Are Human Beings Intelligent?

“So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.” Bertrand Russell     

Human beings arrogantly assume they are intelligent creatures having compared themselves to "lower" life forms that haven't invented wheels, money, or TV. Well, birds don't need wheels, monkeys barter sex for food, and lizards didn't write those awful final seasons of "Friends.” To be sure, humans do have a knack for turning abstract thoughts into inventions and for synthesizing information to predict the future. But if that’s all our definition of intelligence* entails, then I will retract what I’m about to say about human intelligence; um, that is, that humans are not intelligent. Sure, on occasion, humans do display an ability to reason, which is the other common requisite for intelligence and is the link between abstract thought and invention. But if we’re talking about how often we collectively exercise the ability to reason, especially in our day to day lives, then we don’t seem all that intelligent as a species. It seems that a number of other so-called intelligences take precedence as we go about our lives; interpersonal intelligence and bodily kinesthetic intelligence, for example. While using reason to create tools and predict the future is great, rare is the person who takes reasoning seriously as a tool for running their lives, much less the lives of anyone else.  

[* - I’m discounting our ability to communicate in a variety of ways as a facet of intelligence as many animals can do as much, though not with the same complexity. But I discount the complexity of human language as well because that complexity also drives misunderstandings.]

We are all aware of the headlines that alert us to common acts of stupidity, such as the man who calls police to report the theft of the marijuana he was illegally growing in his attic; as commonly reported by sources such as News of the Weird and the Darwin Awards. More examples of human stupidity include building huge cities in earthquake prone areas. Stupid. Living in a trailer home in Tornado Alley? Stupid. Giving teachers paychecks that are dwarfed by multi-million dollar high school drop-out athletes and rappers because the human need to be entertained is greater than the human need to be skilled or educated? Stupid. Oh, and have you ever heard Celion Dion cover AC/DC? I’m not even kidding! The average human is about as smart as a box of rocks, and that’s probably giving people too much credit as well as being an insult to rocks.

While these sorts of headlines tackle the everyday stupidity of humans, there are far worse examples of humans not exercising their supposed intelligence. Take for example the eagerness of the agriculture industries (BigAg as it is known in the U.S.) who stealthily implements genetically altered foods into our food chain without studying the long term effects these foods might have on us or the environment. Here, the afore mentioned ability to synthesize information in order to predict the future goes right out the window for the sake of the short term monetary gain by a minute handful of people. In this respect, we might also take for example industries that pour their toxic wastes into rivers and oceans and endanger what is arguably our most important resource, water. Moreover, what of energy companies that intentionally suppress the advancement of clean, renewable energy? And what about cloning? International law notwithstanding, surely humans will soon be cloned with regularity. Who will control this technology and for what purposes? Sadly, our ability to create is forever outpacing our ability to philosophically deal with the ‘intelligent’ Dr. Frankenstein within us. So, are we intelligent?

That’s a good question to ask oneself, especially when one believes in a god. Meta-studies appear to indicate a correlation between intelligence levels and strength of faith, where the more education one has appears to lead to a higher percentage of agnostics and non-practicing theists, if not outright atheists. There's a reason why religion is not taught in public school and colleges; it is not compatible with reason. If a theist is to seriously think about human intelligence, they should find themselves asking exactly why any supposedly intelligent creator would create an intelligent species with such an inceredible capacity for stupidity. Why would God create something so dumb that it would proclaim itself, in the face of an entire universe, as the pinnacle of creation? We’re talking about an entire species dedicated to the Black Swan Syndrome; we don’t know of any life as intelligent as humans, so humans must be the most intelligent in all the universe! We can continue to ask these types of questions: Why would a god create humans with such poor reason, who are constantly making choices that endanger their lives or otherwise make themselves unhappy? And why, in the name of all that is holy, would God like to be worshipped by these idiotic creations? Even the robots humans build do not require that the robots worship their creator.

The reasonable answer to these types of questions is that God, were He to exist, is a moron. But we do have to give credit where credit is due, for in a single stroke of cleverness, God gets off the hook for creating such dumb things as people by the virtue of faith. That’s right, faith, the dumbest psychological position a person can commit to; this is what excuses God from having made humans as unintelligent as they are. Human being are so unintelligent that it takes something like a human to create and define the word ‘intelligence,’ assign the word great moral value, and them proclaim itself to be intelligent. In much the same way that God cannot be moral by proclaiming to be the standard of morality, humans cannot be intelligent by proclaiming to be the standard of intelligence.

Naturally, someone is going to disagree with me and say something like, “Well, other animals cannot ask themselves why they exist,” which goes to show you exactly how stupid humans are as the person making this argument obviously hasn’t first asked if their argument is even logical. Humans aren’t intelligent. For every example one could give in favor of human intelligence, ten examples of human stupidity can be given in response. By contrast, humans are far more arrogant than they are intelligent, which would explain why supposed alien abductees claim aliens use people as lab rats. But this merely shows how dumb the aliens are, too. I don’t think they’re going to learn much from us. If they were smart, they’d already know that.

God's Plan Sucks

While I’ve recently been pointing out that being religious doesn’t necessarily make people bad, it doesn’t necessarily make them good either. Nor does being religious necessarily make people stupid, though the two often appear to go hand in hand. I submit as evidence the average apologist’s defense for the presence of evil in the world: It’s a part of God’s plan.

The presence of evil in the world while there is an allegedly powerful and benevolent god watching over us all is formally known as the Problem of Evil. Monotheistic apologists, who aren’t much for thinking, often recite any number of defenses as a reflex to the Problem of Evil. [While there are many complicated and convoluted answers to the Problem of Evil by some of the more clever theologians, that’s exactly the irony; faith should be simple and not require mental gymnastics to justify its finer points.] However, all answers are sorely insufficient and ultimately lead to the same place. For example, a theist may defend the presence of evil in the world as a punishment for the transgressions of Adam and Eve, with the rebuttal being, “Remind me again why I am responsible for the actions of others, especially when I wasn’t there to stop Adam and Eve from disobeying God? Oh, and if I am responsible for their transgressions, why? If I simply am responsible, God appears to have an arbitrary reason. It’s not like He said we’re responsible for each other from the get go; that’s nowhere in the Bible. You can’t hold us accountable after the fact. I mean, come on!” It’s right about now that the theist will invoke faith in ‘God’s plan,’ invoking faith since they do not know what God’s plan is. (Assuming God’s plan was in fact known, the next question that arises is why doesn’t an omnipotent god simply make things the way God wants it to be without all the suffering?)

I find that this particular answer to the Problem of Evil – having faith in some unknown plan – incredibly distressing. Imagine a god who – for some strange reason despite being omnipotent and omnibenevolent – thinks it’s okay for human beings to torture each other so that said God’s plan can be achieved. Think, really pause and think, of all the wars and manners of fighting, genocide, murders, rapes, general pain and suffering inflicted by human beings upon one another. [I think it is reasonable to leave out so-called natural evils such as hurricanes and earthquakes from the Problem of Evil since atmospheric and geologic activities have no intent.] For the amount of suffering that takes place to be necessary to some unknown plan of God is kind of like needing at least two overly ripe bananas to make banana bread; the plan can’t be achieved without it, can it? But that’s just it, no one really knows what the plan is or just as importantly, why this plan and not another, say, one that requires less suffering? After all, we don’t need banana bread and if we do, well, I’m sure there is banana bread out there made without bananas. (Granted, it may not be as nutritious.)

Sure, some theists indeed pretend to know the mind of God. They may say that God’s plan is for as many people to go to Heaven as possible or for people to accept God precisely because of all the suffering. As I’ve said, though, an omnipotent God could simply make these things happen; God could start off with everyone in Heaven with no need for an earthly life or provide more evidence for His existence so that suffering (read: coercion) would not be necessary to believe in God. That latter answer, that God includes suffering in our existence as a means of coercing us into needing an afterlife bespeaks of a despicable god. We certainly would frown upon a fellow human being who was so manipulative, yet God gets a free pass because He’s God? If that’s not arbitrary-meets-circular reasoning I don’t know what is.

Unable to answer the Problem of Evil, the theist will speak of how virtuous faith is, of how believing in a plan without evidence is somehow noble. Of course, theists never apply this vision of faith to any beliefs they don’t personally hold; Christians never say that Jews or Muslims are virtuous for having faith in their gods. No one says that the North Koreans are virtuous for believing their leader is a demi-god. Faith is not a virtue. Neither is stupidity. Both take little strength of emotion and no strength of intellect.

I don’t like God’s plan, probably because God’s plan looks a lot like things people simply want to believe without thinking too much. Even if we were to suppose God does exist, God’s plan looks terribly sadistic, which again, is a human trait. Any god deserving of my respect is above such human frailties.

What I Don't Like About Being an Atheist

I’m not much of a follower. Not being a follower only explains a small part of why I think gods and the religions based on them are a bunch of hooey, though. To me, the idea of the existence of gods simply doesn’t make philosophical sense. Now, if you want to compartmentalize me as an atheist – because compartmentalizing is what we humans do – you’ve categorized me with a group of people I don’t have much in common with. That is to say, scientific atheists (those who believe reality can be explained in scientific terms, thus, there is no need for religion to explain reality) comprise most of the population of atheists, at least in the Western Industrialized world. [Full disclosure: I have no citation for such a statement and I am arguing from anecdotal evidence.]

While I believe scientific explanations give us a more accurate picture of reality and as such leaves less room for religious explanations, I feel that scientific explanations are not sufficient enough to completely absolve us of the possibility of the existence of God or gods. Philosophy alone is sufficient enough to conclude gods do not exist but you won’t catch too many atheists using philosophical arguments to deny, say, Creationism. Instead of saying Creationism is false because they have reasonably concluded there are no gods, atheists typically use the scientific explanation of Evolution to counter the idea of Creationism. This tactic has had limited success; for every victory for Evolution like the one in Kansas 2005, like a venereal disease Creationism keeps coming back because its proponents core beliefs haven’t been properly challenged.

What is worse is that in pressing creationists on their explanation of life instead of their explanation of God, scientific atheists are as militant as any theist ever was. Having once been the object of scorn, these atheists apparently feel there still isn’t enough vitriol in the world. Worse than that, is that in giving their side of the argument, scientific atheists often commit as many logical fallacies (e.g. ad hominid attacks, straw man, etc.) as theists do. It appears as though scientific atheists want a reality based upon scientific explanations, logic, and reason but often couldn’t tell you what the scientific method is much less act with logic or reason in their everyday lives. Personally, I bear little respect for hypocrites.

I’m not going say I’ve never been a hypocrite but I do try to act with reason and logic in my life. I also do not commit ad hominid attacks in the course of a debate (unless you’re a Scientologist). Instead, when dealing with people I try to be patient and understanding. I also try to be humble, though that is difficult given how smart and handsome I am. So while I may be an atheist, what I have in common with other atheists is often superficial.

I told you I wasn’t a follower.

The Basics of Pi-ism

[Ed.'s note: People think I'm making fun of religion through Pi-ism; Pi-ism is charged with being a parody religion. But is it a parody religion or is it a meta-religion? You be the judge.]

The Least You Need to Know About The Religion Based on Pi (As detailed in the book “The New Adventures of Pi.”)

• God chose philosopher and atheist Theory Parker to become His latest prophet because God feels that theist prophets are not adequately conveying God’s messages.
• To demonstrate God’s powers (and sense of humor) God used Her divine powers on Theory Parker to keep him from actually believing in the existence of a god.
• God’s existence appears to be contingent upon a question God has. The universe we live in is part of an equation God has devised to answer this question. Our universe was created to calculate the irrational number Pi to a finite number.
• All living things are variables in this calculation of Pi. Pi can only be solved by its variables acting in a particular manner, thus the need for The Suggestions, aphorisms God invites us to contemplate if we want to better ourselves as a variable.
• The Suggestions are: 1-Be Good, Be Happy 2-The Best Things in Life are not Things 3-Learn From Your Mistakes and .14-What You Will is the World.
• Due to Pi’s irrational nature, all things are possible, even the idea that God exists and does not exist at the same time. All religions are derivatives of Pi-ism with the exception of Scientology, which God specifically calls “retarded.”
• Dreams are sometimes glimpses of ourselves in other universes. These glimpses of our other lives are meant to be a learning tool.
• There is no free will as far as Pi-ism is concerned (meaning, there is no such thing as you having a free will). This is meant to be an encouraging idea and not the terrible idea everyone seems to think it is.
• Most importantly, God abhors violence and interference in the lives of others.

These are the most basic tenets of Pi and it associated religion, Pi-ism. Want to know more? Pick up “The New Adventures of Pi” on Amazon.com or Lulu.com today!

Adam and Evil

“I’d rather laugh with the sinners than die with the saints; the sinners are much more fun…” Billy Joel

For two thousand years, a great deal of fanfare has surrounded the idea that people need to be ‘saved’ by accepting Jesus Christ as their savior because we are all sinners. The idea of sin goes back to the very first chapter of the Bible in the Book of Genesis, in which the first man and woman, Adam and Eve, perpetrate what is known as The Fall. Certainly, such a notion is a primary reason why some theists go to great lengths to justify a belief in their singular God and His son. Only, a critical analysis of this particular creation myth reveals a god that, if actually existent, is a god of questionable morality and perhaps even malicious.

In the book of Genesis, after God has made the Earth and heavens, He decides to make man in the likeness of Himself (and other unnamed gods) for no reason that is made even remotely obvious to the casual reader. Then, because this man, Adam, is lonely, God makes animals for the man to have dominion over. Next, He makes a woman for Adam, presumably because having sex with sheep is inappropriate. God places the both of them in the beautiful garden of Eden where they may live happily ever after, but not without a dire warning: Do not eat from the Tree of Knowledge. If they do, God warns, they will die.

Most of us are familiar with what happens next. A serpent comes to Eve, telling her one lie and one truth. If Eve eats fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, not only will she not die—a lie—but she will come to have knowledge of good and evil as the gods do—the truth. After eating the fruit (presumably a bad apple), she then gives her husband fruit from the tree and he eats it too. They now know the difference between good and evil, which seems to come as a surprise to the typically described omniscient God the next time He comes around.

Incredulous, God punishes Adam and Eve. For starters, they’re going to die—and the serpent who instigated the entire affair, who gets off relatively easy by comparison. In addition, not only are Adam and Eve going to die, but God tells Eve she is going to bear tremendous pain during childbirth and subjugates her to her husband, while Adam is sentenced to the backbreaking task of having to grow their own food. Finally, they are cast out from the Garden of Eden least they try next to eat from the Tree of Life and live forever.

It appears Adam and Eve sinned; they disobeyed God, and from this a reader is to extrapolate a lesson: If you disobey God, the consequences will be undesirable, to say the least. However, a philosophical question arises as to whether or not Adam and Eve acted with ill intentions towards God and whether or not they should be punished for what they did.

I think it is fair to point out that it is perfectly clear that Adam and Eve had no knowledge of what was good and what was bad prior to eating the forbidden fruit. God may have told them that eating the fruit from this particular tree would result in their death, but they had absolutely no cause to believe that either death, disobeying God, or prancing around the Garden unclothed were bad things until after they ate the fruit.

With that in mind I think it equally fair to say that it is God then that explicitly bears the responsibility for creating the circumstances that would cause Adam and Eve to “fall.” What reason did God have for putting the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden? Why did He create a serpent that would be so beguiling as to fool Eve? If He was testing Adam and Eve, He must have known they would fail this test given that God is (or described as being later on in the Bible) all-knowing. Of course, if God had chosen not to know the future regarding this matter, God is either irresponsible or worse, a sadist. For the theist who wishes to take this creation account seriously, the absence of any analysis is required to think that God might not be evil. But we mustn’t judge too quickly.

We learn by reading further into the Book of Genesis that thanks to Adam and Eve’s disobedience, every subsequent human being suffers consequences. Because of the first man and woman, everyone is now born with a stain upon their soul as punishment for Adam and Eve’s insubordination. Certain monotheists call this “Original Sin,” something from which they think everyone is in need of being “saved” from. But what God does to Adam and Eve is akin to my requiring you to rob a bank with me, not tell you the details of the plan, then have you die during the heist so that I can get away unscathed. Best of all, your ancestors take the rap! Again, we must ask the compelling question as to why God would set the events of mankind into motion in such a manner. If we take into account that the Judeo-Christian god is described as being as omni-benevolent as He is omniscient (though we cannot figure out why from the Genesis account, other than to have faith that what the Creator creates is good), why did The Fall turn out to be anything but good? Couldn’t an all-powerful God have prevented this mess?

We, as human beings, must require that we know God’s plan in order to determine whether or not His punishment from the onset of our supposed history is just. Yet, if God is silent, if His ultimate plan is a matter of speculation, we might speculate many things—and that includes discovering who the Wizard of Oz really is. Given the account of man’s creation in Genesis, somewhere, somehow, one or more of God’s three, traditionally ascribed, major attributes—omnipotence, omniscience, and omni-benevolence—has failed to make either who God is or the story of Genesis (or both) credible.

God’s supposed goodness suffers the greatest damage in Genesis. After all, a child doesn’t know the meaning of a punishment until they are actually punished, so it seems odd to me that God would choose to punish his creation (and his creation’s creations) so severely. If God’s reasoning was to think that it would surely teach humans to never disobey Him again, He positively failed on that account.

It is this failure to be kind to his creations that casts doubt upon his other attributes, most notably His capacity to see the future. If God knew, or even could have logical deduced what the outcome of The Garden of Eden scenario might have been, He should have refrained from creating Adam and Eve. [That is, if humans hold God to any recognizable moral standard. Heck, even God’s own standards.] If God did not know what the outcome of events would be, then He is not omniscient.

Unfortunately, the best theistic defense is to characterize God as a perfect entity and this, they argue, by definition must include omniscience. Thus, if what the theist says about God’s omniscience in relation to His perfection is true, then God had to have known what was going to happen. If that’s true, we must return once again question God’s supposed benevolence. “Ah,” the theist will continue, “Keep in mind that God is perfect. God cannot not be benevolent.” But this would make God amoral since a being can only be moral if able to make choices. Even if God could choose evil but never did, we still couldn’t be certain that he could commit evil if He’s never made that choice. God must have free will then, hence, no one can be positively certain that God was without some evil intent in the creation of mankind. The theistic defenses of God’s qualities that allude to perfection drown in a circular sea of reasoning as quickly as any other characteristic ascribed to God.

            Given the contrivances in the story of Genesis, one should find it difficult to entertain tradition monotheistic descriptions of God seriously. God cannot be perfect because omniscience/amorality prevents this from being the case (a theistically “moral” person would argue, anyway). Nor can God be omniscient without casting suspicion on His “benevolent” motives. We might, for a second, consider that God is indeed supremely powerful given that the logic necessary to make the attributes of God mesh with the story of Genesis is as impossible as a square circle. But if God can only do what is logically possible then God’s attributes are reduced to contradictions, though perhaps we should have seen that coming. On the other hand, we humans are not omniscient and we’re not perfect. Maybe that’s a good thing.

References

God. The Holy Bible . 1000th. Hippo: Synod Press, 393.

Krueger, Douglas E. What Is Atheism?. 3rd. Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1998.

Plato. The Trial and Death of Socrates. 1st. New York, NY: Dover Press, 1992.

Smith, George H. Atheism: The Case Against God. 1st. Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1979.