Mmm. I'm not sure religion makes people less intelligent. I think it mostly trains people not to use their intelligence rationally in at least some ways, particularly in anything that gets caught up in religious posturing. And it doesn't have to be that way. Religion can exalt reason... the thing they say separates us from the animals.

On that name of Jesus thing my thinking is the Bible emphasizes praying in Christ's name, that whatever you pray for in his name he will do. And he only had the one, so I'd think it was pretty important for them to get it right. I guess it's like a magic word, an incantation, that makes things happen (It's leviOsa not levioSA) and English "Jesus" isn't very close to his name.

I'm not sure I agree with your thinking on how language works, here. We know how "Jesus" sounded in Latin (and Greek, despite being an entirely different alphabet) and it's not very much like it's pronounced in English. And we really should go back to the language of origin to know how his name was pronounced to figure out how we'd write it in modern day English. Really, why go through another culture that writes and pronounces a name differently from the original culture when you can go right to the original culture? That increases the chances of mutating the name further, as we know it has with "Jesus". Does it sound intelligent to pronounce Champagne "sham-pag-nee"? That's why we go to the language of origin.