PEW is very biased in this area and their poll categories reflect that bias.... There is if you will notice no separate category for atheist or agnostic it just says "unaffiliated" which includes new age and Christians who consider themselves not affiliated with one of those churches that teach the bible wrong..."

"The more education a person receives, the more likely they are to become atheists. Non belief also increases with intelligence and income. Residents of more educated countries see religion as less important in their daily lives."

From: "Why Are Educated People More Likely to Be Atheists?" by Nigel Barber, Ph.D., Psychology Today, February 19, 2014.

[psychologytoday.com]

Other "research" has shown a correlation between intelligence and and atheism.

Less equals more religious.

There are some profoundly well educated imbeciles in the current administration.

I see nothing on the chart about atheists.

The problem with charts like this is that it's not necessarily about religion, specifically, because there are a great many cultural Jews, Muslims and Hindus who may believe in no god but identify with a religion because of ancestry. More and more, I think christianity is becoming the same - people who call themselves Christian because their family was.

You misinterpret the data. We "nones" are in a minority, yet we rank with higher number of Christians and Jews in in educational level. That means that we are more highly educated than the population at large, or than Christians as a whole.

I'm not sure how accurate those results are given some of the rows are very far away from 100% (that's an awful lot of rounding). And atheists make up a much smaller population than religious folks, is it possible these results are skewed due to an already small survey number of atheists?

Like anything of this nature you need to first ask a) who’s paying for the research and b) where are they gathering their information. You can prove anything with statistics like this.

I'd look for another source for info, not this on it;s own. Personally I think its way off

How do you gather? Unaffiliated is way behind Jews on education by that graph but slightly ahead of Christianity. How does that put us way behind? If there is a separate atheist section lower than all those, I think most all the “nones” are atheists who are squeamish about using the term and they’re doing us no favors on being taken seriously as a voting block.

Pew research seems flawed on all its research about atheists and nones, conflating us where they shouldn’t and not considering us practically the same thing when they should. All my experience has been the opposite of this. Also there are plenty of idiots who get through college and people with genius IQs who don’t necessarily finish because of what a debt racket it is. If you’re a wealthy republican with a connected father you’re more likely to be able to pay for school until you finish it and not have to pay back your own loans, (which would surely help you figure out there’s no god) and more likely to be religious in the first place.

I didn't realize there was a contest.....

I suspect that those who have never give religion much thought could be less educated, and there are probably many. Criminals, drug addicts, Donald Trump, etc. But, those who have recovered from religious indoctrination are generally more educated in my experience. Those trained in the sciences for example are often more likely to reject the impossible events described by many religions, like 6 day creation, a worldwide flood high enough to cover mountains, a virgin birth, resurrection from the dead, and the list goes on. Education seems to overcome blind acceptance. That's my 2 cents worth.

Statistics tripe.
My Agnostic wife has an MS in finance, an MBA, and is a CPA. I've BAs in pre-law, anthropology, geography, and an MS in clinical psychology. Plus, and engineering degree in computer science. We're both as "unenlightened" as everyone else.
Give me a true definition of "intelligence"

That's funny; where I live (in the Bible Belt) people who are religious espouse being ignorant, and are encouraged to not learn anything that isn't explicitly noted in the bible.