"Are atheists mentally ill?"

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Having a belief in something, in and of itself, doesn't necessarily mean the believer is mentally ill (although there was, interestingly, one study put out a couple months ago that links belief in a hateful God to mental illness).  As for IQ tests, haven't they already been proven to be one of the worst ways of measuring "intelligence" in groups, be it race, religion, or otherwise?  Sorry, but the more I read this bunk, the more skeptical I become of its inherent value.  Both sides are guilty of abusing and misinterpreting studies to suit their own (often hateful) agenda, and this article is nothing new.

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Having a belief in something, in and of itself, doesn't necessarily mean the believer is mentally ill (although there was, interestingly, one study put out a couple months ago that links belief in a hateful God to mental illness). As for IQ tests, haven't they already been proven to be one of the worst ways of measuring "intelligence" in groups, be it race, religion, or otherwise?  Sorry, but the more I read this bunk, the more skeptical I become of its inherent value.  Both sides are guilty of abusing and misinterpreting studies to suit their own (often hateful) agenda, and this article is nothing new.

I'm not familiar with this, can you give me a quick recap?

As for the mental illness thing, anectdotally I remember atheist PZ Myers asked his readers to take the AQ test and the results were considerably higher than the norm; there might be other factors at play there though.

Long story short, we have a wealth of evidence that intelligence is highly malleable to a multitude of environmental factors, and things like race and religion aren't discrete enough to qualify as biological categories for which people can be grouped and compared.  Also, IQ scores don't really reflect beyond what a person learned in school.  You can say x race is smarter on average than y race or a religious group is smarter on average than b religious group, but it's a moot point because people can be categorized any way you choose.

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Yikes.  Add religion to the list of things this forum isn't mature enough to discuss.

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And of course I am always amazed at how quickly people are willing to divorce religion from its awful, inhumane, bloody history in order to make a terrible argument that extols its virtues. I don't think we do that with literally anything else - religion gets another free pass.

Actually, we do it with many things: money, governments, sex, science, speech - the list goes on and on.  Each of these are "good" things that have been exploited in various fashions to serve the selfish interests of individuals.  That doesn't mean we simply dismiss them as inherently bad.  Doing so would be impractical.  There is value in everything, but its virtues can only be embraced if the potential for exploitation is suppressed.

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Indeed, religion does endow people with these things.  That doesn't mean religion itself needs to be changed, it means the conversation and the approach needs to be changed, and that goes for both theists and atheists/agnostics.  As long as our world is populated by people who are self-righteous, self-indulgent, or idolatrous, religion is bound to be subject to exploitation, just like everything else.

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As an evolutionist, I would argue that "we came from apes" is not an inaccurate statement of the scientific position.  Obviously, the reality is far more complex than that, but that doesn't necessarily negate the statement itself.  That isn't the point I'm trying to make, though.  To Christians (or at least, the Christians I've encountered), God does not exist as a mere wizard Who resides in the sky.  Furthermore, Jesus' mission was not a "suicide mission" in any sense of the word.  No, suicide is deeply frowned upon in the Christian religion.  Christians view Jesus' death as fulfillment of the prophesy.

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Christians view Jesus' death as fulfillment of the prophesy.

Christians view Jesus' death as the fulfillment of the prophecy of the god of the Jews. As I already pointed out in another thread;

Whose ‘conditions’ does he meet? Jesus is not Kalki, Li Hong, Maitreya, Saoshyant or John Frum. He meets (in part, we have to say because Jews consider he doesn’t meet the criteria) the conditions of the Jewish messiah as promised to them. He is intrinsically linked with Yahweh. Jesus may be for the ‘whole world’ and not just the saviour of the Jews, but he is tethered to his father. You can’t dissociate them. For example I couldn’t say Achilles was a demi-god and then deny the relevance or deity of his mother, the god Thetis. He can’t be considered a demi-god without his mother being considered a god. With that in mind, surely the Old Testament which reveals the conditions of the coming the messiah and which encapsulates the covenant Yahweh has with his people would if inspired by The God, be ‘better’ than it is.

Even if it was never meant to be better than the scientific and historical truth and was intended to be largely allegorical (though it’s curious as to why it should not have been telling the Jewish people about the reality of creation and their history) surely it should be a better myth than other competing myths if it’s inspired by The God? Especially given that these other competing myths, many of which are linked to the worship of other gods (because to those worshippers, those gods gave that message to them) were not inspired by The God.

Why are some of these other myths more accurate descriptions of the truth or predate the stories of the Old Testament from which the OT then borrows? It would suggest, would it not that knowledge not inspired by The God or inspired by other claimed gods, seems to be better than that which apparently was inspired by The God in the OT. Given that was the case then, and is certainly the case with scientific advancement now, then at no point in it’s existence has the Old Testament ever elucidated the best, greatest, most profound and most accurate understanding of the world even through the eyes of humanity at the time it was written. And yet we are told the OT was inspired by The God.

So if The God has inspired people to write inaccurate accounts or at the very least, the ‘lesser’ material then either The God wants people to remain ignorant or he is deliberately misleading them. If he is misleading them (which if he is The God he could easily do) then you cannot trust the messianic claims. At the very least, other deities deserve a look in if you’re searching for the truth!

So you have to believe that the god of the Jews is The God. Given that the OT is less well written and less accurate than the theological texts of some other religions (or pilfers from them) in order to be theologically honest you should say to yourself, say to others why you believe that Christianity is 'more correct' than every other interpretation of faith. And that is what frustrates people. Atheists and agnostics can understand the concept of a god. I have no beef at all with people who believe in it and good, solid, deist arguments can be made.

However let me say this. Personally, to meet someone, as reasoned a person as you are who says that out of all the infinite number of universes, the billions of galaxies, the billions of stars and billions of planets that the entire revealed word of the creator and all his rules was given to one Palestinian tribe is absolutely incredulous to me. The entire theological argument of a creator god endowed with human personality traits and directly intervening in tribal warfare for a thousand years of history as being The One True God is so egocentric, so ultimately self serving (having humans seek affirmation from an external agent for their own actions) that for me (and I say this as a former Christian) if there is a god, Christianity and most faiths are so far removed from what god is, that you're better off holding no position at all.

Afleitch, I have repeatedly tried to establish that I don't approach Christianity, let alone religion in general, the same way fundamentalists or conservatives do.  I am not a Christian because I think I am right.  My approach, arguably comparable to that of John Wesley's (not that I would ever place myself at his level intelligence wise), is a strictly orthopraxic one.  Being "right" is a very miniscule tenet of my religion, if one at all, and I do not see truth as something confined to the tangible and the irrefutable.  Did God reveal His word to one tribe of people on this planet in this universe, and to no one else?  Maybe, maybe not.  I don't lose sleep at night for having that uncertainty.  Do I have reasons for why I think God exists and why it's better for me to hold a position in the affirmative rather than have no position at all?  Yes, and I try to live up to that faith as best as I can.  But at the end of the day, I realize that I'm only human, and that there is no belief system which will guarantee me a 'happy ending' or otherwise something that makes me superior (morally or otherwise) to others.  All I'm left with is a light in the heart.

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Afleitch, I have repeatedly tried to establish that I don't approach Christianity, let alone religion in general, the same way fundamentalists or conservatives do.  I am not a Christian because I think I am right.  My approach, arguably comparable to that of John Wesley's (not that I would ever place myself at his level intelligence wise), is a strictly orthopraxic one.  Being "right" is a very miniscule tenet of my religion, if one at all, and I do not see truth as something confined to the tangible and the irrefutable.  Did God reveal His word to one tribe of people on this planet in this universe, and to no one else?  Maybe, maybe not.  I don't lose sleep at night for having that uncertainty.  Do I have reasons for why I think God exists and why it's better for me to hold a position in the affirmative rather than have no position at all?  Yes, and I try to live up to that faith as best as I can.  But at the end of the day, I realize that I'm only human, and that there is no belief system which will guarantee me a 'happy ending' or otherwise something that makes me superior (morally or otherwise) to others.  All I'm left with is a light in the heart.

But why are you a Christian? (and indeed, want to minister to others in that capacity) It's a serious question.  Why aren't you a Hindu, or a Muslim or a worshiper of Apollo if the truth or being right or wrong is not a tenet of your faith? Now the flippant answer, and I don't think this is entirely incorrect, is that for most people labouring over religion isn't easy, so the adoption of the local dominant or influential faith tends to be the case. So people who find religion in the US tend to become Christian or if they experience something religious attribute it to the Christian god because that god is a cultural artifact. However, given your uncertainty which is not bad thing, why minister to others who perhaps require a notion of certainty? Why seek to minister to people something that you're not particularly bothered is correct or relevant? If you want to believe in 'something' rather than nothing when it comes to god, why not investigate other faith and belief systems to seek what is more personally fulfilling?

"Why I'm a Christian" isn't the point.  You are emphasizing something that is not important simply because of what ninety-something percent of other Christians you've met may have told you about the faith.  I was raised Christian, I read the Bible cover to cover, I am familiar with and accepting of its teachings, and this religion speaks to me most.  The Museum of God displays many paintings; I picked the one that speaks to me best.  It didn't matter what I got because they're all painted by the same artist, Whom I engage with ritually and call Jesus.  To others, that artist is known by a different name.  No matter what we call Him, that being at the end of the tunnel is the same.  I want to counsel to others so that I may introduce an approach to the faith that is seldom taken.  Part of that approach calls for the freeing of oneself from the weight of absolute certainty in exchange for the rewards of humility.  If you require a notion of certainty, you aren't playing the game correctly.

Could I help people in the capacity of a rabbi or an imam?  Perhaps, but those religions simply don't communicate to me.  My local UCC congregation is going on a mission trip to South Dakota next year.  We aren't going to build houses for Christians, or Jews, or Muslims - we are going to build houses for people.

Of course I've investigated other faiths, and if there's one thing I've learned it's that nearly all of them are chock full of people telling me they're right and everyone else is wrong.  There are various reasons why other religions don't speak to me; many are theological, others moral, and some ceremonial.  You could just as well ask me why I opt to be a Protestant minister instead of a Catholic priest, but I think the reasons behind that choice are self-evident, given my theological views.

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I've always taken God's complexity as the central reason for why we have Jesus and the prophets.

God is very hard for a mortal to know.  He is omniscient, omnipotent, transcendant, and eternal, perceives the whole universe of time and space in one timeless instant, is infinitely wise, and therefore is inescapably complex.  God is simply too big for us mortals to wrap our heads around, so if we assume that God wants us to know Him, He needs to help us, and that help comes from the relationship formed between those of His creation and that of His human, mortal self.

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...I've...never seen a Christian theology that concedes the notion that God is complex before.

Er, I think I may have misunderstood your post.  You posited that the argument from complexity assumes that God is more complex than anything in His creation, which flies in the face of most other theology.  However, I don't think most religions see God's creation as more complex than Himself.

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Afleitch, first of all, it has never been my intention to prove that someone is "wrong" on the issue of God's existence.  As I've stated before, being "right" is a very slender part of my philosophy, and I think that if there is a God, He or She shows compassion toward those who who had wrong belief or no belief.  I can only speak for myself on that, of course.

That being said, I don't see how having belief in God vs. not having belief in God is the same as being left-handed or right-handed.  Being right-handed is not a position one can take.  You cannot rationally defend your being right-handed, unlike your belief in God or non-belief in God.