[sweetjazz]

I don't quite get what's being debated here. Obviously, there are a lot of doltish people who accept and/or promote bad logical reasoning, and no doubt it is among this (large) group of people you will find people who believe that they can prove their religious beliefs through logical reasoning. Such people are clearly none too bright. I doubt their religious beliefs cause them to be gullible (because such individuals typically believe all kinds of foolish things), but rather their foolishness leads them to believe fanciful religious beliefs. (Believing that wine can be turned into the blood of Jesus Christ is merely unreasonable or unjustifiable through logical means. Believing that one can prove it is so -- a claim, by the way, that almost no theologian or serious religious scholar would make -- is fanciful.)

So if the point being made is that doltish people -- the kind that are led to accept dubious religious propositions simply because they have appealing consequences or they were raised that way -- are likely to be horrible at poker and other such activities, this seems undeniable.

But this is a rather shallow view of religion. It seems similar to analyzing atheists and assuming that they reject all Judeo-Christian moral principles. (One typically then deduces all of the bad consequences that would ensue from not having a society that accepts Judeo-Christian moral principles.) But while there may be such atheists (perhaps even in large numbers for all I know), there are many reasonable atheists who accept some of the Judeo-Christian moral principles (obviously on different grounds than divine law).

I do agree that once you look into segments of the population where doltish religious creeds are not accepted, then people are much more likely to reject even mere theism. I am not sure that proves much about the link between religious faith and intelligence, other than a high degree of intelligence will (likely) prevent one from accepting fanciful religious propositions.

So if the claim made by David and/or others is that people who do well in games and science tend not to claim that they can logically prove religious beliefs, sure this is irrefutable. It's also trivial and doesn't address any of the serious religious beliefs that people have. As I said above, almost no serious religious believer claims he can logically prove his religious beliefs. (The strongest claim I regularly here made is that belief x is undeniably true. But when pressed for the basis for this assertion, the justification is faith.)

In brief, I appear to be missing something the discussion, as it seems akin to saying "All atheists think that murder is acceptable." And then including in the definition of atheist a person who (irrationally) rejects all Judeo-Christian moral principles (presumably out of hatred for Judaism and Christianity). Perhaps such people exist, but it's absurd to define atheism in such a way as to limit its scope to such people.