Intelligence and Belief in God

I am hoping to write a series of philosophical posts about God and Christianity and intelligence and science.  Making time is challenging but I figured I might as well start and see how it goes.

So this post is about intelligence and belief in God.  Obviously.  Because of the title of the blog post :-).

There are billions of people on the earth and some of them are very smart and some are very intellectually limited and then there is a huge range in between.

Being limited intellectually, by the way, isn't meant to be an insult. God loves intellectually disabled people with a special love, I believe. Their faith is often very pure.  God has a lot to say about the faith of little children and I think that includes individuals whose minds are like children even as adults.

It is sadly common among scientists to say that "believing in God" is stupid.  That only idiotic people would believe in  miracles, in a virgin birth, in resurrection, in the basic core foundation of Christianity.

This is the truth, though -- no one, no matter how intelligent, is entirely rational in his or her beliefs.  No one.  We all are emotional and spiritual beings. We all have a past. We were all raised in certain ways. We were exposed to certain things.  We have certain bents.  Believing in God is not just an intellectual exercise, it is extremely emotional as well. If there really is a God out there, then that changes our place in the universe in profound ways. Some people, like me, find that comforting.  Others find it revolting.

I grew up in a Christian home.  That was my foundation.  But neither of my brothers is a practicing Christian, so obviously that wasn't the whole answer as to why I am a believer in Christ.  But it is a factor, for sure.

If you look across history, there have been some very smart atheists, some very smart Muslims, some very smart Christians, some very smart Buddhists.

I reject that intelligence, in and of itself, is a reason to believe someone's conclusions about God.  An intelligent person may well be able to understand deep things that others cannot.  A genius certainly can understand things that I cannot.  BUT even a genius has his or her own worldview.

I am a pretty smart cookie.  I have a Ph.D. in engineering.  I did extremely well in college.  I have a scientific bent and am, I think, a quite logical person.

I appreciate my intelligence because there are things I have studied and can understand that help bolster my faith.

But if I say to someone, "Well, I have a Ph.D. and I know that Christianity is true because I'm smart" I hope that person would flog me with a wet noodle.  That is not enough.  I mean, we can talk about the science (I intend to in future blog posts) but just my stupid Ph.D. isn't enough to prove I am right.

Many smart people have been, and are, wrong.  That is reality.

So I guess I'm saying, let's be humble.  Let's also not trust that someone knows what he or she is talking about scientifically, socially, etc.  We need to ask God for wisdom (if we are so inclined) and seek truth.  Scientists from all walks of religion have contributed valuable things to our understanding of the universe.  But let's be clear -- being religious doesn't make me stupid.  Being an atheist doesn't make you (if you are an atheist) stupid.