Relious dumbasses v smarter atheists?

Independent.co.uk article:

Religious people are less intelligent than atheists, according to analysis of scores of scientific studies stretching back over decades.

Study found 'a reliable negative relation between intelligence and religiosity' in 53 out of 63 studies.

Scientosity?
I am not religious in the sense of social organisation or
identification - but I am in the sense of Unified Intelligence and I don't need a study to tell you that scientosity has defined intelligence in such a way as to bring mankind to the brink of destruction.
To be sure science CAN become whole again - so it is a particular kind of mentality that splits off and manipulates in the name of science, just as it did with religion.
Clever thinking and a masked intent to exploit and manipulate is called upon to pretend to explain the unexplainable or seek to justify the unjustifiable, but a clear discernment can see through complex financial packages without having to open them.
The mesmeric unconsciousness of ignorance is maintained by belief. Only waking up to observe your experience is your beliefs allows the nature
of mind to be appreciated and more consciously cooperated with.
Honesty doesn't need to be clever to tune in to discern and address a need - but in a system designed to undermine trust and replace it with mechanical process, honest people are seen as stupid, ignorant and
heretical. (Keep it hidden or you get targeted!)
Mechanical mind doesn't SEE anything real - it only
'sees' its programming as if it were real. Wake up and smell the roses!
Intelligence is not unlike 'in the Cloud'. Draw what you need for what you need as you need it.
The mind that draws a thick black line around itself
also thinks that it possesses life and intelligence as a power in itself. There's no lack of intelligence - but look at the use to which you put your mind and see that it is being used to limit, in order to serve a wish to have this experience (whatever it seems to be). So focused on the virtual reality of your own mind that you are unaware in
the main of all the complexity that is providing this experience. Not unlike the apparently simple screen in front of you now.
'Reality' as believed is manufactured - what then IS Real?
Put aside or pause the manufacturing machine of mental definition, judgement and belief and simply Be receptive.
God
is not secret. It is your wish to be a power unto yourself that demands to be kept secret, where love cannot enter - and so redefines and 'discovers' reality in its own image - as a polarized, fragmented and conflicting experience that demands defence and control in reaction to its own unrecognized reflection!
The play out of 'science and religion' as if actually separate or at war is just a game of ideas. All
facets of our being are in unified concert. They only seems like they war because of a secret intent to play the game of divide and rule.

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Extra responses to other comments:

To one who said:

If someone promised you eternal life, the protection of a loving super being, a feeling of moral righteousness, a purpose for living, answers to all the big questions, and a rule book for achieving the pinnacle of human potential… and all in exchange for having faith in something that wasn’t in any way proven, would you be suspicious?

 I responded:

Absolutely!
Your list is mixed up though.
Whenever true inspiration, intuition, recognition etc open in the human realm, the mind that manipulates it for its own ends steps in to usurp it. This doesn't mean that truth is corrupted but that the forms associated with it become associated with a manipulative intent.
The key is opening truth in one' own heart. The forces arrayed to prevent you from uncovering this are layers and layers of conditioning such that everything is used to maintain the box in which you think you think.
Not merely religion. Everything.
Looking at what is wrong with others is one of the decoys. Seeming to be more aware than the ignorant is one of the decoys.
The world-mind does what it does. It isn't as it seems. The filters and defences make communication almost impossible. What can be said in such limited concepts that is not rendered meaningless or misinterpreted to reinforce the defences?
As long as one seeks for oneself alone one is under a spell, a deceit, a manipulative intent. It is that distortion which pervades your list.
Your list would pass as 'temptation' because it misses the foundation, which is nothing to do with 'getting' it for oneself excepting this:
If you accept love for yourself it will share out to others and your world. In its SHARING is the recognition of Eternity. Of an edgeless and timeless being that is Always (here) - but completely disregarded by a consciousness engaged in its reflected distortions.
People who try to sell or convince are trying to eradicate their doubt. Everyone is free to choose what they think and therefore experience. And to learn and grow from cosequences.

Now I might say that the promise of eternal life is always already in your heart and is the link to a God that can never be broken - that could not be separated from no matter what you did or didn't do in your thought and its experience.
But because the sense of a separate one has meaning for you, you imagine a god to be a Super Separate One - which is both absurd and terrifying depending whether it is given time of mind. So I stand with you in not signing up for it.

Love - can it be proven?
Try letting someone else be altogether worthy of your attention. Overlook the reasons to withdraw or criticise or cut across. Go for it!
This uncovers your own worth to you as well as affirming the worth of another.
Of course it is a self fulfilling loop - just as is the refusal to love.
Mind Itself doesn't interfere with what is shared. Because you are it! You may seem to interfere with mind and so seem to be a something else in your own right - that CAN be interfered with! But the interference is local to what now seems to be your own private mind. Your own polarised experience. Fun eh?
Well apart from the loss of unified perspective...
One can also see it as like the sleeping princess who is encircled with defences that keep out all but the true kiss that wakens. What set that up? An excluded or rejected part of the whole.
What I am pointing to is not in the world - but in an aspect of our life that is before or beneath the world. The consciousness that is the inward aspect of what seems an outward event.

- - -

Zachariah said (to a women who shared that she felt a love in her life through her Catholic faith and quoted the saying of Jesus - to be as little children):
      
Your Catholic upbringing has indoctrinated you. Therein lies the issue because you will in all likelihood indoctrinate your children into Catholicism as well. Spreading ignorance and misinformation is wrong. Especially the mantra of the Catholic church which actively keeps hundreds of millions of women in poverty all around the world!       

I said:      
Wow!
So there's a total disregard for someone who is willing to communicate with you - and the seeds of a 'holy war' to stamp out evil indoctrinations and release hundreds of millions from an evil power that they have no choice in being subjugated by. Thank God for drones and microchip implants and the New World Order - then we can clean up this mess! (joke)

Everyone is subject to personal and family and cultural influence and in some way adopted it as what worked at the time out of what was available.
If you get to know anyone rather than identify in the mask, I feel you will discover they are far richer and more interesting than all this opinionating. Anyone who truly feels love in their life has a capacity for listening and discerning that grows by living it. We outgrow much of what once served and sometimes leave it behind and other times appreciate it in fresh and new ways.
Awakening life more abundant - right in the midst of a world that seems to be in darkness and conflict is like swapping a grievance for a blessing.
The outer forms shall fall away and willingness shine forth to know itself one in all.

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John Goatbirth said−
The problem with that is; How do you disprove something that doesn't exist? The religious brigade claim this "god" is there yet they have no evidence to support it. Atheists claim the god isn't there - the continued absence of this individual, I'd say, is a pretty good proof. Scientific studies, such as the ones which display prayer to do absolutely nothing, help back that up. Not that indoctrinated religious sorts would ever be able to see it this way. And scientific advancements have ridiculed religious claims. Of course you still get idiots saying, "Ah, evolution, so that proves how amazing god is!" as they cling desperately to the reigns of their moronic fallacy.

Anyway, I believe in Santa. He is real.

I responded:
You seem pretty good proof of God to me - why get complicated?

But, the presumption that God is a separate entity is a reflection of the
presumption you are a separate entity. I have no such presumption and
appreciate the toppling of an idol - but don't share faith in human
rationality which seems employed more to justify and serve this so
called separate entity in its private agendas and self presentations and
not an expression of true Reason at all.

Santa may actually be Satan; a love of form over true content. To take the forms of things from their true context and redefine with fantasy associations for the sake of a private gratification.

The word 'God' is just a pointer to an unspeakable and undefinable Presence in which separation and division is not.

The concepts of God are very very many. Even where many apparently believe
in God there is division - so mere belief is not meaningful unless it has realisation and living practice.

Kindness is appropriate to those of a kind - who don't seek difference and division and extend honour and compassion because they recognize themselves in the other in some sense.

If those who live the willingness of such a love do or don't associate or profess any particular brand of religion or spirituality - so what?

The heart has not a language of articulation or currency in a society that believes its own rationalisations of autonomy and control because honesty is the first casualty of such war - and it is war because it seeks power over life.

Merely following the forms of accepted respectability whether religious or
atheistic is simply aligning with the apparent power of the day.

There is no need to prove or disprove God - is there? There is no need to
engage in one-upmanship or personal or scientific superiority over
others - is there?

There is no need to have and defend an opinion or point of view - is there?

Underneath any kind of presentation about anything one will feel where it is
coming from. If it has integrity one can feel it - whether it expresses
in terms one agrees with or not.

What is integrity - it is not bluster and deceit but a congruency of thought and word and deed.

The attempt to seem to have it means that people adopt and dress up in all kinds of presentations - without real substance.

Few leave the apparent safety and comfort of a herd-like huddle to actually
explore or uncover for themselves - because it always means stepping
outside the definitions and conformities of one's peer group or upbringing.

The need for truth doesn't rise in those who get comfortable in a world of distraction. It arises in the loss of the capacity to engage or maintain such a 'life'. Opening to honesty isn't so that one can then make a stick and hit people with or set up a scam - but people do that with or without any relationship to honesty or pathsof discovery because of the urge to regain some sort of power or status from a sense of shame and a coating of arrogance.

You simply seek the witnesses to what you have already decided to believe. To accept a sense of unalloyed worth will surely shift your evidence gathering. Its all here to be uncovered if you want it.

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Panto:

capa75 said:
I am an atheist, though I did for a while believe in Santa and Rudolf, let's get that clear now, and I have been shot at, and it did not enter my head at the time to " suddenly" believe.

I responded:

Oh No You're Not! (Panto mode)
Because you believed, it did not enter your head to suddenly leave.
Adding things to our self seems to be how we enter and adapt to the world. People try things on and some fit or stick.
When this self is recognized to be the mask and not the real you - then a different purpose awakens. I don't think that what we think we believe or present as our identity counts for much - it is what we demonstrate in our relationships and our living that communicates what we actually believe - even if we never have a label for it.
Santa knocked Jesus out from Christmas - ironic anagram there. Life doesn't fit or measure into little boxes but presentations can masquerade as presence in a panto - and the audience can join in without leaving their seat.
The control mentality has to learn to manipulate attention in order to seem to be needed and effective.
Are we ever really in control?
It's another component of the make believe. Maybe the issue is more about a quality of joy, peace and a truly shared sense of life. If our imagination serves to allow it - IT wakes up to its own value and is not contained in the means by which it was made welcome.
If a make-believe of Christmas giving is incarnated with an actual willingness to give - not just stuff, but real appreciation and attention then something true is shared through the props. Why seek truth in the world! There is none in the props of themselves.