From: Chris Ho-Stuart <>
Newsgroups: nz.soc.religion,aus.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Ross's evidence
Date: 1 Mar 1999 07:17:33 GMT

Marcelo Cantos <> wrote:
> Then let's do a straw poll.  I invite any atheist reading this to
> comment on the following statement by Julian that started this
> discussion:
>
>   Atheists don't write garbage, just the truth.

A number of counter examples can be found in this group.

Atheist mean "does not believe in God". That is it. It carries
no special implication of superior intelligence or ability.
It does not take a genius to figure out that there is no
good evidence for God's existence, and thus it should be no
surprise that a large number of atheists do not stand out for
genius, or even above average ability.

Conversely: superior intelligence does not imply consistency
in one's world view, nor total protection from being mistaken.
Thus it comes as no surprise (to a sensible atheist) that many
theists are very intelligent indeed.

There is a trend towards disbelief or at least non-conventional
belief with increasing education and academic ability. However,
this trend is by no means universal, and therefore no particular
conclusions should be drawn about an individual based on this
attribute alone.

I have been reading this thread with interest, because Marcelo,
the theist, is in fact displaying significantly better rhetorical
and logical skills than some of the other contributors. On the
other hand, some other theists are providing some stunning lows
in argumentation.

I'm a strong atheist. That means I take the positive position that
God does not exist, and I accept a certain burden of proof for
that proposition. My own apologetics for strong atheism can be
found at http://www.fit.qut.edu.au/~hostuart/why.atheism.html

Cheers -- Chris Ho-Stuart