David Sklansky challenges Christians:

[CP489]

David Sklansky is a professional poker player and author and has issued the following challenge to all believers:

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 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 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 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, their real fear, though they won't tell you, is that you will find out how badly they fail the polygraph.

Link

Discuss

 

[Marquis de Carabas]

Hmmm... I think I could pass a lie detector test. Especially with such nebulous things to say as "95% certain that..."

 

[drkitten]

David Sklansky is a professional poker player and author and has issued the following challenge to all believers:


Discuss

He's a fool, but will probably get away with it.

 

[CP489]

He's a fool, but will probably get away with it.

Could you explain why you think he's a "fool" and what you mean by "get away with it".

I think he's arrogant and condescending, but not so much a fool.

 

[drkitten]

Could you explain why you think he's a "fool" and what you mean by "get away with it".

He is a fool because I can think of a dozen people of my personal acquaintance who would probably cause him to lose that bet (and another dozen by reputation), and I hardly claim to know everyone in the world.

He'll get away with it because I'm not going to tell any of those people about the offer -- and most of them are too busy with their own work to take his proposed bet seriously.

But there are a number of people/organizations that I think would love to take him down a peg. I shudder, for example, to think of what the folks at the Discovery Institute might do with this bet. The $50,000 stake is nothing to those people compared to the publicity they could milk out of it. The DI would be happy to put up the stake, and then give their best mathematician -- or, more likely, dig up some mid-ranking DI supporter who has been teaching college algebra and SAT prep for 20 years -- and tell him to have fun.

 

[baron]

A fix. Let's be straight, this guy can afford to lose $50K multiple times. How many Mr Averages can do the same? Would he put this bet up if he couldn't afford to lose the money? Would he heck.

Only a fool would take this bet. If a person has $50K to throw around then winning another $50K wouldn't make a difference. The only reason anyone would take the challenge is to prove a point, and the only point I'd feel obliged to prove is that this guy is an arrogant idiot... but look! He's already proven that himself.

Given such Christian's intelligence is distributed like other American's are.

Let's hope grammar isn't part of the test.

 

[Darth Rotor]

He is a fool because I can think of a dozen people of my personal acquaintance who would probably cause him to lose that bet (and another dozen by reputation), and I hardly claim to know everyone in the world.

He'll get away with it because I'm not going to tell any of those people about the offer -- and most of them are too busy with their own work to take his proposed bet seriously.

But there are a number of people/organizations that I think would love to take him down a peg. I shudder, for example, to think of what the folks at the Discovery Institute might do with this bet. The $50,000 stake is nothing to those people compared to the publicity they could milk out of it. The DI would be happy to put up the stake, and then give their best mathematician -- or, more likely, dig up some mid-ranking DI supporter who has been teaching college algebra and SAT prep for 20 years -- and tell him to have fun.

I am guessing that since he made this bet, he has been priming himself on GRE/SAT tests for some time. He's a professional poker player, which tells me he's has likely iced the bet before he made it.

Or, as you suggest, a fool.

DR

 

[NeilC]

Sklanksy is well known as being both arrogant and highly intelligent. And since he has written some of the most detailed maths/stats based works on gambling and especially limit hold'em available I'm guessing he will get a great SAT score.

His main point seems to be that very intelligent people, if being totally honest with themselves, don't really believe those two tenets of christianity. I think he might have something. I hope someone takes him up on it. But I'd be surprised if anyone can afford the risk of losing 50K over something so small.

 

[Orangutan]

This sort of stuff probably doesn't help. It just makes Atheists look like point scoring jerks.
(Ok, that may be true about me, but I do nice things once in a while too!)

 

[drkitten]

But I'd be surprised if anyone can afford the risk of losing 50K over something so small.

You're not thinking on a large enough scale. To an organization like the Discovery Institute or the Ave Maria Foundation, $50K is small change. Tom Monaghan probably spends that much on Christian apologetics in a week. And although Tom himself might not be able to win the bet, I'm sure some of the faculty on his toy university could -- or would know someone who could.

 

[ImaginalDisc]

He should know that there's no such thing as "a reputable polygraph."

 

[Modified]

I am guessing that since he made this bet, he has been priming himself on GRE/SAT tests for some time. He's a professional poker player, which tells me he's has likely iced the bet before he made it.

Taking the test in half the time may be the key here. By training specifically for that, you could beat a lot of people who would score better than you given the normal amount of time.

 

[drkitten]

Taking the test in half the time may be the key here. By training specifically for that, you could beat a lot of people who would score better than you given the normal amount of time.

.... yeah, but by the same token, the mark can train as well. With $50,000 of Tom Monaghan's money riding on it, I hope Tom would even suggest that....

 

[Darat]

He should know that there's no such thing as "a reputable polygraph."

That was my first thought - preening himself about being more intelligent then others because they believe without evidence and yet he believes in something we have evidence that shows it does not do what it claims to do!

 

[Jekyll]

But there are a number of people/organizations that I think would love to take him down a peg. I shudder, for example, to think of what the folks at the Discovery Institute might do with this bet. The $50,000 stake is nothing to those people compared to the publicity they could milk out of it. The DI would be happy to put up the stake, and then give their best mathematician -- or, more likely, dig up some mid-ranking DI supporter who has been teaching college algebra and SAT prep for 20 years -- and tell him to have fun.

I just don't see the pay off for the Discovery Institute. What would the headline read, "Christian Smarter than Poker Player, Now Official"? On the other hand I see the loss being significantly more painful for them.

I imagine that Sklansky's money is actually quite safe.

 

[NeilC]

I saw this on Wikkipedia

"According to a study by Paul Bell, published in the Mensa Magazine in 2002, there seems to be an inverse correlation between intelligence and religious belief. Analysing 43 studies carried out since 1927, Bell finds that all but four reported such a connection, concluding that "the higher one's intelligence or education level, the less one is likely to be religious or hold 'beliefs' of any kind." A survey published in Nature confirms that belief in a personal god or afterlife is at an all time low among the members of the National Academy of Science, only 7.0% of which believed in a personal god as compared to more than 85% of the US general population."