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Sun 29 Mar, 2015 10:37 pm
Does "atheists are likely to be drawn from among the better educated and more intelligent" mean "atheists are likely to be found among the better educated and more intelligent
Context:
Moving on from the elite scientists of the National Academy and
the Royal Society, is there any evidence that, in the population at
large, atheists are likely to be drawn from among the better
educated and more intelligent? Several research studies have been
published on the statistical relationship between religiosity and
educational level, or religiosity and IQ. Michael Shermer, in How
We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science, describes a
large survey of randomly chosen Americans that he and his
colleague Frank Sulloway carried out. Among their many interest-
ing results was the discovery that religiosity is indeed negatively
correlated with education (more highly educated people are less
likely to be religious). Religiosity is also negatively correlated with
interest in science and (strongly) with political liberalism. None of
this is surprising, nor is the fact that there is a positive correlation
between religiosity and parents' religiosity. Sociologists studying
British children have found that only about one in twelve break
away from their parents' religious beliefs.
Well, since on one would like to answer, this thread is closed.
@oristarA,
It's more along the lines of "selected," "picked," "extracted," etc. I think "found" would have been a better choice of words given the context of the text you provided.