Theists and IQ

I've made it clear before that I don't think atheists are simply smarter than theists, or that theism is indicative of a low IQ.

I was joking around last week with the head football coach at my school (one of the two people at my school I've dialogued with on atheism) when I said, "I wouldn't mind if my wife left me for Tim Tebow," and he replied, "But then your kid would be raised a theist!" Completely unfazed, I replied, "Oh no, because my son would still have my genes and therefore a very high IQ and thus would never buy into that nonsense." I said it as a joke, but I know some people would take it seriously, although I know he didn't.

When some people ask me if I could ever believe in God again, I try to use Santa as an analogy. Not that I'm saying that I think god-belief is comparable to Santa-belief, but rather that when we learn about Santa's nonexistence through our own experience (seeing mom and dad buying toys or putting them together on Christmas morning) we are so completely deconverted from the belief that we would have to see comparable positive evidence to outweigh the negative evidence we've witnessed. In other words, I might believe in Santa again if he lands on my roof with his magic reindeer and flies off into the night in front of me. Ditto with God.

My experiences with witnessing human suffering are on the scale that I just simply cannot believe in any sort of powerful benevolent Being. If the problem of evil has some satisfactory solution (I don't think it does) then perhaps I could reconsider it, but I think all that would do is clear the logical obstacle that I think exists to prevent god-belief. In order to actually give me a reason to believe (rather than the capacity to do so) I think would actually require a burning bush or something just as dramatic in my own life.

Don't hold your breath waiting...God's propensity for all that miraculous stuff just so happened to go out of style around the time that technology started developing to record it.

It's great to be a Florida Gator

Two years ago and one day I last said this: It's great to be a Florida Gator!!!

Go Gators! Go Gators! Go Gators! Go Gators!

Go Gators! Go Gators! Go Gators! Go Gators!

Go Gators! Go Gators! Go Gators! Go Gators!

"...it's great...to be...a Flor-ida Ga-tor...yes it's great...to be...a Flor-ida Ga-tor...yes it's great..."

Just in case you're abysmally ignorant, the Gators (we) just won the national championship against the Sooners in an awesome fight.

On the BCS

The Hokies victory yesterday meant both of my teams may win their BCS bowls. Also, a note of analysis from the game showed me just how important defense is up against a good passing offense. Basically after losing Murray I think OU has a weake run option left, despite contrary assertions. After watching Cin give up 4 interceptions, I really think the Gators' D will win the game because Bradford hasn't been passing against such speedy defenders. The caveat is of course that Bradford's accuracy is much higher than Pike's and his wide outs are probably a lot better too. I also think that the OU defense won't contain our offense, and so we may have a pretty high score.

My prediction: Gators 45 - 27