Religiosity vs Intelligence

I cant help it... I must be certainly biased and not thinking straight... But for some reason I think that in order to be religious you have to be a little stupid and or gullible.

I decided to look for the data behind this... are atheist really smarter than theists? Do I have evidence backing this up? Would intelligence really make a difference..?

I did the research (i googled it....)

http://digg.com/d15OfA

"The graph shown above relates the arithmetic mean IQ measured in various country's populations, to the fraction of each country's population that believes religion is very important.

The green diamonds represent individual countries; the yellow line is a linear regression (y = mx + b), calculated by the least squares method. The United States data point is circled in red. TK Solver was used to create the graph from the data listed in the table below:"

This graph shows that the higher the IQ of the population the less religious people are, or... the more religious people are the lower the IQ.

In this study the only countries that show the opposite correlation (high religiosity and high IQ) were three... THREE. Pakistan 91 % Turkey 65 %Uzbekistan 35 %.

Thats one study done in 2003 I believe.

The least educated, least discerning, most ignorant and gullible are those least likely to challenge and question, and the more likely to blindly accept faith over fact. This is just as true of Islam, the fastest growing religion in the world thanks to its appeal to the most undereducated inhabitants of the Third World.

So when we take all this data into account, what conclusion can we draw? Well, we cannot infer that all atheists are smarter than all theists. That would be an easily falsified assumption. But we can deduce by a preponderance of corroborating results from scientifically conducted studies that on the aggregate atheists are more intelligent than believers.


"Here’s a tip -- if you see people who are babbling mindlessly in tongues, or handling snakes as they dance around praising Jesus, or proclaiming the Earth to be 6,000 years old, or crawling on their hands and knees to be touched by a faith healer, or allowing themselves to be ceremonially crucified in honor of their savior, or attesting to the End being near; feel comfortable giving good odds, and placing a week’s salary bet, that none of them are brain surgeons, rocket scientists, or Mensa members. It’s money in the bank." Atheist Camel.

GO AHEAD... START YOUR BITCHING