There's No Nailing Ordinaryclay (Jello) To The Wall

[bornagainathiest]

OrdinaryJello wrote...

Posted 29 September 2012 - 07:17 PM

"The bottom line is we all have faith because we all have some belief we hold through subjective reasoning. We trust it to be true based on our life experiences. Having such faith is not irrational, and it is just weasel words to claim otherwise. There is good evidence that God exists and Christ is who He says He is. That said there are many truths a Christian must take on faith. We can not possiblly know everything. There is nothing wrong or irrational about it. Non believers simply cling to the notion of faith being irrational to comfort themselves."

 

Sorry folks, but there's nothing you can use to nail OrdinaryJello to the wall with.

 

Nothing will work.

There's no point appealing to Dictionary definitions of words.

There's no point trying to catch him out with anything from the Bible, either.

Nor is is it any good using anything from science, either.

There's no point in trying to constrain OJ, using any kind of standard or measure.

He's got the ultimate Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card and he uses it whenever he likes.

So what is this magic bullet?

.

.

.

Subjectivity.

.

.

.

 

OJ can trump anything we throw at him by appealing to the subjective.

We can't force him to agree to any objective definition of anything he doesn't want to, because he'll just disagree with whatever definition we give to anything. Please note that I've said, "...anything he doesn't want to..."

 

That's the kicker!

He'll happily agree with anything that doesn't contradict or undermine his beliefs and therefore, just as happily claim that his beliefs are supported by good evidence. (See the quote above) Conversely, anything that appears to contradict and undermine his beliefs won't be agreed to and will then be cut down by his appeal to subjectivity.

 

According to OJ, we all use subjective reasoning.

Therefore, belief is a matter of subjective personal choice and not adherence to an objective standard or measure. Such a position cannot be argued against or even reasoned with. How can it be? Any argument anyone can make against this is automatically cut down as subjective, as a matter of choice on his part. As I said before, there's no objective measure or standard OJ can be constrained to abide by. He can opt to hold his own, subjective p.o.v. on any issue and this right cannot be taken from him.

 

Pick anything. Name anything you like.

The Bible. Science. Philosophy. MetaPhysics. Epistemology. History. Archaeology. Linguistics. Dictionary definitions of words. Anything at all. What ever you use, you'll be trying to nail him down with what you think is objective evidence. You'll fail to nail him down for two reasons.

 

Firstly, because he's not obliged to agree that it your evidence is objective. Since we all use subjectivity in our reasoning, he can blithely claim that your 'objective' evidence is nothing of the sort. You only think it is, because your reasoning is... s-u-b-j-e-c-t-i-v-e.

 

Secondly, he's not obliged to agree with your definition of any of the terms you use. Any definition you use is also based upon reasoning that is... s-u-b-j-e-c-t-i-v-e.

 

Therefore, I contend that OrdinaryJello cannot be argued against or even reasoned with.

 

It's hopeless.

 

BAA

[Guest Babylonian Dream]

His subjectivity arguements are suspiciously similar to End3's.

[♦ ficino ♦]

You are equivocating on jello.

[mymistake]

His subjectivity arguements are suspiciously similar to End3's.

 

Not suspiciously similar, rather it's systematically similar. And it's not just like one, there are thousands who think like this. Some people subject themselves to it more than others. Some people are more susceptible to it than others. Those who are melted down and poured into that mold wind up shaped the same. It's how Christianity changes one's worldview.

[RankStranger]

This is why I don't bother to engage this type of christian. They've decided what they're gonna believe- and they will bend over backwards to rationalize it. IOW, they're not even remotely interested in reality as it pertains to their supernatural 'beliefs'. Their only interest is in maintaining and defending that magical thinking.

[TrueFreedom]

Yep--he's hopeless

 

*disengages*

 

*hides posts from OC*

[mcdaddy]

as bad as Jay is, OC takes the effin' cake. ive seen few live in such a delirious sense of "reality".

[Ravenstar]

hmmm.... it seems to me that taking 'reality' as purely subjective, to say all is subjective and the subjective is the reality (which is what 'faith' says), is a recipe for chaos. How would you judge anything to be real?

 

It's like a self-imposed acid trip... where feelings and impressions become your environment. You could not trust your senses at all.

 

down the rabbit hole we go...

 

I don't know if i expressed that well.

[bornagainathiest]

You are equivocating on jello.

 

Sorry Ficino, but your words are the products of your subjective reasonings, therefore I cannot process them thru my own subjective reasoning.

 

 

BAA

[asanerman]

OrdinaryClay

 

His God is the Subjective

 

His belief is Subjectivity

 

I suppose that's ordinary clay religion.

 

Anything is impossible with this guy's God, his Ultimate Ground Of Being.

 

He just subjectively thinks he's christian when in subjective reality he's A-theist-ic!

 

I'm sure OC is a stand up kind of guy but man I can do without all this dead ended thinking.

 

It reminds me of the snake that ate its own tail until there was no more snake. The snake ate its way into snake heaven.

[Vigile]

The man is the classic Black Knight. He isn't jello, he just refuses to acknowledge he's been beaten.

[bornagainathiest]

hmmm.... it seems to me that taking 'reality' as purely subjective, to say all is subjective and the subjective is the reality (which is what 'faith' says), is a recipe for chaos. How would you judge anything to be real?

 

It's like a self-imposed acid trip... where feelings and impressions become your environment. You could not trust your senses at all.

 

down the rabbit hole we go...

 

I don't know if i expressed that well.

 

It's ok Ravenstar. I know exactly what you mean.

 

OJ isn't being completely and totally subjective. Instead he's being selectively subjective.

Total subjectivity is (as you say) a recipe for chaos and nobody can live that way. No. He's carefully and calculatingly exercising his judgement on this matter. There's no chaos involved. He only plays the subjectivity card when it suits him. He does so any time it looks as if we might pin him down to any kind of external, objective standard of evidence that would threaten his beliefs.

 

For instance, let's say that you and I are debating X, which you say is good evidence for the non-existence of God. When you do that, you are agreeing to bind yourself to a standard of objectivity that is outside of you. Now, if you choose to accept X and I don't, look at what happens. You consider X as bona fide evidence and therefore think it should be binding on me. But I don't accept the objectivity of X! Instead, I reply that X is a result of subjective reasoning on your part. That sound familiar?

 

This is what's been happening recently, when we've been trying to pin OJ down to hard-and-fast definitions from the Dictionary. We've made the false assumption that if we accept these definitions, he MUST do so as well. Sorry! But he doesn't have to. There's no law written across the heavens that says that OrdinaryJello must abide by what's in the Dictionary. In fact, he doesn't have to abide by anything we want to impose on him.

 

So Ravenstar, I'd say that OJ is being SELECTIVE about it what he calls subjective and what he doesn't.

 

Does that help?

 

BAA.

[bornagainathiest]

The man is the classic Black Knight. He isn't jello, he just refuses to acknowledge he's been beaten.

 

I appreciate your input Vigile, but I can't agree.

 

Does the Black Knight play according to the rules (of Chess) imposed upon him?

Is he beaten according to those rules?

If the answers are Yes and Yes, it doesn't matter if he won't accept defeat... he's still agreed to play within the rules.

 

OrdinaryJello won't be bound by any rulings we ordinary members think we can impose on him. The only ones he will abide by are those imposed by the Mods, which carry the penalty of censure and/or expulsion. Provided he stays within the guidelines of good forum behavior, they can't eject him from the field of play. You'll notice that he never, ever questions the meaning and the definitions of this forum's rules, eh? He's too smart for that.

 

I recall a line from Tron:Legacy, spoken by Jeff Bridges...

"If you don't make the play, you can't be beaten."

That's OJ. He never makes the play according to any other rules than his own - provided he thinks he can get away with it.

 

Thanks,

 

BAA.

[Vigile]

[midniterider]

OrdinaryJello wrote...

Posted 29 September 2012 - 07:17 PM

"The bottom line is we all have faith because we all have some belief we hold through subjective reasoning. We trust it to be true based on our life experiences. Having such faith is not irrational, and it is just weasel words to claim otherwise. There is good evidence that God exists and Christ is who He says He is. That said there are many truths a Christian must take on faith. We can not possiblly know everything. There is nothing wrong or irrational about it. Non believers simply cling to the notion of faith being irrational to comfort themselves."

 

Sorry folks, but there's nothing you can use to nail OrdinaryJello to the wall with.

 

Nothing will work.

There's no point appealing to Dictionary definitions of words.

There's no point trying to catch him out with anything from the Bible, either.

Nor is is it any good using anything from science, either.

There's no point in trying to constrain OJ, using any kind of standard or measure.

He's got the ultimate Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card and he uses it whenever he likes.

So what is this magic bullet?

.

.

.

Subjectivity.

.

.

.

 

OJ can trump anything we throw at him by appealing to the subjective.

We can't force him to agree to any objective definition of anything he doesn't want to, because he'll just disagree with whatever definition we give to anything. Please note that I've said, "...anything he doesn't want to..."

 

That's the kicker!

He'll happily agree with anything that doesn't contradict or undermine his beliefs and therefore, just as happily claim that his beliefs are supported by good evidence. (See the quote above) Conversely, anything that appears to contradict and undermine his beliefs won't be agreed to and will then be cut down by his appeal to subjectivity.

 

According to OJ, we all use subjective reasoning.

Therefore, belief is a matter of subjective personal choice and not adherence to an objective standard or measure. Such a position cannot be argued against or even reasoned with. How can it be? Any argument anyone can make against this is automatically cut down as subjective, as a matter of choice on his part. As I said before, there's no objective measure or standard OJ can be constrained to abide by. He can opt to hold his own, subjective p.o.v. on any issue and this right cannot be taken from him.

 

Pick anything. Name anything you like.

The Bible. Science. Philosophy. MetaPhysics. Epistemology. History. Archaeology. Linguistics. Dictionary definitions of words. Anything at all. What ever you use, you'll be trying to nail him down with what you think is objective evidence. You'll fail to nail him down for two reasons.

 

Firstly, because he's not obliged to agree that it your evidence is objective. Since we all use subjectivity in our reasoning, he can blithely claim that your 'objective' evidence is nothing of the sort. You only think it is, because your reasoning is... s-u-b-j-e-c-t-i-v-e.

 

Secondly, he's not obliged to agree with your definition of any of the terms you use. Any definition you use is also based upon reasoning that is... s-u-b-j-e-c-t-i-v-e.

 

Therefore, I contend that OrdinaryJello cannot be argued against or even reasoned with.

 

It's hopeless.

 

BAA

 

I think there is a sense of butthurt because when you say 'irrational' he hears 'wrong.'

[bornagainathiest]

OrdinaryJello wrote...

Posted 29 September 2012 - 07:17 PM

"The bottom line is we all have faith because we all have some belief we hold through subjective reasoning. We trust it to be true based on our life experiences. Having such faith is not irrational, and it is just weasel words to claim otherwise. There is good evidence that God exists and Christ is who He says He is. That said there are many truths a Christian must take on faith. We can not possiblly know everything. There is nothing wrong or irrational about it. Non believers simply cling to the notion of faith being irrational to comfort themselves."

 

Sorry folks, but there's nothing you can use to nail OrdinaryJello to the wall with.

 

Nothing will work.

There's no point appealing to Dictionary definitions of words.

There's no point trying to catch him out with anything from the Bible, either.

Nor is is it any good using anything from science, either.

There's no point in trying to constrain OJ, using any kind of standard or measure.

He's got the ultimate Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card and he uses it whenever he likes.

So what is this magic bullet?

.

.

.

Subjectivity.

.

.

.

 

OJ can trump anything we throw at him by appealing to the subjective.

We can't force him to agree to any objective definition of anything he doesn't want to, because he'll just disagree with whatever definition we give to anything. Please note that I've said, "...anything he doesn't want to..."

 

That's the kicker!

He'll happily agree with anything that doesn't contradict or undermine his beliefs and therefore, just as happily claim that his beliefs are supported by good evidence. (See the quote above) Conversely, anything that appears to contradict and undermine his beliefs won't be agreed to and will then be cut down by his appeal to subjectivity.

 

According to OJ, we all use subjective reasoning.

Therefore, belief is a matter of subjective personal choice and not adherence to an objective standard or measure. Such a position cannot be argued against or even reasoned with. How can it be? Any argument anyone can make against this is automatically cut down as subjective, as a matter of choice on his part. As I said before, there's no objective measure or standard OJ can be constrained to abide by. He can opt to hold his own, subjective p.o.v. on any issue and this right cannot be taken from him.

 

Pick anything. Name anything you like.

The Bible. Science. Philosophy. MetaPhysics. Epistemology. History. Archaeology. Linguistics. Dictionary definitions of words. Anything at all. What ever you use, you'll be trying to nail him down with what you think is objective evidence. You'll fail to nail him down for two reasons.

 

Firstly, because he's not obliged to agree that it your evidence is objective. Since we all use subjectivity in our reasoning, he can blithely claim that your 'objective' evidence is nothing of the sort. You only think it is, because your reasoning is... s-u-b-j-e-c-t-i-v-e.

 

Secondly, he's not obliged to agree with your definition of any of the terms you use. Any definition you use is also based upon reasoning that is... s-u-b-j-e-c-t-i-v-e.

 

Therefore, I contend that OrdinaryJello cannot be argued against or even reasoned with.

 

It's hopeless.

 

BAA

 

I think there is a sense of butthurt because when you say 'irrational' he hears 'wrong.'

 

Point of order, Rider!

 

I've never called him irrational.

When OJ wrote, "Having such faith is not irrational, and it is just weasel words to claim otherwise." he was referring to other members of this forum, not me, ok?

.

.

.

 

As I've outlined to Ravenstar, I think OrdinaryJello's actions are very calculated and controlled. Very rational indeed.

This Christian should not to be under-estimated. If we make the mistake of thinking he's just irrational, then we are playing into his hands. If we go with McDaddy's colorful description of him... "OC has officially replaced Jay as the most dumbfuck xian in ex-C's history." ...then we are just fooling ourselves.

 

Make no mistake, OrdinaryJello is no ordinary, run-of-the-mill Christian apologist.

He's a master logician. He's supremely intelligent. He's thoroughly well-read. If he hasn't written the book on semantic sleight-of-hand and word games, then he should have. He's got years of experience in forums like this one. He's always looking to raise his game. He actively seeks out forums like this one to match himself against the best Atheists, Agnostics and un-believers he can find. He's always probing for new angles of attack and always looking for weaknesses in the oppostion. He can't be negotiated with, bargained with, bought off, sidetracked or dealt with on any other terms than his own.

 

I first crossed swords with him, back in 2008 (in a different forum) and he was formidable, even then.

 

Don't ever doubt the depth of his Christian conviction, either. If he does have doubts, he never, ever declares or even hints at them. This is one 'True Believer' who'll go to his grave with his beliefs 100% intact.

 

So, I can't agree with you, Rider.

OJ's way too clever to misconstrue the word 'irrational', taking it to mean 'wrong'

 

Thanks,

 

BAA.

[Vigile]

He's a master logician. He's supremely intelligent.

 

Nah, respectfully, the guy doesn't have the first clue how to use logic. He proved that in the other thread when he just threw out random logical phrases demonstrating he didn't even know what they meant or how to use them properly. The guy just grabs a few tidbits from Craig's site to make himself appear smarter than he is and once rebuffed and left without a canned Craig response, he falls flat on his face. Though, like the Black Knight, he claims victory anyway.

[Ravenstar]

"I reply that X is a result of subjective reasoning on your part."

 

I'm sorry, that's just fuckin' gaslighting.

 

"no, it must be all in your head—I am worried about your grip on reality, I never touched the lights, I wasn't even here"

 

bullshit

[Guest Babylonian Dream]

I'll have to agree with Bornagain on a few things. He's clearly using everything he knows to wrap up himself in faith. He's very intelligent, and tries very hard at what he does. His faith is a tower of sticks on a swamp. The tower is slowly sinking, while it also is growing as he builds it up. His finding "proof" of the BIble shows he has a logical side, whether or not he uses it correctly.

 

IMO, his subjectivity BS to me sounds like he's waxing overphilosophical, just to maintain faith. Its something I also did, bury my beliefs in philosophy before I finally gave in to selfhonesty.

[bornagainathiest]

He's a master logician. He's supremely intelligent.

 

Nah, respectfully, the guy doesn't have the first clue how to use logic. He proved that in the other thread when he just threw out random logical phrases demonstrating he didn't even know what they meant or how to use them properly. The guy just grabs a few tidbits from Craig's site to make himself appear smarter than he is and once rebuffed and left without a canned Craig response, he falls flat on his face. Though, like the Black Knight, he claims victory anyway.

 

Ok Vigile.

 

With equal respect, if you think you can take him down - he's all yours.

 

Thanks,

 

BAA

[florduh]

Who could take him down? It's like going to Monty Python's Argument Clinic.

 

"The dictionary says faith is belief without evidence."

 

"No, it isn't."

 

"Yes, see right here in the definition?"

 

"That dictionary is subjective."

 

"So do you have some evidence?"

 

"Yes, of course."

 

"Can you show me?"

 

"I already did."

 

"No, you didn't."

 

"Yes, I did. Did you buy the half-hour argument or the full hour?"

[LivingLife]

As for the black night, I actually had a 3D chess game that enacted this when a black night was defeated. It was pretty cool and this was in the Pentium 1 (or 2) days. Every move had animated battles instead of pieces merely disappearing. Shit game, I never won once.

 

OC is not worth the effort and few woos are. I used to enjoy the one on one debates back when intelligent people only came on the interwebs and were moderated debate. The shit he pulls would have had him lose the debate by default. I am not impressed. He is merely a master debator.

[mymistake]

He's a master logician. He's supremely intelligent.

 

Nah, respectfully, the guy doesn't have the first clue how to use logic. He proved that in the other thread when he just threw out random logical phrases demonstrating he didn't even know what they meant or how to use them properly. The guy just grabs a few tidbits from Craig's site to make himself appear smarter than he is and once rebuffed and left without a canned Craig response, he falls flat on his face. Though, like the Black Knight, he claims victory anyway.

 

Ok Vigile.

 

With equal respect, if you think you can take him down - he's all yours.

 

Thanks,

 

BAA

 

What do you mean? Clay has already been taken down. He went down in flames when he started quoting the dictionary. He then when into this pathetic game of pretending he won. Once his argument falls apart he has lost. We don't have to wait for Clay to grow up and admit he has lost. That might never happen.

[♦ ficino ♦]

No need to read through the whole post quoted below (on the now moribund 'Repenting after Death' thread), but in part of it, OC accused me of equivocating. i contend that I did not equivocate and that OC attacked things that I did not say. I admit that I did not get all of "Molinism" correctly. When I offered to OC and others to continue the discussion if someone wanted to carry the ball, there was no response from OC (nor from others, but that's OK in their case because OC was the one who brought up Molinism).

 

To Ordinary Clay, Living Life, Centauri, Bornagainathiest, and everyone else who's interested:

 

I submit that the argument for Molinism (yes, time travel back to our discussion of April) is vitiated by an equivocation fallacy.

 

First, to recap: Molinism holds both that God is First Cause and that humans make decisions by free will. (see previous parts of thread for fuller exposition of this). The question matters as part of our bigger discussion of the Problem of Evil. Molinists like William Lane Craig and Ordinary Clay claim to have solved the problem of evil by showing that evil is the result of freely willed choices by creatures AND showing that God remains omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, and that God's grace does its job. “Freely” means “not determined by causes other than the agent’s will;" the agent is able to choose P or not-P.

 

So the issue matters for lots of us on here, whether we're believers or not.

 

Molinism makes a distinction among God's types of knowledge. To explain how decisions of creatures are free, Molinism posits that God foreknows by "middle knowledge" all possible worlds. Therefore He foreknows all the decisions that, say, Ruth will make in all possible worlds. Let's say He foreknows that Ruth will choose to believe in Christ in a world in which conditions x, y and z are actualized. God then creates a world in which x, y and z are actualized. The same holds in the case of all decisions of all free-willed creatures. The bundle gives us the actualized or "factual" world. If God had chosen to create one of the other worlds, in which different conditions would be actualized, then in some of these counterfactual worlds, Ruth would believe (i.e. x, y and z would be actualized in those worlds, too), and in others, she would not (in them at least x, y or z would not be actualized).

 

Here's why I think there is an equivocation on the term "Ruth" in this line of argument.

 

God's middle knowledge knows all the possible decisions of Ruth, including the one God likes, and God creates a world in which that one will be actualized. So by His middle knowledge He knows lots of counterfactual Ruths and the one actual Ruth whom He creates. By His free knowledge He knows the actual Ruth as actual. God knows by Middle Knowledge that she will choose P under conditions x, y and z. God wants Ruth to choose P. God therefore creates a world in which x, y and z are actualized, so that it’s guaranteed that Ruth will choose P.

 

But the actual Ruth is not identical to any of the counterfactual Ruths because not all that is true of the actual Ruth is true of them (and vice versa). So when the Molinist says, "God knows all the decisions Ruth would make in all possible worlds and chooses to create the world in which Ruth will make the choice he wants," the first "Ruth" in this sentence is not identical to the "Ruths" in the counterfactual worlds. There's an equivocation on "Ruth" lurking in here. The Molinist argument treats "Ruth", the inhabitant of the actual world, as a term that can be mutually substituted for "Ruth" the inhabitant of counterfactual worlds. One may grant Wm. Lane Craig that God can have knowledge of counterfactuals, but that’s not the issue. Not all that is true of Ruth the inhabitant of the actual world is true of Ruth the inhabitant of some counterfactual world. Therefore there is a vicious equivocation upon Ruth; the argument surreptitiously exploits a jump from the counterfactual Ruth to a conclusion about the factual Ruth. It is not legitimate to consider what "Ruth" would have decided in some counterfactual universe and compare that to what she decides in the actual universe, because there would be no "Ruth" in that universe, only someone else whose life narrative would make "her" a different person; there is no "she", identical in both parts of the argument, that supports inferences about one from conclusions that involve references to the other. Put another way, there is a missing middle term in the argument, and its absence is masked by the equivocation on "person" or "Ruth."

 

Afterthought: the Molinist might want to formulate the God's Middle Knowledge argument so as to avoid inferences about an actual person's decisions from premises that involve reference to the person's decisions in counterfactual worlds. But this won't work, because Molinism trades precisely on a distinction between the knowledge by which God knows all possible worlds, and thus, all a person's possible decisions, and the knowledge by which God knows the world He actually brings into existence. There is no Molinism anymore if you don't appeal to counterfactual "Ruths," but if you do, you equivocate when you draw conclusions about the actual Ruth.

 

You are engaging in an equivocation of the notion of identity. You use an undfined idea of being different people based on having made choices. You are not an actually different person just because you chose to make your post. You are the same person who happened to have made a choice. Following your reasoning we end up with absurdities involving responsibility. If we are different people after each choice then our justice system has no right prosecuting anyone because the person who committed the crime no longer "exists". Absurd.

 

I put this argument out here hoping to receive criticism, so thank you for yours. From what I've read in the literature so far, it's clear that there are a number of takes on Molinism even among its proponents, and the arguments are very slippery (I think partly because of floating variables like "omniscience," as I said a while back). So I have more thinking to do.

 

So far I see no equivocation on "identity" in what I wrote. Where do I use that term in a sense different from the sense that I impart to it in another part of my argument?

 

You do not seem to have read what I wrote carefully, OC - or of course I could just be missing things. Where did I say that the actual Ruth becomes a different person after an actual choice that she makes? Your forensic analogy imputes that position to me, and it is not mine.

 

My point focuses rather on the ontological constituents of worlds. Molinism trades on the notion that God by middle knowledge knows all possible worlds and knows all freely willed actions that someone will perform / choices that someone will make in each of those possible worlds. Then He actualizes one of those possible worlds. The standard notion of "person" entails a world in which that person is, as it were, embedded, or of which it is a constituent. The "Ruths" as inhabitants of possible worlds are not identical to each other because "Ruth" is under a different description in each possible world. A comparison might be made to the actual world vs. the worlds of historical fiction. Julius Caesar the actual personage is not identical to the Julius Caesar the literary character because one belonged to the "actual" universe and the other belongs to a fictional, i.e. possible, universe, and each "Caesar" is under a significantly different description. That analogy may help to explain my point that the actual Ruth is not identical to bundles of possibilities in other possible worlds. If "she" is so treated, one of two things must go on, as I see it. 1) the argument is moving from a context-free Ruth, who is a construct not a person but nevertheless wills freely, to a context-embedded Ruth, a complete person--thus equivocating. Or, 2) the difference between the actual world and counterfactual worlds disappears.

[pandora]

I have no problem with reasoning and debating logically with Christians, "intelligent" or not. I think that the more reasoned responses probably help these people think more deeply about their sacred cows. The harsher posts do nothing to help us.

 

It rubs me the wrong way when we start calling them stupid, deceived, etc... we are doing the same thing they are. Many Christians are very intelligent, some more than I am. But to say they are stupid is just being mean, IMO. It ignores the deep psychology of belief and why people believe things and join religions. A distorted psyche can make even a genius believe irrational things. And we, as atheists, agnostics, and freethinkers, still sometimes cling to beliefs that are emotionally relevent to us, no matter how much we try to say they aren't. To ignore this is to ignore the great effect that our psychology has on us. They are on a journey, and it may take some people years or decades to come to the same revelations that you came to in a moment or day, regardless of the person's intelligence, IQ, or educational attainment.