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

The Biblical author that fascinates me is the J (Yahwist) author. Howard Bloom thinks J was a Judean woman, probably in her 40's. I'm thinking she might have come from somewhere in Iraq, or knew people who grew up there, because J draws on so much from Sumerian folklore and didn't seem to know much about Egypt.

And yet we weren't speaking of them, but merely those who "believe."

And what do they believe?
The Bible.

Because you insist upon seeing it as "belief" rather than a different form of inquiry. It's like someone who's colorblind saying "You just imagine you're seeing colors. They don't exist because I can't see them. "

Explain how this "different form of inquiry", functions.

"Your's is the superior intellect."

There's nothing in the definition of colours that says they should directly relate to colourblind people in any way. God, in any meaningful use of the word, is supposedly creator, moral authority, or supreme power above even those who can't see them, and in fact, believers making such a claim are tantamount to a seeing person telling a colourblind person that he could see colours, if only he'd open his mind, because they are a fundamental truth.

Like Diacanu, you're describing religion. Religion =/= God; God =/= religion.

I mean, if it resembles rational inquiry in every single way, then why not just present an argument for belief?

If reason isn't the instrumentality, then what?
Mushrooms?
Sensory deprivation tanks?

I always thought it was interesting that monotheists worship a polytheistic God. God said "Have no other gods before me", not "there aren't any other f***ing gods."

Then God said, "Let us make mankind in our image..." Genesis 1:26

This I'll give you.
It's as if God were trying to marginalize and eliminate the competition... Now he has to fight being marginalized and eliminated from the game himself!

It is called henotheism, @gturner.

The other thing I find fascinating about the J author is that she was probably a non-believer, which gets into some psychology about writing. She wrote a lot into Yahweh's character and gave him a big arc. He started out walking around, sniffing the air and such, and dropping by on people having dinner. As the story progresses he becomes more and more remote, till by the end of the Story he's more like what we conceive of as God. But if she conceived of him as a believer would by the end of the story, she could never have written the earlier parts where he was more like a guy who walked around looking at things and talking to people. You can't really write a character creatively if you think you're talking about your true god.

So I think she has to be a non-believer, or perhaps a partial believer, or she wouldn't have been able to do such an incredible job with the character (even though God was more of a supporting character, but central to the theme). I like to think of her as "the mother of God."

I was recently listening to a long NPR interview with Howard Bloom, and one thing that amused me was his complete rejection of the idea that the God in the New Testament is the God in the Old Testament. He couldn't even reconcile that the two books remotely belonged together, as if the character of Hamlet was written into King Lear.

If I run in to him, I should explain that the Christian Bible is like a box set of the original Star Wars Trilogy that includes Clerks and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. You have to be familiar with the first work so you can catch the references to it in the latter, which are movies about epic events that occurred among the superfans of the original trilogy.

I'm laughing at the superior intellect.

What does this have to do with being atheist or agnostic?

Khan: Full impulse power!

Joachim: No, sir! You have Genesis! You can have whatever...

Khan: [grabs Joachim in anger] I ALSO WANT THE REST OF THE BIBLE! FULL POWER! DAMN YOU!

What? Which of my three descriptions applies to religion? Is it supposed to have created the world, possess supreme power, or be the ultimate source of morality?

Nah, superior intellect isn't right.

Not crazy is more apt.

Yes they have every right to think you a dumbshit for learning lots of bullshit.

It all comes down to cowardice about death.
It's the stupidest thing to fear.
We're all going to die.
No one in history has escaped it.
Even Jesus died all over again (if you believe in that story).
Beating death isn't even a fucking option on the table.

Everyone wants to live as long as possible, everyone fears the dying process, my sympathy goes that far, but death itself?
You just go back to where you were before you were born.
You big pussies.
You big dribbling pussies.

All that'll be left of you, is memories.
And when everyone who remembers you dies, then you'll truly be deleted.
People can't handle that part.
Tough shit.
If you want to be remembered for quadrillions of years by people you'll never meet, that's just solipsism.
And there's nothing noble about solipsism.
That's what chaps my ass about afterlife belief, the solipsism.
And religion telling you that solipsism is noble.

Well, if solipsism is so wonderful, let's hand out Nobel peace prizes to house-cats, because they're LOADED with it.

google google. I don't think solipsism means what you think think it means. It seems to be the opposite of the belief in a higher being than yourself. The only place I've heard the term used in polite company was a Heinlein novel, so I could be wrong. Heinlein had some strange ideas about cats too.

A higher being with an ego that gives your ego a ticket to forever in the name of....ego.

shrug. The definition of solipsism seems to be that only oneself exists, nothing else is provable. I'm just a figment of your imagination.

Odd, I was certain you were a figment of mine, but now you claim it's Dicky?

It is solipsistic to believe that the universe is organised with you in mind.

As for the original question, there are numerous studies showing that educated people are less likely to be religious.

yes. be quiet figment. Dicky is trying to get off.

The multiverse mythology:

"Pantheistic solipsism is a technical term (properly "Pantheistic multiple-ego solipsism") that has been advanced for the World as Myth idea proposed by science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein in several of his books and stories, although the concept has little in common with either pantheism (the universe is God) or solipsism (nothing exists but my mind)... The World as Myth involves the idea that a powerful author, such as Edgar Rice Burroughs, Isaac Asimov, or Heinlein himself, creates a parallel universe simply by writing about it." (source)​

The Number of the Beast took that idea to extremes. I think Heinlein was a bit whacked when he wrote it. Job: A Comedy of Justice was more fun.

Zelasny took a stab at that too, both in his Hugo winning Lord of Light and the expansion of the ideas in the Chronicles of Amber. Of course, his characters had a bit better reason to be solispsistic - they were demigods with the ability to create realities to fit their whims. But even then the answer was no, because other creators could impact their new realities.