Atheism Intelligence Correlations - The Strongest Argument for Atheism

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The Claim:


I think the strongest single argument for atheism (yes I know the burden of proof is on the theists, that's not relevant) is the fact that there is a high correlation between atheism and intelligence.

Can anyone give a single example of a case in the course of all of human history where there was a high correlation between intelligence and a belief when the belief was wrong? Specifically, I mean a belief not held by everyone where there were 2 or more possible sets of belief, where the correct one was held by a group of lesser average intelligence.

If there is such a case, I think it is likely a fluke where the lesser intelligent people believed the right thing for the wrong reason.


The Evidence:


Wiki entry on Religiosity and Intelligence :

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The study concludes that, of the most intelligent respondents, a disproportionately high percentage did not believe in God or did not believe that it was possible to know whether or not God existed. Similarly, a disproportionately high percentage of the most intelligent surveyed considered that the bible was not the “inspired word of God.”

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I also recall a study where 20% of community college professors (obviously above avg intelligence and above average %) were atheist, while 40% of Ivy League professors were atheist.

A quick Google search led me to An article that drew a similar data set containing this paragraph:

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The study found that 23.4 percent of college and university professors describe themselves as either atheists or agnostics, with the remainder reporting some level of belief in God or another higher power. The authors also made a distinction between the general professoriate and those professors who teach at elite doctoral institutions, as defined by the US News and World Report's list of the 50 best doctoral-awarding universities. In the latter category, 36.6 percent of respondents described themselves as atheists or agnostics.

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The Poll:

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How do we know that atheists are smarter? Maybe the less intelligent atheists are not making any arguments so they are never in the limelight for us to assess their intelligence? How do we know that some less intelligent atheists aren't hanging out in churches pretending to be theists because of social/family/career pressures they perceive as dictating they do that?

The Jesuits are a religious group and history consistently tells us that they were an exceptionally brilliant class of theists.

Today's culture may be subverting people into no faith or weaker manifestations of faith. Peer pressure has a lot of influence on shaping people. A perfect example of this is the the military which is famous for using peer pressure to break people down so they can rebuild them in the military mode. How do they break people? They apply peer pressure.
They say do this right or the whole group will pay. If the individual fails to do something right the whole group pays then the group applies its social condemnation of the individual putting further pressure on that individual to conform.

Today it looks like the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction. For a couple of thousand years people have been striving to do right using what they perceive as God's boundaries from their religions, but along comes atheism saying "Hey, exalt yourself! Follow your urges. Nevermind your heart your intellect is enough". Now we have a society that is negatively reinforcing some of the worst urges.

Peer pressure can be used for both evil and good purposes. Evil peer pressure: see Hitler. Good peer pressure: see the Amish on the slaughter of their children.
Someone throwing off evil peer pressure: see that 5th guy in the recent rape article someone posted in a thread showing the craziness of some Pennsylvania judge's ruling. He could have followed the crowd instead he chose to get that woman out of a bad situation.

Here's an interesting slant on intelligence, belief and performance:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releas...-swb013107.php

Do non-theists focus on random chaos while theists focus on order? Is the whole world a balance between the 2?