In lieu of Thursdays with Seth...

Intelligence also correlated with sexual exclusivity in males...

Hey, everybody, this is Cory (not Seth, we'll be having "Saturdays with Seth" this week)! I just thought I would pass on a couple of pretty cool links for you to check out today. The first one was sent our way by one of our readers. It's a CNN article about a study conducted at the London School of Economics and Political Science. This study concluded that intelligence correlated with atheism, liberalism, and (in males) sexual exclusivity. Don't get too excited, though! The scientists who conducted the study hypothesize that people with higher IQs (the difference in the IQs was small but statistically significant: 6-11 IQ points) disbelieve because they are more likely to go against current trends, fostering societal changes.

According to these scientists, the study results are not due to smarter people figuring out that there is no God, but smarter people acting out in ways that appeal to elitist sentiment (also correlated with intelligence). Historically, a great way to act out or go against the grain has been to question common views of religion, because it's a safe bet that this will be the minority view (although history shows us that this wasn't necessarily a "safe" bet in terms of actual safety). Unfortunately, we cannot rely on these statistically more intelligent atheists to spread their intelligence or their atheism genetically, because another correlation with high intelligence is a low level of procreation.

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Our second link today is from the American Humanist Association, a great organization that was one of our many generous contributors for Darwin Week. They have a huge event coming up: The 69th Annual Conference of the American Humanist Association will be held June 4-6. You can get more information (including registration info, registration is free for students) by following this link. Also, you may notice that we have a new blog on our subscription feed to the right side of your screen (under the Blog Archive) called "Rant and Reason." This blog is produced by The Humanist Magazine, which is also associated with the American Humanist Association. Check them out!