Is President Obama secretly an atheist, who fakes being a Christian for political reasons?

[LeftishBrit]

65. As a matter of fact, I do think that papers by Richard Lynn should be avoided!

He has a very simplistic view of IQ; considers that some races are genetically more intelligent than others (was cited approvingly in 'The Bell Curve') and that men are more intelligent than women; and is something of a latter-day eugenicist.

His views are not only 'politically incorrect' but mostly based on assumptions that are in my opinion logically incorrect.

The whole concept of 'national IQ' in this paper is suspect, as people in some nations are far more likely than those in others to have advanced education, leading to both better knowledge of the content of tests and to greater familiarity with the whole concept of a test. Related to this, poverty is likely to lead to lower IQ for all kinds of reasons (ranging from limited education to brain damage from malnutrition and poor health), and is much more prevalent in some countries than others.

On the whole, people who are highly educated are more likely to be atheists, because of greater exposure to the possibility of a variety of beliefs. Many people in the world will never have heard of atheism, or indeed anything other than the locally dominant religion! Education will make people familiar with the concept of atheism and that not everyone in the world believes the same thing. IQ is related, both as cause and effect, to educational level; so it is not surprising that there is a statistical correlation between IQ and atheism; it probably stems from the fact that both are correlated with education.

On a national level, I think this is basically saying that atheism is less prevalent in poorer countries than well-off countries. And perhaps also that theocratic governments tend not to provide a wide and varied education for their citizens.