Just because you have a high IQ…

…doesn’t mean you can’t be a fool. What’s interesting here is how New Scientist observes the tribal pieties of the Chattering Classes by picking Dubya as their example instead of, oh, say, Richard Dawkins or any one of a host of very bright and very stupid Clever People who observe the same tribal pieties as the editors of New Scientist. Dubya is indeed an example of a person with a fully functional brain who doesn’t seem too interested in expending the effort to use it. But guys like Dawkins, or Myers, or the million and one other spouters of boilerplate about “religion vs. science” would seem a more courageous target for the consciousness-raisers at New Scientist to point out. How much courage does it take to bravely face the applause of your smug readers?

What’s missing from the discussion, of course, is the place that concupiscence has in “darkening the intellect” as those dusty old moral theologians used to say. Merely having a clever mind that swiftly processes data is no great shakes and is not much to your credit. God pretty much supplies that via genetics and the care of your parents in educating you. The real trick is to want to bother to use it and to want to bother to use it for the glory of God and the love of neighbor. Merely being smart is something any idiot can do. Goebbels, recall, had a Ph.D. And Satan is smarter than all of us. He’s also the Great Ass of the Universe.