Religious people are stupid, and smart people aren't religious, apparently...
I found a very incendiary article yesterday on Wikipedia regarding the correlation between religiosity and intelligence. It copiously documents how the more religious you are, the stupider you are. And the smarter you are, the less likely it is that you are have religious feeling...
From Wikipedia:
In 1986, the magazine Sceptic summarized studies on religiosity and intelligence:
All but four of the forty-three polls listed support the conclusion that native intelligence varies inversely with degree of religious faith; i.e., that, other factors being equal, the more intelligent a person is, the less religious he is.
Conclusions -- In this essay:
1. sixteen studies of the correlation between individual measures of student intelligence and religiosity, all but three of which reported an inverse correlation.
2. five studies reporting that student bodies with high average IQ and/or SAT scores are far less religious than lower-scoring student bodies;
3. three studies reporting that geniuses (IQ 3+ standard deviations above average) are much less religious than the general public, and one dubious study;
4. seven studies reporting that highly successful persons are much less religious in belief than are others; and
5. eight old and four new Gallup polls revealing that college alumni (average IQ about one standard deviation above average) are much less religious in belief than are grade-school pollees.
RECENT STUDIES:
In Explorations: An undergraduate research journal, Regan Clarke reports religious belief and behavior were negatively correlated with SAT scores in the USA. In 2000, noted skeptic Michael Shermer found a negative correlation between education and religosity in the United States, though Rice University indicates this may not apply to the social sciences.
Several studies on Americans focus on the beliefs of high-IQ individuals. In one study, 90% of the general population surveyed professed a distinct belief in a personal god and afterlife, while only 40% of the scientists with a BS surveyed did so, and only 10% of those considered "eminent.". Another study found that mathematicians were just over 40%, biologists just under 30%, and physicists were barely over 20% likely to believe in God.
A 1998 survey by Larson and Witham of the 517 members of the United States National Academy of Sciences showed that 72.2% of the members expressed "personal disbelief" in a personal God while 20.8% expressed "doubt or agnosticism" and only 7.0% expressed "personal belief". This was a follow-up to their own earlier 1996 study which itself was a follow-up to a 1916 study by James Leuba.
Some would say, no surprise there. But I would say, let me go out and get me some larnin', so's I can break the curve! 