See the data over at The Audacious Epigone. This sort of finding shouldn't be super "counter-intuitive," there are a lot of variables which affect the opinions of a set of people on a disparate set of questions, and one shouldn't expect too much internal consistency. I may be that all things equal liberals don't exhibit this tendency, but in the real world all things are rarely equal. The variable is TAXCHEAT. Below are the values for belief in God (left = atheist, right is = know God exists) and race.
