Biblical Answers to Questions Christians are Asking Today.
Are Atheists Smarter than Christians
Hi. I'm Dave Dewitt. Today, I'd like to talk about the question, "Are atheists smarter than Christians?" A friend recently asked me if atheists are smarter than Christians. Actually, I think he asked, "Why are atheists smarter than Christians?" Anyway, I found the question intriguing so I wrote down some thoughts. As we encounter the liberal progressive agenda in, say, novels, movies, TV, programs in the public school system, K through college, we're indoctrinated with the idea that atheists are smarter than Christians. Atheists are usually depicted as scholars, thinkers, heroes, scientists, other well-adjusted people. Christian leaders are often depicted by some wack-all handling snakes, some legalist nutcase, or some idiot walking around, screaming nonsense, holding a Bible to his chest. In the average, Christians are usually portrayed as unintelligent, uninformed people who naively follow the wackos. Today's liberal progressive agenda ignores the scores of hard-working, moral, family-oriented, sound-minded, smart Christians involved in local churches, paratrooped ministries, and missionary organizations all over the world. And these people because they have a moral and theological foundation in the truth are smarter than smart atheists. Having said that, it is indeed true that many atheists are smarter than many Christians. It's probably even true that the average atheist is smarter than the average Christian. Biblically, that should not be true. So why is that? Well, first we should define a Christian. I shall here use the word "Christian" to identify a person claiming to have salvation by having received Jesus Christ as their personal Savior, as described in John 1, 12, and 3, 16. Their sincerity or lifestyle is not a consideration here. My definition would eliminate cults like the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses because they add to the Bible a biblical salvation. It would also not include people who are just part of a Christian country like England, as Anglican, Greece, Greek Orthodox, and so on. Second, we should define an atheist. There are two kinds of people who call themselves atheists. Most common are those who say something like "a good God would not allow all this suffering." These are just God haters, not true atheists. The true atheists are anti-supernaturalists. I believe there's nothing but the natural world. Not believing in God is just a byproduct of their anti-supernaturalism. For example, their commitment to naturalism is why atheists do not believe in miracles, but they usually make the mistake of not distinguishing between what's the mystical and the miraculous. Miraculous miracles are contrary to nature events, but like natural events, miracles are described as having public objective historical verification, like Moses crossing the Red Sea and the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Given the predominance of evidence, these events are true beyond reasonable doubt. Mystical events are reports of experiences that are private subjective and without historical evidence, like Muhammad receiving the Koran from the angel Gabriel, or Joseph Smith receiving the Book of Mormon from the angel Moroni. Theists are smart to not believe in mystical claims, but they're not smart to equate unverified mysticism with verifiable miracles. Third, we should define smart. The Meri and Webster dictionary defines smart as having or showing a high degree of mental ability. They offer synonyms like intelligent and bright. The New Oxford American dictionary defines smart as having or showing a quick-witted intelligence. They define intelligence as the ability to acquire and apply knowledge. We also know that the ability to acquire and apply knowledge comes from being rational. We're all born applying reason to observation to make sense of reality. When people stop applying reason to reality, we get the mental help or psychological help. So I would conclude smart is the mental ability to gain intelligence by applying reason to life's observations. The Bible does not say atheists are smart. The Bible does not discuss atheism per se because there's no evidence of atheists in the ancient world. During the times the Bible was written about 1500 BC to 100 AD, most people were polytheists with some pantheists in the Far East and the Jews who were monotheists, but there's no identifiable atheists. First, identifiable atheists appear in Europe in the 1600s, about 100 years after the Protestant Reformation. However, even though the Bible does not address atheism, the Bible has many statements that can be applied to atheism like Psalm 53 and verse 14 of Fool has said his heart there is no God. The one who says there's no God in Psalm 53 is probably a polytheist, not an atheist. David calls him a fool because he does not believe in one sovereign God. What the fool has in common with the atheist is they both deny the existence of a sovereign God. Conclusion, it's foolish to deny the existence of a sovereign God. Application atheists deny the existence of a sovereign God so they should not be smarter than Christians. Proverbs 9-10 says the fear of the Lord's at the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the Holy One's understanding. Repeatedly, the Bible connects wisdom and knowledge to the fear of God, and that leaves out the atheist. But an atheist is not someone without religious fear. An atheist is someone who fears something other than God. Since the mid-1800s, that fear increasingly comes from evolution, which has become a religion. Evolution is not smart because there's no observation of it anywhere, but evolution causes atheists to fear. They're afraid of things like global warming overpopulation, the extinction of animals, and the exhaustion of the planet's assets. With evolution, as to the religion, they fear things like the traditional family opposition to abortion, regulations of sexual expression, and securing national borders. They fear those things and those who support those things because they believe those things are destroying progress through a global utopia. It's not about preserving the planet, it's about preserving themselves. Conclusion atheists do not fear facing a holy God, but they do fear humans and what they can do to destroy the planet and keep it from becoming a humanist global utopia. Application, not smart to fear what man can do while ignoring what God can do. The atheist is conflicted because God has given us a general revelation of himself in two places. One is the natural world, as Paul describes in Romans 1. For example, the more we learn about the living cell, the further away we are from scientific explaining how it got there. The second one is our conscience, which Paul explains in Romans 2. All humans have a conscience that points to what is right, atheists retreat into things like technology to ignore their internal moral compass. Conclusion is unwise for atheists to ignore the evidence for God and nature and their own conscience. Application to ignore the evidence of God and nature and our conscience is not smart. Since the Bible says atheists are not smart, why does it seem like atheists are smarter than Christians? First, we need to recognize that smart atheists are not smarter than smart Christians. Richard Dawkins, Carl Sagan, and Christopher Hitchens are not smarter than Athanasius Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, John Wickliffe, Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Wesley, Isaac Newton, Jonathan Edwards, Ludwig von Beethoven, C.S. Lewis, or Charles Raery. Some smart Christians are smarter than smart atheists. Also, if we define smart people as those with the high IQ, those people tend to get educated by a doctrine, kindergarten through college, whose agenda is controlled by the liberal progressive mentality. If you put yourself under an indoctrination, you're likely to be converted to that doctrine. The progressive education doctrine generates most of our atheists. Atheists do not become smart people. Smart people are indoctrinated into atheism. But why is the average atheist smarter than the average Christian? We've seen that smart atheists are not smarter than smart Christians. Also, an application of the Bible says atheists are not actually smart at all. So why is the average atheist often smarter than the average Christian? I suggest the answer is clear and significant. Many Christians are mystics and atheists are not. Mysticism makes smart people and to dumb people. Mysticism is like a drug that drains away intelligence, whereas Christians should always be smarter than atheists. The reality is many are not. The main reason is many Christians have exchanged the belief in the revelation recorded in the Bible for a belief in mystical mental messaging. Instead of going to the Bible for a sufficient answer to what God told them to do, many Christians say God called me. God told me God led me. Mostly they're referring to mental telepathy, some imagined mental messaging, which they claim is from God, that beliefs separate Christians from reason and reality. Conclusion? What do we know about smart atheists and smart Christians? Oh, we know that smart atheists are not smarter than smart Christians. We know that atheists do not become smart people. Smart people are indoctrinated into atheism by the liberal progressive education agenda. We know that by applying the Bible, we can determine that no atheist should be smarter than any Christian. We also know that often the average atheist is smarter than the average Christian. Why? Because atheists are not mystics, and many Christians are. All over the world and for all recorded history, rational people have been smarter than mystical people. Atheists tend to be smarter than Christians in the same way rational people tend to be smarter than mystical people. Well, thank you for listening. A longer paper on the subjects with footnotes for the quotes are available on our website relationalconcepts.org. [BLANK_AUDIO]