Especially that data.

Biblical literalism or low IQ: which came first?

A few months ago I posted data which showed, unsurprisingly, that Unitarian-Universalists tend to have high IQs and Pentecostals not so much. What about something like Biblical literalism and IQ? Well, I plotted the IQ values from the General Social Survey for selected denominations and plotted them against the proportion which believed in a literal interpretation of the Bible. Prepare to be greeted by a very banal reality below the fold….

I see the scale.  I see the apparent correlation.  But there is no ‘g’.  And since I haven’t moved in fundamentalist circles since childhood, most of the stupid I see on a day to day basis doesn’t involve biblical literalism at all.

Just because you’ve embraced a theology that relieves you of the necessity of thinking, doesn’t mean you’re incapable of it.  If you haven’t ever met someone who hates having to think about life because doing that gets so very painful at times, you haven’t lived for very long, or talked to people much.  The smarter the person, the more vulnerable they are to cults, booze, drugs, and misanthropy.  And if fundamentalists are so stupid, then how’d they come to own the Republican Party?