Yes. There are smart folks who are religious. Even religious literalists (the guy invented the CAT scan is a YEC). Caught the beginning of debate on C-Span between Christopher Hitchens and Christian guy I didn't know (an Asian Indian guy), and both impressed me as being intellectual heavy weights with the Christian impressing me a little more (partially because he had the honesty to admit that "evolution is a powerful concept...more about that later"). had to go to bed before I could watch the rest of the heavy weight bout unfortunetly. It was probably as entertaining a match as an Ali fight.
But that paragraph you quoted just gives this "study" the "smell of mendacity" (ie the smell of BS).
They say "because of the prevalence of autism spectrum among people with high IQ one has to be cautious because autism correlates with Atheism". They actually SAY "autism spectrum". They are indeed saying "people with autism" (not just folks with autistic traits). Put aside the issue of whether or not that will make folks think that we ASD folks are the spawn of Satan or not, it just looks like such obvious BS. They are admitting that more smart folks than they initially thought were Atheists, so they desperately grab onto something to explain it away. So they declare a big chunk of the smart set as being on "the autism spectrum" and imply that therefore means that big chunk of the population somehow doesn't count.
Its like saying "its a myth that cigarettes cause lung cancer. However we DID find that Americans who smoked the greatest number of cigarettes in their lives did in fact get the most lung cancer, but...studies show that tobacco use correlates with a love of watching bullfights. So its likely that many of those chain smokers did not get their cancer from cigarettes, but from taking too many vacation trips to Mexico City to watch the bullfights... and breathing all of that polluted air in Mexico City.
Sounds like a desperate stretch to cover their asses.
08 Oct 2019, 8:11 am
