An Ohio State University (OSU) class has apparently determined another fundamental difference between Christians and atheists: their IQ points.

An online quiz from the school’s Psychology 1100 class, provided to Campus Reform via tip, asked students to pick which scenario they found most likely given that “Theo has an IQ of 100 and Aine has an IQ of 125.”

The correct answer? “Aine is an atheist, while Theo is a Christian.”

According to a student in the class who wished to remain anonymous, the question was a part of an online homework quiz. Students were required to complete a certain amount of quizzes throughout the course but were encouraged to finish all of them in order to prep for the final exam.

“I understand that colleges have a liberal spin on things so it didn’t surprise me to see the question, which is a sad thing,” the student told Campus Reform in a phone interview. “But how can you really measure which religion has a higher IQ?”

Psychology 1100 is a general education requirement class which can primarily be taught by an undergraduate teacher’s assistant.

While the student said the quizzes were based on the textbook used in class, an OSU employee in the psychology department who wished to remain nameless said quizzes are oftentimes created by the teacher’s assistant.

The employee added that the psychology department is “very open to talking with students” if they are worried about grading or a question on an exam.

OSU explicitly prohibits discrimination on campus against any individual based on “age, ancestry, color, disability, gender identity or expression, genetic information, military status, national origin, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, HIV status, or veteran status,” according to the university’s policy.

“Colleges will tolerate pretty much any religion other than Christianity,” the OSU student said. “If colleges really want to give everyone a fair shot, they should stay away from making comments about any religion.”

Dr. Mike Adams, an outspoken conservative Christian professor at the University of North Carolina, said “every group is protected from offensive speech on campus except for conservative Christians.”

Adams also added that applying this principle to other types of groups would be taboo on college campuses.

"So would it be permissible to force blacks to take a class teaching that blacks would have a lower IQ than white people?” he said in an interview with Campus Reform.

This isn’t the first time a researcher has used psychology to suggest those with more social conservative or even religious values have lower IQ scores. A 2011 study published in Psychological Science claimed that “lower general intelligence...in childhood predicts greater racism in adulthood, and this effect was largely mediated via conservative ideology.”

“When science arose, it arose in the West and it did so in Christian nations. It did so because Christianity—with its assumptions about an orderly universe and its emphasis on obtaining knowledge as a cultural value—[was] necessary for science to develop and to flourish,” Adams said. “That anti-Christian bigots use science to attack Christianity is more than Pharisaic hypocrisy. It is deeply ingrained institutional bigotry.”

OSU declined to comment to Campus Reform for this story.

Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @K_Schallhorn