This Guy At Work

The last two days I worked, Tuesday and Wednesday, I was working with one of the few dudes who is around my age. He’s not an all bad fellow, he can be quite fun to talk with when speaking on some subjects, but he’s a /b/tard and smug about his own intelligence. And not jokingly smug, seriously self-smug.

There’s no doubt the kid is smart, but he’s so very self-righteous about his brain. And then, on top of all that, he ties his atheism to his intelligence. I don’t think he’s quite aware of this, but he’ll often phrase things in such a way to as imply, “I’m an atheist because I am smart,” as if truly intelligent people will be atheists because of their intelligence. This attitude was particularly visible in his comment about how as a child he thought that religion was like Santa Claus. Something grownups made up to frighten children into being good, and then was shocked to discover that people honestly believed that stuff.

The other comment he made, which, I suppose, is true, is his comment about the “stereotypical atheist.” This was brought up in our conversation on Monday about Enthusiast Lady, whom neither of us like. He mentioned how one of the inspectors at work had said, “You don’t look like an atheist.” Now, as he did say, what exactly does an atheist look like? I’m not entirely sure, nor is he. He did mention a list of attributes that a stereotypical atheist has, none of which relate to appearance. Upon thinking about it, the list, which including intellectualism, did fit.

However, I have known a few atheists in my day, and “intellectual” hardly fits them all. The two I know best, this guy at work and a guy in the Strategic Game Club at college, were both smart, but neither of which would I consider exceptionally smart. Just regular, everyday smart.

And a good number of the ones I have ran across have not been smart at all. A good number of retards and pseudointellectuals. Now, pseudointellectuals need to have at least a decently average level of intelligence. You need to have the ability to be verbose and use big words at least semi-properly. You don’t need a shred of common sense or logical ability, though.