Biblical Literalism and IQ

I find that there is alot of subtly buried in this post at Science Blogs. It makes the statistical case that the more literalistic one is in interpreting the Bible, the lower that person's IQ tends to be. Here is one of the charts: For the non-statistical, an R-squared of 86% is pretty damning, although not air tight. The author makes several points: The data on literal interpretation of the Bible is from a book which you can read via Google. The IQ scores are from the General Social Survey as reported by The Inductivist. I already knew that this sort of correlation existed, it's pretty unsurprising as I noted. The same pattern shows up if you use post-graduate eduation as the dependent variable. And I spot checked SAT scores by denomination, and again the association shows up. So, literal interpretations of old documents is a relatively good indicator of lower IQ. To get an understanding of how this translates into real life, read one of the few dissents to the article posted in the comments section: With all due respect, I find your conclusion to be incorrect. I have a 145 IQ and do take the Bible literally. Of course, I do compare the newer translations to older works for complete understanding and cultural relevancy. How were the surveys given? Were they biased? Why worry so much about what others think? I am a Baptist as are many of my friends. Most of them are intellectuals with multiple degrees. Would we invalidate your conclusion? This seems to be a perceived line of thought that says that a smart person cannot be a Christian. A "smart person cannot be a Christian"??? If this person truly has a 145 IQ, then they must be both grammatically and statistically stupid and make up for it somewhere else. First, EVERY group on the graph is Christian. This study says nothing about Christians, only about literalists. Second, a single - or even a small number - of data points do not invalidate a study based on averages. Anyone with any knowledge of statistics knows this. Apparently our respondent with the 145 IQ does not. This answer further serves to support the hypothesis I made here regarding the lack of correlation between IQ and actual intelligence: Knowing how to solve logic puzzles and identifying Latin roots in words I have never seen says more about my test-taking skills and my training than about my fundamental brain functionality. The traditional measures of intelligence - scholastic performance, recall memory, etc. - are embarrassingly superficial and incomplete. I still feel this way, and IQ may not be the best metric. The fact that the analysis also uses other measurables helps lend some credence, but the possibility of intervening variables still exists. A simple explanation, such as the fact that lower intelligence individuals may tend to gravitate toward faiths that have "all the answers", may be the most appropriate reasoning. It is easy to understand why smarter people cannot be literalists. The simple fact is that the Bible is filled with direct contradictions, some of which I cited here. Consider again the following from Numbers 31: 17 Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. 18 But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves. As you can see, the Bible advocates: Genocide (Slew all the males and the females who have "known man" - i.e. had sex) Rape (all the women children - the virgins - keep alive for yourselves) Or, perhaps 1 Samuel 15: 3 Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass. 33 And Samuel said, As thy sword hath made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women. And Samuel hewed Agag in pieces before the LORD in Gilgal. Here, God specifically tells Samuel to commit genocide. How does a free-thinking literalist justify this? obviously, they are not literalists, because I know of nobody that advocates genocide and rape. This is instead a creepy two-faced kind of literalism, where specific passages are interpreted literally - or not - as the person arbitrarily decides. But, back to the original point that literalists seem to be less intelligent the more literal they get. There is an obvious parallel when talking about old documents that were written in another time, with another set of philosophical and societal norms. I am referring to the Constitutional debate between originalism and progressive interpretation. Originalism is like literalism. The same two-faced interpretation that we saw in Biblical theology is evident in Constitutional analysis as well. We know that it is a Republican trend to define ones self as "originalist", but to shed that skin when it is politically inconvenient. I have discussed this before, but I will mention it again. The current Supreme Court is evaluating the DC gun case as it relates to the Second Amendment. As a refresher, the Second Amendment says: A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. Most people interpret this to mean that the people have the right to bear arms because a well regulated militia is necessary. Indeed, an originalist reading of the Second Amendment would seem to necessitate this view. However, this is not the case - originalists are using the comma placement as a reason to separate the militia from the right. They are originalists, unless they happen to disagree with the particular passage. Then, it is much more politically expedient to find a progressive interpretation. At this point, one can hide behind being an abstract thinker: The most common approach -- sometimes accompanied by some cherry-picking of quotes from the 14th Amendment's framers in Congress, with little attention paid to its ratifiers in state governments -- is to argue that we should read the amendment not as embodying any specific principle [about segregation], but rather as proscribing [racial discrimination] at a more abstract level.... The problem, however, is that if constitutional principles are understood at such a high level of abstraction, then virtually any outcome in any case contestable enough to get to the Supreme Court can be called "originalist." We are originalist, even if we have to use progressive principles to get there. If the literalist-IQ correlation holds for old documents like the Bible, how do we think it would apply to originalist Constitutional thinking, especially given that the two ideologies fault out in nearly identical ways when confronted with conflicting information?