I ran across this over at Kottke’s site today. David Sklansky thinks we Bible-believing Christians are 1) lying about our faith and 2) just not that intelligent. What’s that you say? Here is David’s proposal to us all:
This is an open challenge to any American citizen who passes a lie detector test that I will specify in a moment.
We will both take the math SAT or GRE (aptidude [sic] test). Your choice. We will both have only half the normally allotted time to lessen the chances of a perfect score. Lower score pays higher score $50,000.
To qualify you must take a reputable polygraph that proclaims you are truthful when you state that:
1. You are at least 95% sure that Jesus Christ came back from the dead.
AND
2. You are at least 95% sure that adults who die with the specific belief that Jesus probably wasn’t ressurected [sic] will not go to heaven.
If you pass the polygraph you can bet me on the SAT or GRE. Again this is open to ANY one of the 300 million Americans.
Also, for those who think I am being disengenuous [sic] because I would make the offer to anyone at all, you are wrong. I am now so rusty that at least one in 5000 Americans are favored over me and I would pass on a bet with them. That’s 60,000 people. If the number of people who would pass that polygraph is between 10 and 30 million, which I think it is, that means that at least 2000 of these types of Christians are smart enough to be favored over me. Given such Christian’s intelligence is distributed like other American’s are.
But I’m betting fifty grand they are not. Their beliefs make them relatively stupid (or uninterested in learning). Or only relatively stupid people can come to such beliefs. One or the other. That is my contention. And this challenge might help demonstrate that.
PS Since this challenge is open to any American, anyone who reads this should feel free to bring it to the attention to any smart Christian they know. Any math whiz, any professor, etc. But I need to warn you that they will almost certainly turn you down. And the reason will NOT usually be because they think they will fail the math test. University professors will probably not fear this college dropout. But given they are expert mathmeticians [sic], their real fear, though they won’t tell you, is that you will find out how badly they fail the polygraph.
He should have used spell check before posting. What a dope. It reminds me of Elijah on Mount Carmel. I really wish that a number of Christians would take him up on this.
One has to wonder why Sklansky thinks we Christians are so dumb? What about other religions? What about Jews? Buddhists? Muslims? Hindus?
As some have suggested in the forum, Mormon, Ken Jennings certainly could challenge him. I appreciate Ken’s straight forward answer that Mormons do not believe Jesus is the only way to heaven.
