The Devil Inside,
There is hypocracy on both sides, there is ignorance on both sides, there is honesty on both sides and there is intelligence on both sides. That is going to be the case with any debate. There will always be leaders, and there will always be followers. There will always be the learned, and there will always be those who trust the learned. The true unfortunate thing about how people act in life, or even speak on a message board, is hatred and loathing toward those with whom they disagree. Even more than unfortunate, it's a tragedy.
Also, I personally think it's important for two people to agree on what they believe if they are entering into marriage, for the simple idea of providing a stable environment for a child to grow up in. I know that isn't the reason a lot of religious people won't marry people of different faiths, but it would be my reason. Actually speaking though, I am quite open to dating people of different religions, but I would be less open to dating an athiest, not because I think she'd be evil or anything like that, but for the simple fact that, deep down, she would think I was irrational. It would be too much of a wedge in the relationship.
Cris,
As far as I'm concerned, those poles are terribly biased. For example: "the more intelligent... the higher the likelihood they will not be believers" can hardly be substantiated. Firstly, and foremostly, because it is too difficult to guage intelligence. If you're using IQ tests, then you're considering, primarily, the person's capacity to problem solve. Of course, IQ tests often attempt to incorporate other forms of mental tests, some spacially/visually oriented, others verbally and textually oriented. However, the majority of questions asked on most IQ tests are those which pertain to mental processes of the left hemisphere of the brain (or right in some people, there is a small portion of variation in regards to this). It just so happens that the left hemisphere is also the one that carries out scientific, logical, verbal, symbolic, sequenced functions. The right hemisphere is the one that takes care of artistic intuitive, spatial, pictured, holistic functions, as well as religious.
Since IQ tests tend to focus more on left-hemisphere activities, it'll tend to be the person who's left hemisphere is more prominent in mental functions than the right who will score higher. This also means that they will tend to be less religious. It is the one who's brain operates on a near balance between the two, and whose hemispheres work in conjunction and communicate alot with each other that will get the highest score on the IQ test. This is why Leonardo Da Vinci is considered one of the most intelligent person to live, because he seemed to be quite genius both scientifically and artistically. IQ tests are largely biased, and are widely recognized to be so.
It is also true that education in recent decades has held more of a focus on the sciences than the arts, particularly in higher education, though, there are movements that are attempting to bring about a greater balance between the two. Again, I reiterate the fact that if you're scientifically inclined, then you're less likely to be religious, not because science shows religion to be false, but because you think more prominently with the left hemisphere of your brain than with the right.
Thus, the bias in such poles. If education tends to focus on sciences rather than arts, then the highly educated are more likely to be more logic-oriented than intuitive, and thus, by virtue of the structure of the brain, less likely to be religious. So, while those poles might indicate something true, as far as the educated are concerned, they also indicate something that is false. Namely, that the non-religious are more likely to be intelligent.
Intelligence doesn't merely pertain to the logical, as many people believe. A person can be quite intelligent, but not particularly logical either. Not illogical, but non-logical, or intuitive. There is an obvious difference between the "brainiac" and the person who has a lot of common sense.
I was told a story once, about a group of mensa members who were at a diner. As it happened, there arose a problem that they attempted to solve. The problem was that they noticed that the salt was in the pepper container, and the pepper in the salt, and they wanted to transfer the salt to the salt container and the pepper to the pepper container. They devised quite an elaborate scheme to complete the task, and called the waitress over to show her their accomplishment. After describing the problem to her, along with the solution, she merely picked up the two containers, and switched their lids (which, incidentally, had the salt/pepper labels).
There is no doubt that the elaborate solution that they devised was made through logical intelligence. It wasn't a stupid one. But what they missed was the common-sensical solution, or the intuitive one, that the waitress recognized right away. She was a waitress, so she probably wasn't very highly educated, but clearly she wasn't unintelligent. She was merely smart in a different way than the mensa group.
I'm not going to get into how these two ways of thinking are useful or unuseful, or go into the specific details of their differences, but I want to emphasize that logic doesn't equal intellect. Logic is a part of intellect, just as intuition is. Logic is merely sequenced processing, intuition is holistic processing.
The genius is the one who's logic and intuition work together. ie, the left hemisphere breaks the problem down, communicates the specific problem, in detail, to the right hemisphere, where the problem is assessed and the solution computed at a near simultaneous rate, then passed back to the left hemisphere to be expressed in logical progression, either verbally or written down.
So when you say that statistics say that the more intelligent someone is, or the more educated that person is, the less likely he is to be religious, therefore you're more likely to be religious if you're unintelligent and uneducated, I say garbage.
Statistics do indicate things, but you should always understand what they're measuring.