In my field, working with adults with intellectual disabilities, there are people whose parents raised them in a faith, and therefore they identify as religious. To the extent that they express any interest in it, we support them in attending services and participating in other activities to do with their religion. (You should see us Christians scrambling to try to figure out how to not completely desecrate Jewish dietary customs on certain feast days WHEN we remember them... ) There are plenty of individuals who have no particular faith, or no particular interest in any form of religious activity, but they don't exactly get identified as atheists. I doubt that any "study", even the most carefully designed one, will take that into account.

There is a lot of measurement error in intelligence tests (e.g. what is it really measuring?)

Precisely. Psychological measurement is a bit of a crap shoot, trying to measure intangibles. You can't measure intelligence directly. You can measure behaviors such as answering test questions, and you can assume that intelligent people answer more test questions correctly than less intelligent people do, but since it is not a direct measure, there are so many possibilities for confounding factors putting spanners in the works.

What I find interesting is that in the article it basically says that since religion can't be tested, intelligent people don't buy it (total paraphrase). Since yeah - religious belief can't be quantitatively measured, how can you compare it to something that (theoretically) can?

Furthermore, I would like to see a breakdown of intelligence as it relates to socioeconomic status and urban vs. rural living.

It's an interesting subject to me. But one, I think, that does not lend itself to black and white. There are so many shades of gray (more than 50, thankyewverymuch).

Speaking personally, I was raised in a more agnostic household than atheist and we were encouraged to explore our interests in religion, if we had any. I did. I did some searching and research and I came to the conclusion that religion comforts me. It gives me something more to count on. It's been invaluable to me over the past year and without it, I honestly don't know where I'd be. It was the driving force in my choice to get baptized this year. And I'm pretty damned intelligent.

What I find interesting is that in the article it basically says that since religion can't be tested, intelligent people don't buy it (total paraphrase). Since yeah - religious belief can't be quantitatively measured, how can you compare it to something that (theoretically) can?

Oh for a time machine. Wouldn't it be splendid fun to put the author of this article in a room with JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis?

Oh, it would.

I consider myself religious, but it's a very personal, considered religion. I define "religion" as "a person's relationship with the eternal/the cosmos/whatever's out there." It should be something acquired after contemplation and study and honest consideration of what's inside one's head. Maybe your parents' religion fits that bill, more power to you, peace be unto you. That discipline of thought, though, is not something most people can do, to my mind. For some, it's simpler to just accept the Religion Packet they were handed as a kid and not spend any more effort on it.

I would like to see a breakdown of intelligence as it relates to socioeconomic status and urban vs. rural living.

Don't bother, it's not worth the further aggravation. There is a serious validity issue. With regard to racial differences, I talk about this to my class and go on a (at least) 2-week rant.

I haven't read the article so I can only base my opinions on personal encounters. I've encountered very intelligent deeply religious people, and very intelligent atheists. I've also known average people of the religious and atheist variety. There are those who are self righteous and obnoxiously intolerant of those who do not agree with them at all levels of intelligence and religious belief. I'm partial to those who accept each others beliefs as personal choice whether they are smarty pants or not.

Hello all! I wanted to say that in regard to:

"he has a good heart." My comeback was, "well, I've never seen it."

The appropriate follow-up might be, "well, I've never seen it ... should I open him up and look?"

Evidence that atheists aren't all that smart: BoA held a carrot in front of us saying that if we just got a letter from the condo's HOA, the loan would close. So we finally went out of pocket to pay the HOA's attorney to do extra work that no other bank asks for...and this morning the processor sent a snippy email saying it wasn't enough and our loan file is closed and declined.

Drew and I have spent nine months trying to get this loan. We desperately need it right now. We spent hundreds of dollars trying to get it. I feel helpless and angry and violated.