"My God > Your God" OR "The Mythology Debate"

So the other day, on Facebook, one of my friends said, "I'm trying hard to find someone to have an intelligent conversation with."  One of his friends replied, "In order to have an intelligent conversation with someone, they have to acknowledge God and most people (or Professors) won't do that."

So let me get this straight.  In order to have any kind of intelligent conversation, I have to acknowledge your god as The God? I have to have the same beliefs as you do in order to be intelligent?  Do you realize how silly (for lack of a stronger word) that sounds? 

All religion is mythology.  Some mythologies are better known than others.  The Greek mythologies (and gods) are probably the best known, but there's also the Celtic mythologies, the Roman mythologies, and, yes, the Christian mythologies.  The entire bible is one big book of mythology.  Some of it is more believable than other parts, but it is all mythology.

In order to have an intelligent conversation with someone, I have to acknowledge their particular brand of mythology?  That's like saying in order to have an intelligent conversation with someone, I have to like their brand of cigarettes. 

Intelligence has nothing to do with beliefs.  People have believed plenty of silly things over the years, until intelligence overcame these beliefs.  To put this in religious perspective, people believed that the earth is only 6,000 years old, until fossils that are millions of years old started showing up.  To put this in a non-religious perspective, people believed that the continents had been where they are since the world was created (by some mythological being, no doubt).  It wasn't until 1912, when Alfred Wegener put forth the theory of continental drift, that this belief was shaken.  And it wasn't until the 1960s, when we had sufficient technology to scan the ocean bottoms with submarines, that the belief was disproven.  The people who believed these things weren't stupid, they were just misinformed.

And that can be said about a lot of people.

So I don't buy into your particular mythology.  Doesn't mean I'm stupid, or incapable of intelligent conversation.  Just means I have a different belief system from you.  There are plenty of people who still don't believe in evolution, or that the earth is more than 6000 years old, or that the earth is even round.  I'm sure they're capable of having intelligent conversations on plenty of topics that don't involve science.  Maybe ethics? :)

Maybe that girl should have rephrased her statement a bit.  "In order to have an intelligent conversation about God, people have to acknowledge him first, and most people won't do that."  That makes sense. 

There are lots of things this world is short on, but ignorance isn't one of them.