This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Working Title: Belief Makes You Stupid: From YKTTW
Bobby G: I removed this clause from the KateModern section: "- of course, he's been suffering from "memory loss" the whole time", since Steve doesn't even have that excuse (the memory loss turned out to be a lie). Kudos for doing the research, though.
Bob: Cutting the Mass Effect part for not being an example of this trope. She tells you that she gets funny looks for being religious, but she's not portrayed negatively because of her beliefs and neither is anyone else in the game.
- Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams of Mass Effect is treated this way by other humans. In a world with Casual Interstellar Travel and gobs of surprisingly human-like aliens, believing in any sort of higher power is an extreme outlier. She's the only crew member with no technical or biotic skills, ridiculously xenophobic, acts as The Rick, and is one of the three crew members at risk of permanent death.
- Copernicus was after all a churchman. So was Newton.
- I've removed the "So was Newton" part. Newton asked for, and was granted, exemption from taking holy orders when he became Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge. His own religious views were complicated, and he was neither a non-heretical Anglican nor a freethinker.
Nornagest: Pulling this until I can see some documentation —
- * Atlas Shrugged, thankfully watered down before release.
The annotated version I read mentioned that a priest character had been cut from the final draft — a sympathetic one, whom the male lead (the interesting one, not the flawless Mary Sue one) would have confided in. Ayn Rand not being known for her subtlety or her compassion for intellectual inferiors, that doesn't sound much like Belief Makes You Stupid to me.
Gattsuru: 35th Anniversary version's foreward says that James Taggart regularly confided to a priest in an earlier version of the book (the priest being a throwaway character, and Taggart being as close to the Big Bad as Rand's "those who are opposed to me are morons" viewpoint let the story develop). It was supposed to be another outlet for Taggart's self-deception, and that self-deception is supposed to be part of why Taggart's "If we are to perish, let’s make sure that we all perish together. Let’s make sure that we leave them no chance to survive!" viewpoint exists in the first place. Ayn Rand hated religious gumps, too.
Dalantia: Real life examples are starting to look like Complaining About Religions You Don't Like. Contemplating whacking the whole shebang and just putting the tag "Don't do it, it's not worth the bickering".
Cosmetor: I thought we agreed to avoid real life examples before the page was even made. Which makes me wonder why they take up half the page.
Wraith_Magus: Why is this considered subjective? It is not for talking about real life religions at all, it is about talking about fictional examples where religion is portrayed as inherently negative. That seems fairly objective, unless you want to get subjective about where the borderline is. It is simply not for real life examples, that is all. As an addendum: This page could use a more thorough description to clear up confusion.
I think there's a problem here. I don't claim to understand the anti-religious any more than they understand me, but I'm pretty sure they don't think that belief makes you stupid, but rather stupidity makes you believe.. like, it makes you rely on belief because you don't have the knowledge that (they would say) rightfully belongs in its place, explaining things.
Schizo Technician: It all depends on who you're talking to. I myself happen to know many otherwise very intelligent people (such as my father, and most people at his synagouge) who occasionally do, say, or make a habit of incredibly foolish things due to their belief. They're not stupid- in many areas, my father is smarter than I am. Nonetheless, I see him as behaving foolishly- due to his belief, not the other way around.
theFirebottle : I think this is a chicken-egg question. Belief makes you stupid, but stupid people are more prone to counterfactual beliefs in the first place? On the other hand, some study came out recently that it's not increased education that correlates to reduced religious belief but increased material security i.e. wealth. So the more comfortable you are in this world, the less inclined you are to invest a lot of feeling in a "next" world, and intelligence has nothing to do with it unless you're a Randroid who believes rich people are rich because they're smart and virtuous and poor people are poor because they're dumb/lazy/bad.
Johnny E: I just read it as an epistemic statement, that belief means you are stupid, as in "you believe in God? Well, that makes you an idiot". Maybe I'm reading too much into it.
