrote:Emotional distress is often possible of making people believe. As is pressure from friends.

Or family? The one who believes in the Witches and Wizzards crap has a rather religious family. For some of the gatherings I have joined it becomes imediately obvious that many people associate Christian and Good Person as the same thing. They find it impossible to be a good person without having some sort of religion. Out of the sake of keeping the peace I have had to bite my tounge quite a few times on those issues.

Tribun · Post by **Tribun** » 2003-06-01 12:50pm

Some people can became relly irration, in cases of religion.

Gil Hamilton · Post by **Gil Hamilton** » 2003-06-01 01:01pm

Very often I've found religion and actual intelligence have very little to do with each other. After all, it really doesn't effect his life at all whether the Earth is 10,000 or 5 billion years old, so he can get away with believe it's 10,000 years old in spite of all evidence because it's really not a pressing issue and he probably grew up hearing it over and over. This means a lack of critical thinking skills in certain areas, but it doesn't make him stupid.

Sir Sirius · Post by **Sir Sirius** » 2003-06-01 01:22pm

A combination of childhood credulity and parental indoctrination can make kids belief in stupid things and later in life it's just easier to accept all that crap as the truth then it is to apply some critical thinking and question things your parents thought you. + christianity doenst't excatly engourage people to question their beliefs, all those threats of purgatory, hell and even god's immediate retribution do a wonderfull job in making even slightest doubt about the veracity of his beliefs feel christian unconfortable and "sinfull".

aerius · Post by **aerius** » 2003-06-01 06:28pm

Some people are just weird and I can't understand them. I had a co-worker at Canada Customs who was doing her Master's degree in Biology and who was also a young earth creationist and an all round religious fundy. You'd think that someone who's studied Bio and has a degree in it would know that creationism is full of shit. I asked her a bunch of questions and while she understands evolution, genetics, and all that other stuff way better than I ever will she happily puts all that aside for her religious beliefs. It's as if she lives in 2 completely seperate worlds.

SyntaxVorlon · Post by **SyntaxVorlon** » 2003-06-01 08:15pm

Gil Hamilton wrote:Very often I've found religion and actual intelligence have very little to do with each other. After all, it really doesn't effect his life at all whether the Earth is 10,000 or 5 billion years old, so he can get away with believe it's 10,000 years old in spite of all evidence because it's really not a pressing issue and he probably grew up hearing it over and over. This means a lack of critical thinking skills in certain areas, but it doesn't make him stupid.

Yes, I believe a founding father said something to the same effect, can't remember who or exactly what, though.
Religion doesn't mean low intelligence, though low intelligence sometimes means religion. Though I believe the quote was about conservatism not religion, which in no way negates it.

InnerBrat · Post by **InnerBrat** » 2003-06-01 08:21pm

aerius wrote: I asked her a bunch of questions and while she understands evolution, genetics, and all that other stuff way better than I ever will she happily puts all that aside for her religious beliefs. It's as if she lives in 2 completely seperate worlds.

Well, religion is so important to some people that they can separate out these two worlds.
It's not hard to imagine God creating a world that looks 6ky old. It's not obviuos why, but if you believe in God, why question him?
Evolution as a process does not contradict anything, despite the attempts by creationists to debunk it in order to justify your own beliefs. If anything, your friend sounds more secure in her faith than those who come on boards like this to apologise for it.

Xenophobe3691 · Post by **Xenophobe3691** » 2003-06-02 05:13pm

Ya, that's something I don't understand. My brother's friend was the only one in the entire class who could argue about evolution and understood it completely, yet he didn't believe in it. Confused the hell out of me

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2003-06-02 05:57pm

He's basically leading an intellectual double life. There are some very intelligent scientists who actually believe that the Earth is 6 000 years old. This is due to a lifetime of ruthless indoctrination to the extent that they become dependent upon those beliefs. That kind of indoctrination could easily qualify as brainwashing.

As to him knowing you're an atheist, it shows what I've believed for some time: most fundamentalists have no problems condemning random people on the street, but there are a good number who make exceptions for their own personal lives. Either that, or he just hasn't told you that, even though you're his friend, you're going to burn in The Eternal Lake of Fire (tm).