[Mendacious]

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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).


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I missed where the studies showed any numbers like you describe. In the survey I looked at, 16% of the world's population is non-religeous-- and more like 25% if you don't include religeons with deities (such as budhism). The data that I looked at from OP's post was 1) data that suggested the countries with higher intelligence tended to have more atheists, and a study that shows that a high percentage of academics/scientists who presumably have high IQ's are atheist.

It is not remotely surprise to me that a very small intelligent subset of the world who's professions require them to be dispassionate and emperical are non-believers.

It would be equally unsurprising that the vast majority of those with moronic intelligence (who can't think for themselves) are believers. So far, I am unpersuaded that there is much validity to the statistics, and even less persuaded that the greater weight of intelligence is a particularly compelling argument for the existence or non-existence of God.