Here is one of many exhibits illustrating that fact.

And yes, I would think so even if this study claimed that Catholics or southerners or people with brown hair are smarter than others. The data may be factual, although even that depends on ill-defined and shifting terms like "liberal" and "conservative." But beyond that, it's all speculation, much of it not only narrow-minded, in the way that only materialists can be, but pretty much off the wall: religion is an evolutionary advantage because it makes you paranoid? You don't have to be religious to think that's just dumb.