Education does not explain the link between atheism and liberalism: At Secular Right, I posted the GSS finding that atheists are about 5 times more likely to be extremely liberal than theists. A commenter asked if the correlation might be due to some other factor. I regressed political views on belief in God and got this:


Unstandardized OLS regression coefficients (N = 12,516)

Belief in God .209**


And when I add level of education:

Belief in God .205**
Level of education -.011**

**p < .01

The belief in God coefficient is reduced very little by the inclusion of education, so the connection between atheism and liberalism is not due to higher levels of education.

And I don't even need to look at IQ (although I did) because IQ is unrelated to political orientation.


UPDATE: Trust in science explains more:

Belief in God .168**
Trust in science -.164**