Salon.com’s headline: “Religion’s smart-people problem: The shaky intellectual foundations of absolute faith”
Matt’s headline: “Salon.com’s all-people problem. The shaky intellectually bankrupt foundation of an unread magazine.”
Should you believe in a God? Not according to most academic philosophers. A comprehensive survey revealed that only about 14 percent of English speaking professional philosophers are theists. As for what little religious belief remains among their colleagues, most professional philosophers regard it as a strange aberration among otherwise intelligent people. Among scientists the situation is much the same. Surveys of the members of the National Academy of Sciences, composed of the most prestigious scientists in the world, show that religious belief among them is practically nonexistent, about 7 percent.
Now, it’s interesting to me that they pick a very liberal organization to find the “smart people” the headline alludes to.
How about the top CEO’s of billion dollar companies? Are they “smart people?” No, Salon.com doesn’t like those people. Because even though they may be smart they’re not the intellectual elite that Salon writers and editors fancy themselves belonging to.
Make no mistake, these guys are poking Christianity here. The picture that accompanies the story is a Christian one. The ironic thing in that is you just have to love it when an online magazine that started in 1995 predicts doom for a 2,000 year old institution such as the Church.
Oh, and just so you know, Salon.com has stayed around as long as it has mainly because the former CEO’s daddy, William Hambrecht, keeps pumping money into it, according to Wikipedia.
The story goes into evolutionary explanation for religious belief but frankly I got bored reading it. It’s not that it’s offensive, it’s just boring. It’s stuff I’ve read and heard so many times before. That’s the thing about the so-called “smart people.” They’re so rigid in their thinking because they’re so afraid of being outed as a non-smart person. That’s their big fear. They can’t talk about things like the possibility of an immortal soul, or love outlasting this life, or view the creation of the universe as an act of love. They can’t because that’s oogedy-boogedy religious crazy talk. They can’t publicly question their secularist doctrine.
And yet their favorite pastime is telling Christians they have closed minds.
