I think we're all putting words in my mouth here. I'm not making an argument for or against religious people being smart. Nor am I trying to make an argument, um, at all, really. I was just responding to this:
The people I know who are most intelligent are deeply devout.
~SE
That particular statement implies that most intelligent people you know are devout, when compared to all the people you know. And according to THAT statement, what I said made perfect sense, since more of the people who you know are devout, it's more likely that the MOST intelligent people you know are also devout, statistically. I'm not trying to say religious people are dumb, or atheists are smart, or intelligence is an important or unimportant trait. I was just kinda responding to what you said with an explanation--essentially, I was agreeing with everything you said, except the definitions of intelligence, which weren't really that important anyway. So, for the record, I don't want to argue, I'm not trying to start an argument, and if this turns into an argument rather than a discussion at some point, I'm probably just going to stop posting.
As far as weak logical arguments from atheists, a lot of atheists believe they make more sense than those who are religious because they're, essentially, not thinking the argument all the way through. On the same note, a lot of religious people think they make more sense than atheists for the same reasons. Of course we all think what we believe makes perfect sense, and when other people disagree, it usually comes across as stupid.
In the realm of psychology, intelligence is subject of a lot of abuse. Personally, I don't believe IQ tests measure intelligence as well as they should, there's too many other skills being tested at the same time. I fall into the camp that sees intelligence as the ability to problem solve and use new information to do so, rather than all around mental ability. There are some who think there are "multiple" intelligences, which is a nice way of saying there's one intelligence, but for people who don't have it, we'll call other things a type of intelligence, too.
So, IQ does very reliably measure a persons overall ability to solve problems, even if it does it in a dumb way that a number of people disagree with. Intelligence is an important trait because, while a good number of people with it don't achieve anything with it, it provides opportunities for success that don't exist without it. So, even though half of intelligent people don't do well in school, advances in all areas of human existence can be attributed to intelligent people (some of which didn't do well in school!). So, it is an important trait, though for everyday life it is not
the most important trait. One could argue that it is the most important trait for human society, but it's doesn't offer the individual with the intelligence nearly as much fortune.
On a final note, we shouldn't care specifically if religious people are smart or not more than we should care if non-religious people are smart or not. It's just a statistic to help us understand the layout of the social map and where people are likely to go and come from. Because the more intelligent you are, the more likely you are to be atheist doesn't equate to atheism inherently being right. I mean, religious people are statistically more likely to do well in school, get more years of education and do better during that time. That's certainly a more useful "day-to-day" ability than being intelligent is.
Modification: I put the quote box around what SE said, so it doesn't look like something
I'm saying
