Old wisdom: Post-graduate degrees, benchmark of the intelligentsia, lead people astray from religion and promote atheism.

New wisdom: Not so much, says a newly published study, the first ever look at religious beliefs and behavior of people with masters degrees, doctorates and professional degrees such as lawyers and physicians.

It turns out that on Sunday mornings, "the educated elite look a lot like the rest of America," says Barry Kosmin of Trinity College, Hartford, Conn., author of the report published Monday at the online site of the American Religious Identification Survey statistics.

Kosmin, one of the lead-investigators on the ARIS surveys, says:

Secularists want to say more education will make people more rational, less religious. Sectarians, think more education will undermine religion with exposure to anti-religious university faculty. But faculty are actually very unrepresentative of the elite overall.

So we wanted to take the first look at the religious views of post-graduates and we had 5,000 to analyze drawn from the 2008 ARIS," which surveyed more than 50,000 people nationwide.

Kosmin's key findings on elites:

Forget the old fear of university indoctrination in atheism or secularism. "The elite today look more like their parents than their professors." While 82% of all Americans said in 2008 that they believe in a personal God or a high power, so did 85% of elites.

They also more closely resemble most Americans. In the past 18 years there's been an 80% jump in the number people with post-graduate degrees, up from 6% of the USA in 1990 to 8% in 2008. Joining the ranks were "more women and more southerners -- the two groups with the highest levels of religious commitment."

Elites share the majority's doubts about evolution although they are still more likely to support it with 48% saying humans evolved from earlier species of animals, compared to 38% of the nation overall.

Elites have high levels of household membership in a house of worship: 63% say they belong compared to 54% of overall. "They have higher incomes and can afford to join and to put more in the collection plate."

But before believers shout hallelujah, there's another finding to consider. If the elite believe like ordinary folks, they also "unbelieve" at similar rates, says Kosmin.

The ARIS found the number of people who say they have no religious identity, nicknamed Nones, climbed from 8% to 15% of Americans. And about three in 10 Nones are under age 30. As they move up the education ladder, the intelligentsia's religiosity is likely to slip as well, he says.

THINK ABOUT IT: Did higher ed change your view of a higher power?