Nope. You might have lost the context, I answered to a simplified statement with another simplified statement - and in the affirmative.
Atheists, on average, are just half as much "smarter" than believers than people of Massachusetts, on average, are smarter than people in Florida.
That doesn't make Massachusettsians "bright" or Floridians "dumb".
I get that we have a difference of opinion on this. That's fine. But I don't believe I missed any context.
To clarify my thoughts, or what I was responding to;
You said (to another posted, not me) that 'Being smart makes one atheist, not the other way around.'
I get that you were correcting the logic train of the other poster, but I was commenting on the sentiment expressed. Certainly not commenting on you in any general sense, etc.
So, my point was that 'being smart makes one atheist' is pretty odious as a sentiment. And it reminds me of the term 'Brights'. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with the term 'Brights'. It was not intended to denigrate non-brights as being dim, for example. Instead, it was originally a non-offensive way of describing the godless, since that terms (ie. 'godless') is generally seen as a prejorative. It evolved to become a term aimed at describing a certain group of secularists, who can actually be theists, so long as they hold to certain principles around secularism, education,
But whatever they were hoping to achieve, it is cringe-worthy, to me. A group as disparate as atheists shouldn't be claiming much in the way of group cohesion. If atheists are 'smarter' than theists, then bully for them/us. It means nothing in terms of religion, or even whether religion is 'good' or not. Unless you equate intelligence and worth, or intelligence and morality. Neither of those things seems remotely true to me. But, whatever. They certainly don't need my approval, I just don't like it. And this meta-study raises way more questions than answers, which is fine. But the OP, and more particularly the title of the thread aren't really designed to elicit in-depth discussion on this topic by all members here, I would suggest.
Incidentally, I'd be more interested in seeing the differences between intelligence measurements in sub-groups of religion than at a macro-level. 'Theist' is so broad as to be useless.
Put it this way...what do you think IQ testing in America that shows blacks score lower on IQ tests than whites mean? Do you think it means that blacks are not as smart as whites? I personally don't.
Or women, who are now catching and perhaps even overtaking men in IQ testing. What actions should I take based on that?
These things can be useful. They can lead to us discovering trends in education, to some limited degree. They can lead to us discovering bias in IQ testing (for example, women perform better on verbal testing, so adjusting the level of verbal testing can subtly impact results).
But presenting IQ results as if it tells us that atheists are smarter...meh...I find it pretty odious.
And again...to be clear...I'm not aiming that at you. Just my thoughts on this topic. The OP might address the questions I posed to him, and then we can have a discussion that means something, but I currently mistrust the motivations here.
An atheist with a high IQ posing a thread about how atheists are generally smarter based on IQ testing makes me shudder in oh so many ways.
