A friend shared this article with me: Liberalism, atheism, male sexual exclusivity linked to IQ. It got me thinking …
In general I’ve never been comfortable with the idea of an intelligence quotient. It’s not that I don’t think humans are endowed with various levels and types of intelligence, but that the topic seems to typically end-up as a device for self-aggrandizement and manipulation of others. Certainly skeptics and doubters, liberal thinkers and manly-men, may find satisfaction in contrasting their supposed intellectual prowess with those they label faith-head, credulous, superstitious and woman. But honestly, I’m not sure that either side of any given issue is necessarily more intelligent or more stupid-perhaps less intellectually disciplined or in touch with the facts on the ground? If so, we ought not ignore real distinctions in quality of thought. There’s utility in it. And while it is true that liberal thinkers, skeptics, atheists and all varieties of so-called intellectualsâ„¢ have their woo-woo as well, I rather find most of it far less ominous and intellectually objectionable than a religiously fundamentalist belief that one’s own thoughts are, from time-to-time, virtually indistinguishable from those of the most powerful and wise being in the universe. I mean, what ever happened to “your mind is not my mind?”
Ironically, it’s the god-fearing, god-channeling types who tend to see themselves as humble servants while pointing at the less-believing, calling them prideful and arrogant for not submitting themselves to faith. In light of what a believer claims to know … or at least strongly believes … how does this finger-pointing make any sense? Really, who’s being haughty and proud? Those who say “I don’t know,” or even “I know I have no reason to believe that god speaks to human beings, and I also see no evidence to support such claims by others?” Or those who claim not only the contrary but that anyone who denies such is at best unfortunately ignorant and at worst a liar, deceiver, or even a minion of hell?
So how have we gotten ourselves into this crazy state of affairs?
I don’t think it’s about intellect or IQ-such arguments are zero-sum, red herrings-as much as it’s about the worldview a person happens to have been taught from early in their most impressionable phase of development. It’s about our children being trained to think in certain ways. All of us were taught many things, a large part of which we pass-on as wisdom. Some of us, myself included, were taught to develop and build-upon natural inclinations toward a mental disassociation from physical reality, and to act as if the fruits of this practice (“by their fruits ye shall know them”) are as real as the physical world; in fact, more real and binding upon the physical universe and all its inhabitants. I was trained this way as a child and it has taken some very difficult circumstances and many years of concerted effort to only partially revert. Consider the life-altering power of this lesson taught to children in song and story:
Before a child learns to believe-in, adore, and worship Jesus, she must first be given a reason to do so. The reason given is implicit in every teaching about the mission of Christ, and it is one of the most fearful possible things a human being might embrace: belief in one’s own need for external salvation. Implicit in the teachings of salvation by Jesus Christ is that without Jesus the individual human being is at best utterly worthless and at worst an enemy to all that is good.
I now feel I was trapped: enslaved, really, by bonds of religious, magical and fearful thinking introduced in early childhood. Is it condescending to believe this? It would be difficult to deny it. But such belief is also the other side of where I was before … a place of honestly believing that all human-kind is evil and bound for unhappiness and destruction unless I play my bless-ed role in God’s plan to set his people free .. which he’ll do with or without me of course! I’m on the other side of this now … the side which holds to a very thin sliver of the mind’s ability to weigh and evaluate evidence, use reason, apply the discipline of scientific thought. I’m on the admittedly tenuous side of relying on those gifts of mind (arm of the flesh if you will) that nature has allowed me, in this perpetual struggle to improve upon the baser motives of fear, paranoia, and animal instinct.
Now this is a topic that really excites me. Having not escaped a belief in objective reality that was instilled in my mind from childhood, I’m not comfortable with an attitude of live and let live. Having personal experience, I know that belief is-as Joseph Smith put it in his Lectures on Faith–a principle of power and action.
What we believe truly matters. And again, most of what we believe has its roots in what we were taught as children by people who we once rightfully worshipped as demi-gods; they who introduced us first to the garden of the womb, then received and cared for us upon our expulsion into a cold and dreary, frightening, exhilarating, and awe-inspiring world. These are the source of our own private Adam-God Theory. For those of us raised in Mormon families, these all-powerful, all-knowing beings, our parents, may have even taught us that we would ourselves one day become gods. They were right, of course … right about the metaphor on adulthood.
Where they, and we, fail is when the metaphor is forgotten in favor of a codependent game of master and servant, prophet and child, god and mortal.
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[Image credit: Michelangelo: Creation of Adam, via Wikimedia Commons.]
So some people are smart.
So some people are witty.
So some people are book-learned. And to be learned is good as long as you harken unto the counsels of God.
We were all once intelligences. Intelligence seems to be save for those who are smart enough to follow God; some are no longer intelligent even though intelligence had no beginning and no end? And Mormon intelligence is being smart enough to follow God’s appointed servants – thereby proving you are able to discern. If you are that intelligent – you get to be a God yourself. Whatever level of intelligence you have earned – you get to take it with you. So you become more and more intelligent.
If you follow that logic, you might just be dumb enough to drink the cool-aid. How about this? Be good to all people whether they believe or live like you are not. Take whatever is good about life and live and learn. And stop using the church as a weapon to prove you are better than other people.
Angie, totally agree on the various types of intelligence. And ‘book learned’ is a honing of any given intelligence toward an end. It’s funny to me that a “religion of the book” is really saying here … hey, books are good, after all god’s word is in a book, but there’s only one book to rule them all.
I hear you on the way the dogma of pre-existence pats us on the back for being extra special as proven by the fact that we are here. It’s “I think there for I am” modified to “I am therefore I’m smarter than those who have less than me and those who are never-born are the dregs of all.”
Very disturbing when you take the time to look at more than the shiny side presented in church.
I love your metaphoric interpretation of the Adam/God theory.
“it is one of the most fearful possible things a human being might embrace: belief in one’s own need for external salvation. Implicit in the teachings of salvation by Jesus Christ is that without Jesus the individual human being is at best utterly worthless and at worst an enemy to all that is good.”
A great thought–the message of Christianity, perceived as beautiful by many, definitely has a negative aspect.
Thank you, CC. The theory gets a lot of grief for being out of step with Christian dogma, but I think the metaphor … if we only see it as such … expresses some real insight.
Like ‘Course Correction’, I really appreciate this use of a theological construct to teach something about our psychology.
I was interested in what you thought further on ‘a mental disassociation from physical reality’… I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what our bodies may have to teach us. I think when we start running into problems with the narratives we’ve inherited, this ‘ground’ can connect us to the answers – the new narratives – that we need to construct.
This makes me think about our post yesterday, too. In this personal Adam/God relationship, we encounter something like previous versions of ourself – especially in family relationships. How can we learn who they/we are? And how can we give/receive things that help us, and not entrap?
Thank you, Andy. I totally agree that the ‘ground’ should make a great reference point for our questing. One thing I’d been thinking about was the whole notion of ‘spirit’ and ‘spirit world’ being as real as the matter before us, but much finer … you know, that’s a teaching among the Mormons. So that when Joseph and his witnesses say they saw something but did not know if it was with their physical eyes or with the spiritual, well, this kind of disassociates the mind from the meaning of a thing being physical. Now the mind is suddenly free to put all sorts of visions and wild notions, claims without physical evidence, on the same level as everyday objects. And since it’s god and godly doings we’re talking about, then the fruits of this mental disassociation from physical reality are considered even more relevant … even more real and vital. The stuff right in front of our eyes becomes a distraction (if not an illusion) from this more supreme reality, and we begin to detach from this life and start to only live for the next … doing only the bidding of those who claim to be the arbiters of this higher reality. This is tragic, I think.
As if our lives weren’t complicated enough, the doctrine reaches back to before this life when we lived as intelligences with God.
It was always very disturbing to me that it’s somehow implied that whatever you did before as an intelligent “earned” your place in this world. Some with severe disabilities. Some born to starve. Some born places they would never hear a word about Christ. Somehow, intelligences valiant enough to fight a war in heaven. A war waged by a son against a father/brother . . . earned some a less valiant life/earned others a more valiant placement/situation. Some God wives were less than other God wives? So the children of less God Wives went places that are less Mormony? Supposedly Africans “just wanted a body” so they were lazy – therefore born to live a short life and starve. Implying that a short life in Africa is less than a life as a Mormon in Utah? I guess the arrogance of this all is what slaps my face the most. What if a short life in Africa while starving to death teaches that person more about a Christ-like life even if he has never heard of Christ . . . than a long, long life of living in Utah and attending the temple daily. . . what then?
I hope my God is more intelligent than all of this because I don’t think it’s good or right.
Angie, I’ll just add … I hope that god (if there is a god) is not what we think it is, since we clearly can’t imagine anything that’s not filled with our own f’d-up notions.
Nietzsche’s assertion that Christianity is based on slave morality shocked me. I misunderstood what he really meant, but it got me thinking about how Christianity tends to enslave the mind. At the most basic level, the idea that people are born essentially corrupt certainly enslaves. I’m still not sure whether Jesus taught that or if it came from his disciples in the centuries that followed.
Maybe Jesus was simply teaching the same idea as the Buddha or the Jews that preceded him: that the world is broken and life is suffering. Religion is healing the broken world.
Seems likely to me, Jonathan. And what difference does the actual source make in the end? I thought it was always the ideas that we worshiped? You know, The Word.