MiloCast

I’m a member of a mailing list for non-theists. I wrote a message to the group today about a point a theist friend of mine and I disagree on in order to start a conversation on that point. Instead, one of the members responded with incredulity that I referred to my theist friend as “very intelligent.” This kind of thinking is a huge hindrance to the skeptical movement for many reasons. What follows is my reply to my fellow non-believer.

I understand where you’re coming from, and you have fallen victim to a very common misconception among freethinkers. We assume that since we are smart enough to see such obvious truths which are so fundamental to reality, we are somehow smarter than anyone who believes in pseudoscience, religion, or any other irrational junk.

What we must realize is that by treating people differently based on that judgment makes us as guilty of intolerance based on ignorance as fundamentalists. If people who believe religious garbage are necessarily not intelligent, then we would clearly see this in the real world: All the religious people would work at McDonalds or be on welfare, and all the millionaires, CEOs, and scientists would be atheists. Obviously this is not the case.

The truth is we simply don’t know what the difference is between a theist’s mind and a non-theist’s mind — not even those of us who are ex-theists. If we did, we’d be using that information to systematically eliminate religion from this world because of the harm it does.

Every intelligent theist makes decisions as rationally and intelligently as we do. However, they base their decisions on a collection of beliefs which contains some very wrong ideas. I’m sure you and I do the same and have some very wrong ideas about other things, although they may be nearly insignificant compared to religious dogma.

Understanding this and treating people with opposing views properly based on these ideas is very important. First of all, treating them like idiots is a stupid way to try to convince them to listen to us. Also, if we approach the problem with an incorrect hypothesis about the source of it, no solution we dream up is likely to be effective in actually fixing the problem.