Do athiests have the right to consider themselves the superior intellect?

Or agnostics for that matter.

I was reading an article on Carl Sagan a little while ago and this debate was an obvious extension of it. Now, I have to admit that as a non-believer of organised religion or a fixed deity I tend to find fixed and prescribed ideas that aren't based in at least some evidence pretty damned absurd. But the fact is that there are more people on this planet than not that believe in a deity. Atheism and the non-religious account for less than 20% of the world's population (albeit that figure is steadily growing).

Just how big a measure of arrogance is it that we believe we have the answers to the universe?

Or is humanity that stupid that it cannot see what we regard as the obvious?

The question is why there were atheists all through the ages. Everyone else at least could offer an explanation for the Earth, but back then the atheist answer to almost any question about the natural world would've been "Darned if I know. Never really gave it much thought."

I think it is shortsighted, and myopic, to consider oneself the superior intellect based solely on one's belief system, or lack thereof. That's a good way to reinforce confirmation bias.

Argumentum ad populum?
Really?
The Tasvir gambit?

And to get a sword in your gut.

Well at least in the Middle Ages.....

I have doubts that when push comes to shove, anyone is really an atheist. At most they're just sleeper agents for various Go'uld system lords.

If I were an agnostic in the Middle Ages, I'd be the most Christian Agnostic I could be. Swords in the gut are something I aim to avoid.

Anyone who feels the need to consider them self to be a superior intellect almost certainly is not.

So, you don't consider yourself a superior intellect to say, a slug?

• You haven't thought through it. For one thing, Medieval swordsmanship, though advanced, is not as good as a Glock. For another thing, none of the texts offer even a hint about handling an Ebola carrier. They all explain in great detail how to spill your enemy's blood all over you, but none explain how to avoid that outcome. Surprisingly, none of the masters wrote a treatise titled "Just run away, He'll be dead in three days!", despite their experience with the Plague. The corpus of Western Martial Arts should contain detailed manuals on subduing people with viral hemorrhagic fevers, but they are silent. probably because nothing worked and everybody died.
• For another thing, what did my cats click to bring up these little dots? How can cats bullet point an argument?

Sure they do, but everyone has that right, not just atheists.

I'm atheist, but there seems to be little correlation between intelligence and religious belief, or lack thereof.

My personal theory is that the human tendency to ascribe actions to god(s) is due to some combination of our pattern recognition (such as how we see faces in clouds), intuition for cause and effect, and social need to find our place in a hierarchy.

One could make the argument that atheism, which has a label and a distinct set of practices and a proclivity for insistently and sometimes indignantly spreading its message of disdain/dismissal/outright hatred, has become a belief system in and of itself.
maybe we humans are simply wired to follow: either an unknowable something, or a nothing that we turn into something by our steadfast constant reinforcement.
One could say also that the only thing more foolish than believing in some supreme intellect floating above our heads, is believing in the concept of a supreme intellect hierarchy with creatures as silly as ourselves at the top of it.

Yup, that's strictly a Religious conceit: "God(s) did it".

I call myself an agnostic rather than an atheist because I know I don't have all the answers.

Atheists have the right to consider themselves as having the only reasonable position on the existence of gods. Beyond that, atheists are just as capable as theists of compartmentalizing rationality and of believing true things for irrational reasons. Lets face it: anyone following what's been happening in the atheist online community knows that Richard Fucking Dawkins promotes rape and thinks that if a woman is pass-out drunk she's the legitimate plaything for anyone who happens by.

I hope you meant that ironically.

Indeed.
Arrogant is saying that not only is the universe sentient, but you're in communion with it, and this renders you smarter than all the scientists whom ever lived.
But, that brand of arrogance gets a pass, and for no other reason that everyone's just used to it.

This was the first link I found on Gogle about that:

http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2011/07/04/ladies-richard-dawkins-knows-h/

#50ShadesofTed

Greg Laden is an evil pig.
He threatens people with physical violence more than fucking Tasvir, and then turns around, and acts like a white knight.
And in this article, he twists words.
A real piece of shit.

Dawkins never said you can "just walk away from an assault in an elevator".
Here's what really happened in "elevatorgate".
Girl walks into elevator, guy joins her in elevator.
Guy asks her to come to his room for "coffee".
She says "no thanks".
He says "okay".
Incident over.

There you go.
That's it.
That's the story from her own lips.

Dawkins then rightly ridiculed her over her white-people-problems.

Assholes like Laden deliberately warped it into "Dawkins likes rape!!!".
Then he throws in a case where a woman is really raped in an elevator, and is like "yeah, betcha like that, huh, Dawkins?".

Fuck him sideways with a table leg.

Those who say "There absolutely, positively is no such thing as a god or gods, and anyone who believes there is is an unthinking slug. "

It's the assumption that finite man is capable of understanding a possibly (we don't even know that for certain) infinite universe.

Or they simply equate religion with God and can't climb out of that box.

Get God to show up on Letterman, and I'll believe in him.
No, you know what, I'll even watch Fallon for that shit.
Yep, that's how accommodating I'll be.

I'm not afraid to be wrong.
My ego isn't that fragile.
But in the meantime, I'm not going to play the "hedge my bets", game.

Sword to various body parts would at least be quicker than the standard way they dealt with people who even varied slightly fromorthoxed dogma. They loved to burn people at the stake for even minor differences of religious opinion.

You're playing the "God = Religion" game. It's silly.

Even minus religion, I find none of the arguments for belief to be the slightest bit compelling.
They could all be applied just as well to Leprechauns or Winnie The Pooh.

But Leprechauns are real! I'd prove it with the pot of gold I found at the end of the rainbow, but I had to pay it all in taxes, then blew the rest on hookers and blow

Admitting that you don't know everything is not hedging your bet. A wise man knows when to say "I don't know."

No, I don't know everything.
Never claimed to.
The authors of the Bible on the other hand....