I'm not exactly sure what you're going for with this, Chris, but I will tell you I don't think it's a "paparazzi-type factoid." Nadal spoke directly to his notion of belief, and rather rejected it, which is rare in famous athletes. (His Uncle Toni, who is a deep thinker, imo, has outright declared himself an atheist.) I think you under-value those who may lack formal education, as most tennis players do, as unsophisticated in their thinking. While many are, they also have an exposure to the wider world that could be said to compensate for formal education. I'm not sure if you're saying that educated people don't believe in god, or if you're saying that tennis players are mostly dummies, and Nadal is an anomaly in his ability to eschew religion, even though he quit school early, as did most tennis players. Or both.
Thanks for correcting by characterisation. If Nad said sth officially, it's not "paparazzi".
I didn't say anything on the subjects emphasised above and your inference about my opinion on said subjects is incorrect.
Regarding formal vs. informal education, I think both types are equally valuable in the practical sense. If I talk about formal education only while anti-correlating the education and religiousness, that's because the social researchers who discovered said anti-correlation, used formal education as their input data which is the only way to ensure the data is not biased. I'm confident in my opinion, that if informal education level could be somehow measured & used, the said anti-correlation would've been even higher. Also note that I did not say anything about the
value of religious (i.e. unti-correlated to education) worldview. I didn't have to say anything because it was beside my point. But since you've been trying to infer my opinion, I can satisfy your curiosity and explain it. it's up to an individual to pursue their education level as well as moral/religious beliefs. Some people chose to drop out of school because they felt high expertise their school would give them would be useless. Some people don't want to spend their time trying to find scientific explanation of everything, because it's impossible. They prefer to spend their time on something else/more useful, and fill the "gaps" in their knowledge with supernatural beliefs. I don't denigrate those who chose to have such beliefs, although I disagree with such attitude and prefer to seek rational explanation. Some people have to "fill the gap" in their knowledge by jumping to a dimension orthogonal to reality (i.e. irrational) and that's fine, but I don't: I can live with pure void. By now, you can infer that I'm 100% atheist but I'm not a uni prof so I do not quote said anti-correlation to boost my ego.
Regarding the intelligence of tennis players, I don't know how you could infer that I think tennis players are "dummies", because my true opinion is opposite. I think tennis is a game where athleticism and "smart thinking" go together, I indicated it few times elsewhere. So, Nad is not "an anomaly", all players who succeed in this game must be "smart thinking", also knowledgeable individuals. This is a necessary condition. Nad is the smartest and most knowledgeable of them all by virtue of being the most successful in the game, not by virtue of any exception.
B-)
