07.+What+is+Intelligence+(February+2006) - Get a Free Blog

What is Intelligence? 21
We are not going to try to present statistical data on this matter however,
because apart from anything else, the gathering of reliable and accurate
statistical data is not necessarily such an easy thing to do, and in many
cases, probably impossible, due to the usual defects in the collection of
the data – e.g. how are we going to locate and question a “representative
sample” of members of the Muslim, Buddhist or Hindu worlds? – and the
formulating of a correct questionnaire.
But with logic and fact-based understanding of how the human psyche
works, we can say that those who believe in nothing will obviously suffer
from a sense of insecurity and fear that those who believe in a God will
experience far less so, just as those who have the comfort of a marriage
partner on average fair better in health and happiness than single people.
Doctors and medical researchers have long been aware of the mind-body
connection, in their growing awareness of the apparent equivalence of the
mind and the brain.
By experiencing emotional states such as fear, we can induce medical
problems in ourselves of various kinds – even a heart attack could be
brought on by extreme fear, for example, and some people have had their
hair turn white or even fall out completely overnight, following some
kind of a serious shock.
So again, this is to imply logically that if a belief system (regardless of
whether the “beliefs” have any reality or not) provides us mental comfort
and psychological and emotional security, we are better off with one than
without one.
For as “Sufi Saint”, Hazrat Inayat Khan, pointed out: if the beliefs are
wrong and there is no afterlife, then the non-believer will be as well off as
the believer in the state of non-existence and oblivion – i.e. will simply
not have any existence at all of a conscious kind.
But what the scientist and “rationalist” overlooks, is that even if his or her
beliefs are not founded on reality, the believer will spend a life which has
hope and meaning in it, whereas the non-believer will spend a life of
doubt and misery comparatively speaking.
This in itself can be an evolutionary negative – the believer is motivated
to marry and have children – to “go forth and multiply” – as we see all
religiously founded nations all over the world have always done –
whereas the typical view of many “rationalists” and “non-believers” is