At least of couple bloggers I read fairly regularly have cited Kanazawa et al. Why Liberals and Atheists Are More Intelligent. Social Psychology Quarterly, 2010, based on press releases. The actual article is DOI: 10.1177/0190272510361602, but unless you have a subscription, the journal is charging an outrageous $32.00 fee to download the article. (I’ll get back to that.)
PZMeyers, an evolutionary biologist and blogger at Pharyngula, has already sounded the warning on the predictable self-congratulatory praise for the findings expected from liberals and atheists.
Meyers says:
Stop patting yourselves on the back over this study
Good grief. This ridiculous study is making the rounds of the atheist community, with its claim that liberals and atheists are smarter than conservatives and religious people. Look at the numbers!
Young adults who identify themselves as “not at all religious” have an average IQ of 103 during adolescence, while those who identify themselves as “very religious” have an average IQ of 97 during adolescence.
Seriously? Show me the error bars on those measurements. Show me the reliability of IQ as a measure of actual, you know, intelligence. Show me that a 6 point IQ difference matters at all in your interactions with other people, even if it were real. And then to claim that these differences are not only heritable, but evolutionarily significant…jebus, people, you can just glance at it and see that it is complete crap.