Well as they need a manual to explain to them how to get through life! I THINK THAT SAY'S IT ALL REALLY!

Trick question, cut both ways. There are smart people and not so much at both sides of the fence. It's a complex subject where local variables as culture, economics, etc come into place

Don't underestimate. Don't overestimate.
Since the Dark Ages (or before?) the best education comes from the religious orders.
In fact the church was the place to send your child to be educated.
Now if you are talking about enlightenment that is different all together,
BTW, I have run across more then a few Agnostic ass hats of the lower IQ range.

It's not so much a question of intelligence, more a question of intellectual honesty.

Check the numbers of believers in the National Academy of Sciences. ?

The short answer is, you have to be intelligent to become agnostic/atheist, but being intelligent doesn't mean you're not religious; I remember reading some study that said how questioning authority is a value mostly endorsed by smarter people. So, you could say dumb people have no choice but to be religious, while smarter people can choose between being religious or not.

I think the smartest people I know are theists. Certainly the kindest people I know are.

[psychologytoday.com]

[ncbi.nlm.nih.gov]

[quora.com] - Look at the average IQ for religion majors

[blogs.discovermagazine.com]

It's not a major difference, believe it or not. The upper rungs of religions have to go through intensive scriptural study to become more qualified in the clerical caste, so they have to cultivate intellect, or they no longer have people to teach scripture and religious philosophy.

Religion is actually largely just another sociocultural institution, which means that mystical thinking is not necessary, and that at its very core, it's about survival in a social context, but it has a larger population of people who are incredibly stupid, versus the thinking, secular population, and it's because religious practice is not cognitively demanding, and scriptural literacy is not mandated among the whole population in a given religion. In fact, too often, people read scripture and they believe that it's left to subjective interpretation, which means that it is taken in an automatic rather than attentive, considering, analytical manner.

In fact, many people use religion to bring up their own popularity so they don't have to work as hard in general, and something like this appeals to people of low intelligence because it means they don't have to engage their brains in any way, and can interpret things in a way that already affirms an instinctive normative consideration, which does not engage particular, careful, phrase-respective comprehension that involves visual meanings and concepts, which is more used by people of higher intellect.

I don't think intelligence has anything to do with it. I've seen people that span the entire spectrum from both categories. Even intelligent people can hold to wrong-headed ideas, it doesn't make them stupid. I'm reasonably intelligent, but I've held many bad ideas over the years and I just didn't realize it.

And realizing the wrongness of the god proposition doesn't make you smart. I've first hand experience with that.

See that is the confusing thing to me. I know some wonderful otherwise intelligent people who are god followers. Just can't figure it out. ?