Erik said:
> Yes, I think atheists are less than 10% in America (much less, I > think).
Let's suppose that they make up 10% of the population. Furthermore, let's assume that 90% of the atheists are smart and 10% stupid. Then if we pick a hundred representative people, we can expect one stupid atheist, nine smart atheists, 49 stupid theists and 41 smart theists. This means that if we pick a random atheist, we have a 90% chance of picking a smart one, but if we pick a random smart person, we have only a 21.9% chance of picking an atheist. In other words, about four out of five smart people are theists even if atheists are much smarter than average.
This calculation seems to include some unstated assumptions about the distribution of intelligence in believers . . . and IIRC it was an unproven assertion about the intelligence of believers that began this discussion . . .
Which shows that perhaps the Fool and Debbi could both be more or less right.
But as I said, I don't think this calculation answers the question at all, because we still know nothing about the actual correlation between intelligence and belief. AFAIK, there is no way to obtain such information without studying a random sample of the population. And I expect that it may be difficult to come up with definitions of "intelligence" and "belief" which are acceptable to all.
-- Ronn! :)
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