Faith is a virtue of the Intellect

Faith is not thinking that one must believe in the impossible, but a gift of the intellect. Discussion and examples welcome. :slight_smile:

Why do atheists tend to score higher on IQ tests?

That is a generalization, yet a legitimate question when turned in the opposite direction as well: Why do many people gifted with intelligence have such a difficult time with faith? Part of it may be the way religion is presented. Religion, like any subject covered in a classroom, is directed at the median, except we have gifted programs in schools. We don’t have gifted programs in religion (unless one searches it out for themselves) which may be why people drift from faith and religion. It becomes an intellectual muscle that isn’t used and therefore atrophies. It does not have to be so.

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how do you determine that atheists have a “difficult time with faith?”

Faith is not an intellectual muscle.

Faith is the denial of intellect. Which is not to say faith is “stupid” but it is not based in logical thought or anything real or provable. We all have faith in things based on nothing objectively provable. God, love, relationships…etc.

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You mean your faith right?

Because I’m sure you have difficulties with the 1000 other faiths/religions that you reject.

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Could you explain a little more what you mean by this…maybe with an example of your own to start?

The Koran should be studied in school?

How much have you truly worked out your Koran muscles?

After the religions class exercising faith and religion muscles, then they will have an atheism class exercising their brain muscles. Maybe incorporate biology and physics and critical thinking.

Faith is the excuse people use when they don’t have evidence.

About 70% of published psychological studies can’t be reproduced by other researchers…

See reproducibility crisis…

The way they get to that conclusion is not by testing people in the same culture which would make the sample equal, But comparing western countries to non western highly religious countries.

“When one looks at this phenomenon from the point of view of comparisons between countries, it is not hard to figure out possible reasons that more intelligent countries have more atheists as Richard Lynn (2009) reported.”

Pathetic, and Fake news!

From the same article

“Of course, the same phenomena are relevant to comparisons within a country, although within-country differences in these factors are generally smaller. Even so, the wealthier individuals in a country experience life differently than the poorer ones, developing higher IQ scores and greater religious skepticism.”

Nice try

“although within-country differences in these factors are generally smaller.”

LOL!

Intelligence without the common sense to apply it isn’t a very impressive thing to brag about…

And…?

Looking at Romans and I Corinthians I would say our allotment of faith is not of the intellect, but is given to us by God. Because of this we are encouraged to walk together as those with greater faith can support those with lessor.

But that probably doesn’t generate clicks like a good ol’ who’s the smarter person debate.

Faith very much involves the intellect. We have faith based on reason. Perhaps some have developed the impression that faith means believing there was a global flood, and that all of creation took place within a literal 144 hours.

When many of us consider faith, the creation story and Noah’s flood, have no place in the discussion. We start with the belief our Creator is pure love. True creators create out of love, give out of love. Throughout time, God has been insistent that love works. His two great commandments are to love Him and to love one another.

Our faith is that God is a being of love who created us to become beings of love–and even more–we have faith that love works.

That is true faith in a nutshell.

A poster of yesteryear comes to mind: We can fly…but that cocoon has to go.

Nothing takes wing quite like love.