After explaining a chart that correlates education and intelligence with atheism and agnosticism, and polls that reveal the vast majority of the American electorate would not vote for an openly atheistic candidate:
"So we've reached a grotesque mismatch, between the American intelligentsia and the American electorate. A philosophical opinion about the nature of the universe which is held by the vast majority of top American scientists, and probably the majority of the intelligentsia generally, is so abhorent to the American electorate that no candidate for popular election dare affirm it in public. If I am right, this means that the highest office in the greatest country in the world, is barred to the very people best qualified to hold it, the intelligentsia, unless they are prepared to lie about their beliefs. To put it bluntly, American political opportunities are heavily loaded against those who are simultaneously intelligent and honest."
-Richard Dawkins
