[madnak]

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I am not much persuaded by this argument.

A 6 point difference between the IQ's of atheists and "believers" of some sort does not really impress me. The fact that the atheists win 103 to 97 is slightly interesting but not decisive on the ultimate question.

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The average difference is irrelevant. Very high IQs actually get very low representation that way - the IQ scale is statistical, higher IQs are more rare by definition. Therefore those in the 100 range are going to represent the majority, by definition. Even if everyone with a 150+ IQ is atheist, the mean difference between atheists and theists may be relatively small. We're looking at how the tendency toward atheism grows with intelligence, and mashing things together into an average isn't a good way to look at that. The correlation is relevant, not the mean difference.

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Moreover, I would be willing to wager that if it were possible to ascertain the total number of people that are 2 standard deviations from the mean (which I think is the definition of genuis) since the 1600's or so, the number of atheists would be dwarfed by the number of those who believed in some sort of God.

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This is also irrelevant. In a general population that is >99.99% nominally religious, of course any subset of the population is going to contain more theists than atheists. The question is whether the proportion of atheists in the subset is consistent with the proportion of atheists in the general population. If only 0.01% of the general population are atheists, then if even 1% of scientists are unbelievers atheists are over represented by a factor of 100. That is, very smart people are 100 times more likely to be atheists. And I think you would find this to be true since 1600. It has certainly been true since Leuba's time.

I think ZJ overstates his case, but it definitely means something if smart people are many times (tens or even hundreds of times!) more likely to be atheists than people of average intelligence. It doesn't necessarily mean the atheists are right - maybe smart people tend to be prideful, and pride leads to atheism, there are other explanations - but it's a striking phenomenon and it should be a concern for theists (assuming that theists are interested in being rational).