Cold Case Christianity: Are Atheists Smarter or Simply More Self-Reliant and Self-Indulgent?

This is my reply to an article by J. Warner Wallace entitled 

Cold Case Christianity: Are Atheists Smarter or Simply More Self-Reliant and Self-Indulgent?

Posted: 26 Jul 2017 01:32 AM PDT

264After attending Southern California universities for nine years, I was a committed atheist.

And after studying the bible for 20 years, I was a committed evangelical Protestant.

 Was my atheism the result of my intellectual prowess and education, or something else?

Was my Christian belief the result of the Holy Spirit, or something else?

One controversial study seems to imply a direct correlation between intelligence and atheism.

Meaning exactly nothing because if you do enough studies, you are bound to notice that one of them provides results at variance with the others.  I have no qualms admitting that atheists, like Christians, are human and thus are no less subject to harboring atheism for purely emotional reasons, than Christians are subject to harboring Christianity for purely emotional reasons.

A review of 63 studies of intelligence and religion from 1928 to 2012 allegedly reveals the following: non-believers, on average, score higher than religious people on intelligence tests. I think there may, in fact, be some truth in this discovery, but non-religious people should hesitate before they start celebrating. I think folks with higher IQ’s may be more inclined to reject God, not because they’re better able to assess the evidence and draw reasonable inferences, but because they are far more likely to reject any authority other than themselves.

I don't see your point; thousands of protestants and evangelicals feel free to church-hop when they find their current pastor teaching something that they themselves think is false (i.e., these Christians believe themselves to be the rightful arbiters of whether a religious proposition is true or false, they do not simply buh-leeve because somebody proclaims herself a spiritual authority).

And atheists who reject any authority but themselves, do so likely because of higher intellect, (i.e.,the person who needs to decide whether some religious claim is true, is not one's pastor, priest, spiritual mentor or best friend.  It's one's self, alone).  The alternative (believing a religious proposition true because a person you placed in authority above you teaches the proposition as true) is markedly plagued with disaster and deception, viz. Catholicism, Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, etc.  Smart people do exactly no less than "reject any authority other than themselves."

When I was a young boy, my teacher encouraged my mother to have my IQ tested. I was only six years old, but I can still remember the room where they administered the test. When it was all said and done, I found myself in “gifted” classes for the rest of my public education.

 We'd never have guessed that based on your piss-poor and laughably unpersuasive apologetics arguments, which probably explains why your fruits show you promoting your own self and views far more than the simple gospel that you say has power to do what it needs to do without your input or "help".

As the years passed, I never forgot my IQ score and I came to think of myself as someone who was too smart to believe in imaginary beings.

Well, you ARE too smart to believe in imaginary things...aren't you?

The more I thought I knew, the more self-reliant I became and the less I was willing to listen to what others had to say, especially about matters related to God.

Sounds like you were a Martin Luther in the making, it was only a matter of time before you nailed your 95 thesis to the door of religion.

I was comfortable as my own judge and jury; my own authority about any number of things.

Nothing has changed; you have freewill, and you think God won't violate it but will always respect it, so, your own self really is the authority that you submit to before you decide that some allegedly godly thing is actually godly.

While you might claim that today your authority to accept or reject Christian propositions comes from what the bible says, the truth is, there are millions of Protestants who say the same exact thing, and yet they are absurdly divided on numerous issues of bible interpretation, justifying the suspicion that they are all deluded, and this whole business of going to the bible to decide something is about as likely to resolve problems as handing a crowd of Trump supporters and ACLU lawyers a copy of the U.S Constitution and expecting them to agree on how to resolve constitutional problems. 

One of the worst cases is how Mike Licona and Norman Geisler can so successfully divide the body of Christ on the issue of biblical inerrancy and whether Licona's resurrection apologetic is sound.  Another example is the 5 Christian scholars who tear each other apart in a book called "Five Views on Apologetics"  Not only do you people disagree with each other on how to interpret the bible, you can't even agree on which method of apologetics is "biblical".

My self-perception as a “smart guy” resulted in an arrogant, self-reliant and self-indulgent attitude toward life.

This was consistent with apostle Paul, who boasted that even angels from heaven would be cursed if they taught a gospel contrary to his own (Galatians 1:8-10), when in fact the more properly humble view would say that if an angel from heaven preaches a gospel different than Paul's, then Paul's gospel is the one that is false.

I don’t think I’m the only smart person who has experienced this. Studies repeatedly show the practical difference between non-believers and religious people when it comes to wise decision making. Religious people consistently demonstrate wisdom unmatched by their non-believing peers:

Believers make wiser choices in their relationships

Studies repeatedly reveal believers are more inclined to enter committed relationships, more likely to make wise marriage choices, enjoy better marital stability and remain satisfied in their marriages. When both spouses are actively engaged in their religious communities, they are more than two times less likely to divorce than unbelieving couples.

 What you aren't telling your readers is that it a) this article is not available by simple clicking around on google, and therefore, your busy Christian readership made up mostly of people lacking subscription to such journals are not likely to take the time to obtain a copy of the full report, and b) the abstract for it says it was a mere 13.2% (114 of 864) of the researched marital cases that  included a measure of religion, and c) those who attended at least 15 hours of premarital counseling made better adjustments in marriage.

Point "c" doesn't exactly cohere with the ancient Hebrew practice of arranged or forced marriages.  Is your god smarter than the scholars doing a study in a modern journal?  Then why don't we see any premarital counseling prescribed in God's instruction for how the man who just killed a woman's family, can become legitimately married to her? 

¹⁰ “When the Lord your God gives you victory in battle and you take prisoners,
¹¹ you may see among them a beautiful woman that you like and want to marry.
¹² Take her to your home, where she will shave her head,^[a] cut her fingernails,
¹³ and change her clothes. She is to stay in your home and mourn for her parents for a month; after that, you may marry her.
¹⁴ Later, if you no longer want her, you are to let her go free. Since you forced her to have intercourse with you, you cannot treat her as a slave and sell her.

Does your "study"  include those "Christians" who consistently attend their liberal churches?  If so, then if your study makes fundies look accepted by God, it also makes liberals look accepted by God.  But if liberals and heretics can clean up their lives morally and consistentlly attend their churches for purely naturalistic reasons, then it remains a possibility that the reason is no different when this phenomena is seen in conventional evangelical churches.  You are getting nowhere talking about how religious people are statistically more likely to be moral.  Mormons are statistically more likely to be moral than the non-religious persons, but does that say anything positive whatsoever about their religious claims?  No.  Why then should high morality in evangelical Protestant signify anything more?

Believers make wiser choices in their parenting

Believing mothers and fathers make wiser choices as parents. They are more involved in the lives of their children

 For example, if they find their teen daughter had premarital sex in the house, they burn her to death because the eternal God once commanded this, and he doesn't change:

 9 'Also the daughter of any priest, if she profanes herself by harlotry, she profanes her father; she shall be burned with fire. (Lev. 21:9 NAU)

 Would burning your daughter to death violate your duty under Romans 13 to obey secular laws which forbid you from murdering your kids?  "We must obey God rather than men" was Peter's response to secular laws that were contrary to God's intentions, Acts 5:29.  And contrary to popular belief, Jesus did not free anybody from the Law, he did the opposite, he conditioned salvation upon obeying each and every part of it, specifying that anybody who tried to abrogate even the least part of the law, would be called least in the Kingdom of heaven, in the apparent hope of dissuading some from teaching that some parts of Moasic law no longer applied in his day:

 17 "Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.
 18 "For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished.
 19 "Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
 20 "For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matt. 5:17-20 NAU)

In context, this righteousness is not imputed from Christ, but is one's own personal legal righteousness measured by how closely one conforms one's life to both letter and spirit of the Law:

21 "You have heard that the ancients were told, 'YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT MURDER ' and 'Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court.'
 22 "But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever says to his brother, 'You good-for-nothing,' shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever says, 'You fool,' shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.
 23 "Therefore if you are presenting your offering at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you,
 24 leave your offering there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and present your offering. (Matt. 5:21-24 NAU)

 You cannot escape this with the dispensationalist argument that what Jesus required for salvation of people before he died on the Cross, no longer applies to the modern-day church:  the resurrected Jesus allegedly told the 11 apostles that they were to require their Gentile followers to obey ALL that Jesus had taught the original apostles.  The part of the Great Commission that Christians typically ignore is highlighted below:

18 And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.
 19 "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,
 20 teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." (Matt. 28:18-20 NAU)

 Staying within the proper literary context, Matthew apparently thinks the "all I commanded you" that Gentiles must be taught, consists of all the sayings and doings of Jesus that Matthew himself chose to record.  

So it doesn't matter how many church fathers said Matthew was written solely for Jews...Matthew 28:19-20 extends whatever was written for Jews, also to the Gentiles.  If this proves impossible to live out in real life today because the Temple was destroyed in 70 a.d., that's Jesus' problem for requiring something of future Gentiles that future wars would make logically impossible for them to fulfill.  Apparently the day of his second coming wasn't the only fact Jesus was ignorant of.

more involved in their children’s educational experience,

Nowhere in the bible does god or anybody express or imply that educating children in reading and writing has the least bit of importance.  Either your bible is a mere product of its time, or God cares a whole lot less about secular child education than you do. 

are more likely to invest in the lives of their kids, and report stronger and better relationships with their children.

Yeah, Mom and Dad would probably bond more with their surviving kids if the older teen brother was executed for being drunk and rebellious:

 18 "If any man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey his father or his mother, and when they chastise him, he will not even listen to them,
 19 then his father and mother shall seize him, and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gateway of his hometown.
 20 "They shall say to the elders of his city, 'This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey us, he is a glutton and a drunkard.'
 21 "Then all the men of his city shall stone him to death; so you shall remove the evil from your midst, and all Israel will hear of it and fear. (Deut. 21:18-21 NAU)

 If bible believers are obstinate and insist that yes, this harsh rule would indeed have induced parents in the days of Moses to invest more in the lives of their kids and have stronger and better relationships with them, then why aren't Christians doing this today?  Secular law forbids murder, Romans 13?  "We must obey God rather than men", Acts 5:29.  Jesus' death brought about a new covenant?  Irrelevant, Jesus taught that his followers would not be justified to avoid even the least part of the law, Matthew 5:19.

Things are different today?  yes, they are, but only because materialism fueled the industrial revolution, inspiring us with a sense of competitive capitalism, from which derives our decidedly unbiblical individualism.  If we had retained our collectivist outlook, then we'd probably find solutions that do the most good for the group to be better than solutions that cohere most with the individualist U.S. Constitution.
 

There are no convincing arguments that something about the ministry or death of Jesus means that Jesus' Father is now softer on crime than he used to be.

Believers make wiser choices related to early sexual activity

The more committed a believer is to his or her religious practice, the lower the level of teenage sexual activity.

That's equally true of those Christians you think are heretics and false Christians, like Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses.  If you think "wiser choices related to early sexual activity" makes orthodox trinitarians look good, why doesn't it look good for members of "cults" who can boast of such sexual purity too?  Or was it just my spiritual blindness that caused me to forget that the devil inspires cultists to be sexually prudent in his effort to keep them deceived?  Or maybe your Sovereign God is responsible for steering cultists properly on matters of morals, but cannot do so on matters of theology?

As a result, committed believers are 2 to 3 times less likely to have a child out of wedlock.

That's rather obvious and thus useless to point out.  No fool needs to be told that when a Christian is a "committed" believer, then by definition they put forth substantial effort to abide by the moral requirements of their religion. What else are you gonna say?  Committed Islamic terrorists are 2-3 times more likely to behead an American citizen?

Believers make wiser choices in their use of alcohol and drugs

Many studies confirm the relationship between religious belief and reduced likelihood of alcohol abuse, and researchers have also established a similar relationship between religious commitment and drug use. Religious people are far less likely to become alcoholics or drug addicts.

Then those bible-believing Christians are not getting their scruples from the same Holy Spirit, who inspired Proverbs 31, where alcoholism (i.e., drowning your troubles in a bottle) is specifically encouraged:

 4 It is not for kings, O Lemuel, It is not for kings to drink wine, Or for rulers to desire strong drink,
 5 For they will drink and forget what is decreed, And pervert the rights of all the afflicted.
 6 Give strong drink to him who is perishing, And wine to him whose life is bitter.
 7 Let him drink and forget his poverty And remember his trouble no more.
 (Prov. 31:4-7 NAU)

That the wine of v. 6-7 is not mere weak "grape juice" is seen from the fact that the author warns that kings who drink it will forget their decrees.  You don't risk forgetting something by drinking too much grape juice, but you risk forgetting your decrees when  you drink strong alcohol.

When is the last time you bought beer for a depressed homeless person, with the intent that they get drunk and remember their bitter troubles no more?  NEVER.

FUCK YOU, CHERRY PICKING HYPOCRITE.

I don't care what conservative Christian commentaries say about this passage, it clearly does encourage alcoholism, and that's not going to go away merely because the Christian reader is an inerrantist and cannot figure out how this can be reconciled with other bible verses that discourage drunkenness.  Contradictions between the OT and NT are nothing new and have bothered Christians for centuries.

Believers make wiser choices in the way they live their lives

Committed religious believers are much more likely to make wise choices in their personal lives. Believers, for example, are less likely to commit acts of violence against their partners.

Would genuine "believers" have also been less likely to commit acts of violence against their partners back when the man was justified to force his wife, suspected of adultery, to drink deliberately poisoned water, waiting to see if her vagina got all gooey (Numbers 5:12 ff)?

The more committed they are to their religious belief, the less likely they are to behave violently.

For example, the more committed the ancient Hebrew believer was to laws of Moses like Lev. 21:9 and Duet. 21:18-21, the less likely they are to behave violently.

In addition, believers report they are happier, more satisfied with their lives, and have greater morale.

Read the book of Jeremiah.  Your happiness in God is no evidence, whatsoever, that God really is on your side.

Believers make wiser choices related to education

Religious people have higher academic expectations, attend school more regularly, achieve higher levels of education and generally perform better in their academic environment. Studies demonstrate academic performance is positively affected by religious practice.

Never mind that it was uneducated illiterate people of the first century who were the demographic most likely to find Christianity's claims persuasive:

 23 but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness,
 24 but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
 25 Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
 26 For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble;
 (1 Cor. 1:23-26 NAU)

By referring to the makeup of the Corinthian church, Paul now illustrates the principle that God takes what is foolish to our world and makes it wise. While he did not completely eliminate the possibility that there were a few culturally and socially prominent members among them, he knew that there were not many. The congregation could claim as members a former ruler of the synagogue, a city treasurer, and perhaps one or two successful businessmen, but the majority were without educational, social, cultural, or religious credentials.

Chafin, K. L., & Ogilvie, L. J. (1985). Vol. 30: The Preacher's Commentary Series, Volume 30

1, 2 Corinthians. Formerly The Communicator's Commentary.

The Preacher's Commentary series (Page 37). Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson Inc.

From the New American Commentary on 1st Corinthians 1:26:

        

Believers make wiser choices related to compassion and charity

Studies also reveal religious believers are more likely to report compassionate, empathetic feelings toward disadvantaged people than their non-believing counterparts.

For example, when God inspired people this way in the OT, they went around killing children:

  10 Then they burned all their cities where they lived and all their camps with fire.
 11 They took all the spoil and all the prey, both of man and of beast.
 12 They brought the captives and the prey and the spoil to Moses, and to Eleazar the priest and to the congregation of the sons of Israel, to the camp at the plains of Moab, which are by the Jordan opposite Jericho.
 13 Moses and Eleazar the priest and all the leaders of the congregation went out to meet them outside the camp.
 14 Moses was angry with the officers of the army, the captains of thousands and the captains of hundreds, who had come from service in the war.
 15 And Moses said to them, "Have you spared all the women?
 16 "Behold, these caused the sons of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, so the plague was among the congregation of the LORD.
 17 "Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man intimately.
 18 "But all the girls who have not known man intimately, spare for yourselves.
 (Num. 31:10-18 NAU)

  2 "Thus says the LORD of hosts, 'I will punish Amalek for what he did to Israel, how he set himself against him on the way while he was coming up from Egypt.
 3 'Now go and strike Amalek and utterly destroy all that he has, and do not spare him; but put to death both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.'" (1 Sam. 15:2-3 NAU)

  21 They utterly destroyed everything in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox and sheep and donkey, with the edge of the sword. (Jos. 6:21 NAU)

  4 The LORD said to him, "Go through the midst of the city, even through the midst of Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations which are being committed in its midst."
 5 But to the others He said in my hearing, "Go through the city after him and strike; do not let your eye have pity and do not spare.
 6 "Utterly slay old men, young men, maidens, little children, and women, but do not touch any man on whom is the mark; and you shall start from My sanctuary." So they started with the elders who were before the temple.   (Ezek. 9:4-6 NAU)

 Wallace would likely counter by hiding behind the most comprehensive effort by Christian scholars to explain these passages away:  Did God Really Command Genocide?: Coming to Terms with the Justice of God

 But there are numerous problems with the Copan/Flannagan thesis:

1 - They are at odds with other conservative Protestant scholars who say these commands are literal and the Hebrews really did slaughter children.  Walter C. Kaiser is stoutly evangelical in his acceptance of biblical inerrancy and other standard Protestant doctrines, and was a professor of OT, yet he disagrees with attempts to tone down such biblical language, he says such attempts "fail from the start".

2 - No church father or Christian commentary before 1900, with possible exception of Origen, ever so much as suspected that these shocking references to genocide were mere Semitic exaggeration.  Sure is funny that God never reveals exegetical truths of the bible to his followers until after uninspired secular studies make logical room for the hypothesis.  If God was guiding Christians before 1900, we'd expect to see a few more of them noticing that these genocide-references are mere rhetorical exaggeration...just like we'd have expected, if God was really guiding the church up to 1400 a.d. for a few of its scholars to assert, without help from science or astronomy,  that the bible references to flat immobile earth and moving sun are mere language of appearance.  But no, "God" didn't reveal such biblical truth until secular science through Galileo forced the church to either admit bible error, or dream up some unprecedented hermenuetic that would reconcile these bible statements with astronomical truth.

3 - King Saul lost his throne precisely because he did not carry out divine infanticide orders in the literal way, 1st Samuel 15, the whole chapter.  Copan and Flannagan attempt to avoid this obvious conclusion, but in this their excuse-making testifies to their inability to seriously re-interpret it.

4 -Does committing to the premise of “hyperbole” to explain the OT genocide texts, open Pandora’s Box?

Where ELSE does the bible make an extreme assertion mostly because the author is using hyperbole, but which we've been taking literally for hundreds of years? Is God literally as wonderful as bible authors say, or is some of that lofty language mere hyperbole?  Is God’s wrath against iniquity really as aggressive and hot as the bible says? Or is that just the ancient Semitic author employing typical rhetorical techniques of exaggeration common to his culture?  You cannot avoid noticing how much life sucks if you are a Christian and you try to defend your beliefs from an academic perspective.

5 - Copan and Flannagan realize that having a god of truth who cannot lie, talk to believers in a bible filled with exaggerated statements, is hard to believe, and so they cite to the feverishly unpersuasive tactic of William Lane Craig, employed for the purpose of allowing him to believe the bible is "inspired" by God while also giving him a convenient escape hatch for those biblical statements where God is commanding infanticide:

             

Notice the utter lack of objectivity:  Craig is unable to reconcile the happiness toward infanticide in Psalm 137:9, with Jesus' command that believers love their enemies.  Because he cannot reconcile these two attitudes, he thus insists, without further justification, that surely the more barbaric hateful attitude of the OT authors is simply their own naturalistic emotions expressed without divine inspiration.  Craig's presupposition of biblical inerrancy is his sole motive in declaring the OT view the one that lacks divine inspiration.  The absolute harmony of the bible must be defended at ALL costs.  If that means denying divine inspiration to passages Christians have believed divinely inspired for centuries, so be it.

 Other Evangelical scholars more responsibly admit that exactly what Christians should do with such imprecatory language in the bible is far from clear.  See Alex Luc, "Interpreting the Curses in the Psalms", The Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society. 1998, the full article of which can be found here. See esp. the section "III.  Imprecations and Christians Today"

Luc there draws in his "Conclusion" section a conclusion totally contrary to the one drawn by Copan/Flannagan:

Though the imprecations are generally expressed through a mode that appears to be personal wishes, they are prophetic judgments against the wicked and are not to be treated as merely the psalmists' own vindictive sentiments.

 If even evangelical Christian scholars disagree with each other on whether the divine-atrocity statements in the bible are inspired by God, what fool would dare say atheists have an intellectual obligation to get involved in the debate?  How can spiritually dead atheists rationally expect to get themselves any closer to the truth if spiritually alive Christian scholars can't even agree with each other on where the truth can be found in these matters?  I get involved to expose apologetics absurdity, certainly not out of any sense of intellectual "obligation".

This heightened compassion motivates religious people to be much more charitable; believers give far more to charitable organizations than do non-religious people.

But the god of those believers has no scruples in causing men to rape women and making parents eat their kids, Deuteronomy 28:15, 30, 53, and even specifies that he will "delight" to cause such atrocities to disobedient people no less than he "delights" to prosper those who obey him (v. 63).  Don't discount the perfectly biblical possibility that the Christian who bombs an abortion clinic is doing the will of God.

And when you say God doesn't will for Christians to bomb abortion clinics, or for men to rape women, you disagree with your orthodox 5-point Calvinist sisters in Christ, who assert that God predestines and wills all human sin, and they insist that God's will be divided into his revealed will (thou shalt not murder) and his secret will (go ye and gun down a schoolyard full of kids). You cannot characterize the atheist's barbaric view of your god as a result of their spiritual deadness, unless you insist that all 5 point Calvinist Christians are equally lost and spiritually dead.

Believers make wiser choices related to criminal activity

There is also a direct relationship between committed religious belief and criminal activity. Committed believers are far less likely to use weapons, engage in violent activity or commit other felonious crimes.

Mormons also refrain from crime more than the average non-religious person.  If Mormon morality is totally naturalistic despite their claim that it is the Holy Spirit within them, then you cannot fully discount the possibility that the alleged higher morality of protestant evangelicals derives from the same purely naturalistic base, despite their claim that their higher morality derives from the Holy Spirit.

On the other hand, benefits of religion need to be weighed against the costs and disadvantages.  A person can be a Christian bible believer and be more moral than the average atheist, and yet allow his kids to play with live rattlesnakes in their tiny little KJV Only church in Appalachia, and given the stupidity of this, it is clear this fool has already heard plenty from other Christians about how this is wrong is he is stone-cold deaf to reason, in his belief that the taboo nature of the act somehow means the act is inspired by God...so no, educating idiot Christians is not the better solution than simply dismissing Christianity altogether. 

Plenty of former fundies have testified to how much emotional distress and mental anguish was created by their sincere attempts, over a period of years or decades, to figure out, and live out, all that the NT requires of them.  Not everybody has the same capacity to accept contradictions and mysteries and the regular tirade of dogshit excuses that necessarily accompany religion.

If believers are so much less intelligent than their non-believing counterparts, why do they repeatedly make wiser choices?

Maybe for the same reason that most mentally retarded adults don't attempt to rob banks? And I don't claim most Christians are less intelligent than atheist bible critics.  I maintain that most Christians personally find the social benefits of Christianity something more important than the question of whether their choice of religion was correct, and in this view I'm joined by most of the more conservative fundamentalist faction of Christianity. 

As a boy, I can remember an incident that seems to explain this phenomenon. I was not yet a teenager, but I certainly thought I was smarter than most adults, and on this particular day, that included my mother. I can remember arguing with her at a local retail store and repeatedly challenging her (I can’t remember the subject of our argument). For every point she offered, I countered with a stubborn opposing view. We went back and forth for a while as we walked through the store. I stubbornly refused to comply with whatever it was she wanted me to do, offering five or six reasons for rejecting her request.

And you've now made a life of offering multiple reasons for rejecting the views of other people, such as bible critics.  Nothing's changed. 

By the time we got to the checkout register, she was exhausted. We continued to argue as we stood there in line, and at one point an older man standing behind us turned to his wife and said, “That boy is too smart for his own good.”

This is not believable:  You "don't remember" the subject of the argument, but you remember providing her multiple reasons 'repeatedly'  for rejecting what she had to say?  

There is often a relationship between intelligence and the willful rejection of authority.

Such as your rejection of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society's alleged authority as the faithful and wise servant mentioned in the gospels.  Your intellect is sufficiently developed that you can tell this claim to authority is faulty.  Amen?

Being smart doesn’t guarantee you’ll make smart decisions.

 It also doesn't guarantee Christian apologists will conform to Christ.  The fruit of William Lane Craig is not "gospel" but "counterfactuals of creaturely freedom in all possible worlds".  The fruit of James Patrick Holding is closet-homosexuality, and telling his favorite scholars to fuck off after he was forced to admit they think he gives Christianity a bad name, he says:

However, if any of the Context Group ever wished to argue that such language is inappropriate today, my reply is that they need to mind their own business and look past the rarified confines of academia.

Wallace continues:

For this reason, the connection between IQ and religious belief is unsurprising and unflattering.

That works the other way too (i.e., the fact that some Christian apologist is super-smart, does exactly nothing to increase the likelihood that he is qualified for the office of teacher, or walking in Christ properly).

There are lots of incredibly smart believers; these folks have simply learned to submit their self-reliance and self-indulgence before investigating the case for God’s existence.

And there are a lot of incredibly smart believers who subsequently became just as convinced that biblical authority is bullshit, no less than YOU determined for yourself that Mormon authority is bullshit.