Atheism = I R Smart?

A Telegraph article reports that people with higher IQs are more likely to believe less in god. While I tend to believe this is true, I don't believe that being an atheist is solely exclusive to those with PhDs; Mensa members; or geniuses.

I'll provide an example using myself as a subject for a moment. I am university educated and hold an Honours Bachelor of Arts (HBA) degree, I am far from those in the high IQ bracket. I was hardly the top of my class. I hardly passed with a 4.0 or a 3.0; more in the vicinity of 2.40. I've taken some online IQ test [I dunno if they count] and find myself within the vicinity of 100-110. I always say that I'm at a smart person and the academic world can't measure it. Am I stroking and inexistent ego? Possibly, but I am far from dumb and that's for certain.

Much of the criticism the article receives, deals mainly with the ideal that Atheists can only be of high intelligence. Being smart helps, but one must be able to form their own opinion. While being educated in a post-secondary institution may encourage free thinking, there are those who can discover their own path. I think what I am trying to say is that there is a difference between being Atheist due to I.Q. and just being well informed. We cannot expect future Atheist to be of the professor variety and not the average person making minimum wage. If this were true, then Atheist would be a dying breed and go away like the elite language of the Romans. For myself particularly, I am using atheism to learn more about the world rather than sit on Pascal's wager and waste my time. While the report does bring a sense of "the more informed you are the more you will question"; it instead seems to insult at the same time, because of the extreme claim that only I.Q is only directly related to a lack of belief. I say it's more of a removal of reasoning and inserting rationality in its place.

Professor Gordon Lynch, director of the Centre for Religion and Contemporary Society at Birkbeck College states in the report:

"Linking religious belief and intelligence in this way could reflect a dangerous trend, developing a simplistic characterisation of religion as primitive, which - while we are trying to deal with very complex issues of religious and cultural pluralism - is perhaps not the most helpful response."

Religion is a primitive by-product of early human civilization. I don't doubt that for a second. What religion has morphed into is a dangerous trend of creating infantile minds among the masses. I constantly say this in my writing, but religion halts the mind and keeps an elementary way of thinking. The mind either regresses to believing doctrine as absolute, or the mind stays in a state of limbo [hate using this word, but it's a good word in this case] where an individual isn't quite sure what to think. The former are the fundamentalist and the latter are the liberals and moderates of religion. I always seems to associate the liberals and moderates with the Roman Catholics, because their look on the Bible is very tame that Pascal's wager seems enticing for those who cannot let go of their faith. In my case, if there is anything to be fundamental about anything, then being against all religions is the way to go.