Quote:
Originally Posted by tompe
A November–December 2006 poll published in the Financial Times gives rates for the United States and five European countries. It found that Americans are more likely than Europeans to report belief in any form of god or supreme being (73%). Of the European adults surveyed, Italians are the most likely to express this belief (62%) and the French the least likely (27%). In France, 32% declared themselves atheists, and an additional 32% declared themselves agnostic.[101] An official European Union survey provides corresponding figures: 18% of the EU population do not believe in a god; 27% affirm the existence of some "spirit or life force", while 52% affirm belief in a specific god.
A letter published in Nature in 1998 reported a survey suggesting that belief in a personal god or afterlife was at an all-time low among the members of the U.S. National Academy of Science, only 7.0% of whom believed in a personal god as compared with more than 85% of the general U.S. population.[103] In the same year Frank Sulloway of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Michael Shermer of California State University conducted a study which found in their polling sample of "credentialed" U.S. adults (12% had Ph.Ds and 62% were college graduates) 64% believed in God, and there was a correlation indicating that religious conviction diminished with education level.[104] An inverse correlation between religiosity and intelligence has been found by 39 studies carried out between 1927 and 2002, according to an article in Mensa Magazine.[105]
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First of all, Wikipedia is not the most credible resource in the world, and tends to lean towards the bias of the editors--as do polls and studies.
So is the apparent inference from the posted statistics is that the French should be exponentially smarter than Americans because they don't believe in God to the overwhelming degree that Americans do (i.e. religious people= dumb, atheists=smart). That is patently absurd. The United States is one of the highest educated nations on the face of the earth, and one of the most religious. The U.S. trumps France in virtually every meaningful category of success, accomplishment, technological development, financial power and influence, which would naturally be a significant offshoot of intelligence. Would any thinking person actually argue that French as a whole are "smarter" than Americans? The book I mentioned tears apart such typical red herring arguments.
If it helps some people feel more "comfortable" reading it, Vox Day the author of "The Irrational Atheist" is a member of Mensa.
Here, again, is the ebook download link.
http://irrationalatheist.com/downloads.html