[Brandon]

Originally Posted by BDF

I wouldn't call such a person an "idiot", implying low intelligence. Such behaviour is really more correlated with someone's character rather than intelligence. Some people are just jerks and can't help it much, because they don't even realise that they're jerks.They can't see very far past their own little bubble of interests, usually because they don't care to see things from other people's perspective.

I think it has everything to do with intelligence. Religious debates are nothing new to our civilization. They've been going on for a long time. If you're really that intelligent, you would know what kind of arguments the other person is going to say because of your extensive knowledge about the other side of the argument. If you can't look past your own point of view, you are only limiting your own capabilities and you're not fully understanding other perspectives. An intelligent person knows that they don't know everything but strives to know everything; it doesn't matter whether it's completely illogical to them or not. Everything is information and information is neither bad or good in itself; it's just knowledge. If you refuse to seek knowledge, are you really that intelligent? Perhaps you have the capacity of extensive learning, but if you intentionally deprive yourself of knowledge, you are shooting yourself in the foot. Shooting yourself in the foot is, of course, a stupid thing to do. If it's habitual, people would look at you as an idiot. So yes...if someone is religious/non-religious and argues while not being able to see past their own views, they're pretty much an idiot. At least in my eyes.