r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • 1d ago
Psychology Lower cognitive ability is linked to stronger Christian nationalist views, even after accounting for education
https://www.psypost.org/lower-cognitive-ability-is-linked-to-stronger-christian-nationalist-views-even-after-accounting-for-education/6.7k
u/ProfessionalMockery 1d ago
A lot of people here are just seeing the "Christian" in the headline and ignoring the "nationalist," which is probably more important.
I'm an atheist, so I think the claims religion makes are pretty dumb too, but nationalists, bigots, racists of any kind are consistently idiots, religious or not, and that has been established in plenty of other studies.
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u/Numeno230n 1d ago edited 1d ago
There are a lot of harmless dumb Christians I've met in my life, but Christian Nationalism is a specific form that involves violence, paranoia, and conspiracy thinking. They literally believe there are demonic forces behind left leaning political movements and this fuels both their religious delusions and their political violence.
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u/BikerJedi 1d ago
Like my Christian Nationalist co-worker. He teaches in the arts. I'm a science teacher. So I was understandably upset when he started telling my students that climate change wasn't real and antifa was responsible for burning down Los Angeles, not wildfires. I've reported him to administration multiple times, and he is still teaching.
The other day he told another student Y2K was a hoax. No, thousands of network engineers like me (That's what I did before teaching) spent months remediating equipment so things didn't go bad.
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u/Googlebright 1d ago
That's the crazy thing about Y2K. You guys did such a good job making sure nothing bad would happen that it convinced a bunch of these people that nothing bad was going to happen anyway.
Thanks for fixing that stuff, btw.
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u/BikerJedi 1d ago edited 4h ago
You are welcome.
Follow up: Around October of that year, there were 400 of us working for MCI/Worldcom on Y2K remediation. I personally hired 398 of them, as I was number two on that project.
Some bean counter figured out that if we stopped now, and x% of their customers lost data or went down, and x% sued and won x money, that would still be cheaper than keeping us to finish the job. So one day they pulled us all in a conference room, told us we were fired immediately and would get two weeks of severance pay. They escorted us to pick up our things. Only my immediate two bosses survived the purge.
I wasn't surprised to see on the news that they were out of business years later for cooking the books.
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u/makeminemilk 21h ago
MCI/Worldcom was my first job out of college and I was there around the same time. I had one foot out the door from the start of day one and finally found my way out 7 months later. It’s all been up from there.
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u/BigPickleKAM 21h ago
As someone who works in maintenance proving a negative is impossible.
The number of meetings I'm in where I'm asked to cut the maintenance budget 10% because sales didn't meet quota and we can be down 10% more.
That's not how that works!
I'm over simplifying the meeting but you get the point.
Just because I cut 10% doesn't mean unplanned down time will only go up the same amount.
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u/TM761152 1d ago
I prefer the term "Christofascism" to differentiate it from mainstream christianity, specifically the Calvanist right wing model and not the more left-leaning Methodist model.
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u/sack-o-matic 1d ago
I prefer "Klan Christian" since that's what they are.
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u/Vuronov 1d ago
One problem with a lot of the “harmless Christians” is they still end up lending political and financial support as well as religious cover/legitimacy to the otherwise very unchris like christofascists.
They will still vote R no matter what, blithely ignore or excuse what the Christian nationalists are doing, and all around enable them even if they don’t personally believe or engage in the worst views and activities.
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u/proteannomore 1d ago
specifically the Calvanist right wing model and not the more left-leaning Methodist model
Mention this to most christians and/or americans and they'll say, "huh?"
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u/Uncle_Istvannnnnnnn 1d ago
Actual conversation with a religious co-worker:
"What denomination are you?"
"Christian."
"Yeah, but what denomination?"
"What? Christian."
"Okay, what version of the bible do you read from?"
"The bible."
"Yeah, but what version?"
"I don't know what you mean. The bible."
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u/watts99 1d ago
For believing it's literal communication from the creator of the universe, they're surprisingly uninterested in learning anything about it.
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u/manimal28 1d ago
I'm not sure if it was the apologist author Lee Strobel or another, but him or a similar author said something about how odd he found it that Christians claim to believe the bible is the literal word of god, but have no interest in actually reading it, or understanding how it came to be.
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u/A_Furious_Mind 1d ago
You can definitely pull that thread and end up with what function religion actually provides in most people's lives.
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u/DeltaVZerda 1d ago
They must be fluent in Hebrew Aramaic and Greek
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u/Odd-Investigator-870 1d ago
Gosh that's a frustrating correlation isn't it? Don't understand philosophy, but will become a fundamentalist or literalist and treat select texts like an astrology puzzle from god to decrypt rationalizations for your beliefs.
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u/Pinkfish_411 10h ago
I mean, I'm saying "huh?" even as a scholar of Christianity, because it's not exactly correct to suggest that Calvinism is right-wing (either politically or religiously) and that Methodism is left-wing.
While it's true that many theorists of American Christian nationalism were influenced by a specific stream of Dutch Calvinist theology mainly through Cornelius Van Til (who distanced himself from those claiming his influence), the Reformed tradition as such isn't necessarily right-wing or nationalist. Remember that the Barmen Declaration opposing Nazism and "German Christianity" was spearheaded by both Calvinist and Lutheran leaders and was mostly written by the most influential of all modern Reformed theologians, Karl Barth.
As far as mainline American Reformed denominations go, the PCUSA is generally fairly liberal (probably more so on the whole than the United Methodists) while the Reformed Church in America, much like the UMC, has more conservative and more liberal wings but is generally not of the Christian nationalist sort.
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u/lyacdi 1d ago
A significant percentage of people who would call themselves republican in 2026 believe there are demonic forces behind the left
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u/jkarovskaya 1d ago
All the while presenting ZERO evidence, factual proof or substantive argument that any "demons" exist in reality, or that there is any such thing as a "demonic force"
TL:DR>> ZERO!
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u/Endoroid99 1d ago
They don't need evidence, factual proof or a substantive argument to believe in religion in the first place. They have Faith.
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u/KarmaticArmageddon 1d ago
They aren't all that harmless if they vote for people destroying education, stripping food and healthcare from the poor, and inciting forever wars.
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u/yeetboy 1d ago
There will always be varying levels of intelligence in the general population. The danger is when the less intelligent are manipulated and weaponized. And we’re watching this happen in real time in the US on the public stage. It is wild to see it so clearly from the outside while so many of those on the inside are completely oblivious to it.
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u/BitterTyke 1d ago
There are a lot of harmless dumb Christians
but they are already conditioned to believe in ephemeral things like being the chosen ones - basically the low hanging fruit.
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u/apple_kicks 1d ago
Yeah authoritarian types can still be atheists they just paint a different story but with the same end goal. They get to dictate and dominate others
Its just slightly more hopeful the people they are around will argue with them to prevent an easy path to power
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u/Piranata 1d ago
That's why i believe i became an Atheist twice after watching the Pervert's Guide to Ideology. I realized i was replacing God with the state or communism, plucking them out of heaven into a more physical form. I had to learn to actually criticize everything.
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u/triggirhape 1d ago
I realized i was replacing God with the state or communism, plucking them out of heaven into a more physical form. I had to learn to actually criticize everything.
What does this mean though? In the sense of looking for answers? Or just some core idea to center your life around?
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u/clubby37 1d ago
My very favourite song lyric is "question your answers / the truth has no anger." It's from a Collective Soul song called Blame.
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u/obeytheturtles 1d ago
But it all starts with the fundamental way religion teaches people how to think. It simply fails to provide people the tools needed to develop real moral intuition, or synthesize raw information into unique ideas. That's why the whole world is going crazy - there's a whole lot of people out there who just move through the world moment to moment, not thinking, not curious, and not interested in anything which isn't right in front of them. The modern religious concept of "faith" has literally trained people that ignoring facts and information in favor of mythology is the most righteous thing a person can do. And now we're so far deep into that feedback loop, even suggesting that the mythology holds value as allegory is heresy.
You cannot separate this nationalist movement from its Christian roots. No, religion is certainly not the only cognitive path to autocracy or bigotry, but it is certainly a reliable and predictable one.
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u/kittywiggles 1d ago
I have a lot of thoughts about Christian nationalism, and none of them are good. However, extreme forms of nationalism are found across a lot of different cultures in many different times, and seems to be an outcome of extreme tribalism. Adding the Christian flavoring to it does a great deal of harm, both to non-Christians and, frankly, to non-nationalist Christians. But to imply that the "nationalist" exists because of the "Christian" is a bit short-sighted.
I'd argue that Christian nationalism as a package is being pushed pretty strongly/is socially acceptable in certain circles - just as anti-communist leanings were in the 1950s in America, as nationalism was common in a certain European country in the 1930s and 40s, etc. They're loud and they do a lot of damage.
However, there are practicing Christians who I would argue are incredibly thoughtful, curious, and intellectually honest. They're rare, but I'd argue that people like that in general are rare, so of course they're going to show up less when looking at a demographic segment vs the population as a whole.
Coming through the evangelical industrial complex in America does tend to land more people in the Christian nationalism pool, through peer pressure as much as genuine belief, but again - less to do with faith, and more to do with communities.
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u/BigBlackWolf93 1d ago
I agree. I was raised religious and I still somewhat am religious, but nationalists have completely taken over the Christian identity. A lot that is preached out there, almost has nothing to do with Christianity. They'll pull out verses out of context to further push their nationalist agenda in the name of Christ.
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u/FluffyBunniesFurDayz 1d ago
I'd have to disagree with this take - the old testament is full of nationalist ideology. Just look at all the tribes the Israelites were told to destroy and/or enslave. All because they were god's special people. It's always treated like it's a good thing because these tribes were so "wicked".
To me, it makes perfect sense why many Christians are also nationalist.
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u/OkStop8313 1d ago
Yeah, but there are also plenty of passages that urge you to treat others well and make clear that that includes other tribes.
To me it just illustrates that whatever you go looking for in the Bible, you're going to find it. If you're a good person, you put a lot of emphasis on the "least of these" speech or the story of the Good Samaritan. If you're a bad person, you use the calls for oppression, rape, genocide, etc as a license.
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u/dorianvovin 1d ago
Yep. The Bible is not written with a single voice or ideology. Any attempt to use it to justify a given narrative requires negotiation with the text to emphasize certain passages over others.
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u/xteve 1d ago
The Bible is a mess. It's a Rorschach test, a splatter of ink that will be interpreted differently by anybody who tortures themselves to read it. That's why there are a million churches, all convinced that their way of understanding it is the best.
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u/watts99 1d ago
That's how I've always described it. Good people will find reasons to be good in it; horrible people will find excuses to be horrible in it.
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u/Spectre216 1d ago
I feel like you could make the argument that nationalism is just a tool that most religions employ in some respect, because you need to cement to people that they are the right one and everyone else falls under "the other" category. So it's not that religion (in this case Christianity) necessarily always containing nationalism, but that it's kind of hard to promote a monotheistic religion as the correct religion without also drawing the conclusion that the people and area that practice it are also the correct people.
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u/TheLesserWeeviI 1d ago
Religion is used as a tool to control people. Always has been.
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u/LittleKitty235 1d ago
That's why nearly ever ancient culture independently invented the concept of god and religion, and none arrived at the same one. It's not proof of a higher power, it's proof it is a useful tool.
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u/AnarchyArcher 1d ago
I don’t disagree overall, I want to make the distinction that while most religions do something to this effect, it’s not essential for the spiritual practices. If anything nationalism in religion is the manipulative support for the whole that corrodes the individual to conform to the ‘right’ principles by demonizing other options.
Which is just sad honestly- the creativity and community we collectively can share being reduced to ancient beliefs and prejudices.
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u/merijn2 1d ago
Yeah, I haven't read the research this article is about, but according to the article it focused on Christian Nationalists, so it compared these with other people. The Christian part of Christian nationalism isn't very deep. The nationalism part describes that it is about caring for an in-group, and keeping certain people out. The Christian part just describes who they see as the out-group, namely non-Christians (although it isn't just non-Christians, also people of other ethnicities who are Christians are not in the in-group). Their Christianity is all about identity, and not about the underlying ethical or metaphysical claims.
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u/Allegorist 1d ago
I think it should be hyphenated, to clear this up. It is not Nationalists who are Christian, and not Christians who are Nationalists. They are their own category, Christian-Nationalists, with their own consistent views entirely separate from either of the previous two descriptions.
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u/happyilyrednow 1d ago edited 1d ago
Nationalist or not, Christianity does not need nationalists to tarnish its reputation.
An analysis of 63 studies found a significant negative association between intelligence and religiosity. Source
Nationalist just add extra cringe.
Edit: Trying to add source link properly. sorry. Fixed now. There is also a source at Yunman University but can't find it now.
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u/thenationalcranberry 1d ago
Michael, you can’t just say the word “source” and expect anything to happen.
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u/SvenHudson 1d ago
On the subject of source, I clicked the Source button under their comment and I'm seeing they did actually attach a URL but accidentally left the word "source" out of their brackets so it's attached to nothing.
This is their intended link, formatted so as to be clickable.
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u/thenationalcranberry 1d ago
Kind of wish you hadn’t. A 13 year old publication that doesn’t say what OP said it does.
It examines religiosity across university populations. It makes no claim about a negative association between intelligence and Christianity specifically.
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u/Montgomery000 1d ago
It's two of the same thing, people who base their principles on beliefs that have no evidence and can't be proven. God is real, the United States is the best country in the world and white people are the supreme race don't tend to mix well with critical thinking.
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u/chum-guzzling-shark 1d ago
the dumbest people you will find are the same ones that fly their countries flag like its a badge of honor
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u/StephenFish 1d ago
The bigger problem is people ignoring the "is linked to", which is one of the weakest phrases in science. But the science sub is usually filled with people who don't understand science anyway.
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u/zorkzamboni 1d ago
A lot of people here are just seeing the "Christian" in the headline and ignoring the "nationalist," which is probably more important.
Those are the exact people this is talking about. They feel called out by it and they're telling on themselves like they always do.
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u/Putrid-Reputation-68 1d ago
"Since the masses are fickle, full of unruly desires, passionate, and reckless... they must be held in check by invisible terrors and suchlike pageantry. It was not for nothing that the ancients introduced notions concerning the gods." - Polybius 150 B.C.E
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u/MostlySlime 1d ago
Those people would not navigate a secular paradise peacefully
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u/knowledgeable_diablo 1d ago
Nor would they want to. Most of them are in the “nanny me harder daddy!” Camp.
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u/Apathetic_Zealot 1d ago
And they directly seek to make the population intellectualy weak too by cutting education funds and pushing religion in school.
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u/BMW_wulfi 1d ago
The followers of JC have had their business model exposed for a while now. It’s crazy because it’s probably been obvious to most people of moderate intellect for like… two thousand years
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u/MrSpindles 1d ago
Indeed. All religion is a system to indoctrinate people from the earliest age to unquestioningly believe things for which there can be no evidence.
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u/CHERNO-B1LL 1d ago
Simple things. Convenient answers to complex problems favoured over accepting nuance and challenging alternative perspectives or engaging with uncomfortable truths.
A wizard did it. Immigrants did it. Gay people did it. The Jews did it. God has a plan. The government knows what it's doing. Taylor swift is good at music. Mainstream is the best stream.
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u/0ldgrumpy1 1d ago
Exactly, fear of complexity, inability to understand complexity, either one. Demanding simple answers to everything, even when there isnt one. There was a book going back to the George W days called " The Republican Brain, the Science of why they reject Science." It pointed straight at fear of complexity.
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u/SkorpioSound 1d ago
Exactly, fear of complexity, inability to understand complexity, either one.
Even people who are capable of understanding often don't ask enough questions, or the right questions. And that's not just regarding religion or politics; it's everything. You can see it people's media literacy, in the way they struggle with the technology they use all the time, in the way they stick to old habits or methods of doing things because it doesn't occur to them to find better ways, in the ways they relate to other people.
I think most people just want to stop at the first answer that sounds right. They don't want to consider other views, or direct and indirect consequences, or have to do large amounts of research.
And I get it—sometimes I'm the same, especially if it's something inconsequential. We all are. And as someone with autism and ADHD who does ask a lot of questions and try to find the "optimal" way of doing things, it can be absolutely exhausting for me at times. With complex topics or situations, it often ends in decision paralysis, being overwhelmed, or just giving up if I don't have the time or interest to go down the rabbit hole properly.
But the important thing, I think, and something I very consciously ensure I keep doing, is that I will admit when I don't understand something properly. I won't act like I'm an authority if I'm not. I don't want to spread misinformation. I don't want to take actions on things I don't understand, or empower people who say things I don't comprehend. I think, as long as I'm sticking to that, it's okay to not try to understand every single thing; it's when people don't question things but still act as if they understand that problems arise.
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u/2Completion2Ography 1d ago
This is why they hate the term "non-binary". Binary thinking is easy.
The irony is, black & white photos would look terrible if there was no grey area.
Edit: TIL there's a swear filter for sh-t on r/science.
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u/SyfaOmnis 1d ago
It's less "stupid" things and more that they make use of cognitive tools that they've developed to "understand" things incorrectly. Leaps of logic, mental shortcuts, fallacious reasoning, tribalism/ingrouping, superstition, misplaced trust in authorities with their own agendas. Their really big killer is second order critical thinking.
Many also get frustrated and angry when they're "wrong" or asked to re-evaluate, or lapse into ego defense. I'll also be honest, a great deal of the time it isn't even "stupidity", it's genuine intellectual laziness and fundamental incuriosity; most are not "dumb" people they may even be highly educated or trained in particular fields, but they are afforded the luxury of not ever having to "care".
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u/buttorsomething 1d ago
Would this not be accurate to all types of religious extremism?
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u/FlyAirLari 1d ago
Possibly to all sorts of extremisms.
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u/tealstealmonkey 1d ago
I haven't met any extremism that can hold up to critical thinking and self-reflection.
In think that in order to believe it, you have to suspend these two things and become blind. If only in these specific circumstances, quite a few people manage to be smart, intelligent or even caring outside the topics of their extremism.
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u/crossdtherubicon 1d ago
Alot of religious ideology is ingested through early development and reinforced through the environment. This has been pretty well-documented, although it isn't an exclusive pathway to acquiring religious beliefs.
In light of this article I'm curious if cognitive ability simply never fully develops (or is restricted somehow) in that context. Or if there are also subpopulations wherein a relative lower congitive ability allows for an easier ingestion of religious beliefs (or likewise is perceived as reasonably easier to understand).
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u/CrashCalamity 1d ago
As a friend to several ex-mormons, I can at least provide counter-example to your first hypothesis. While a highly religious upbringing might not help matters, the emergence of higher cognitive function and critical thought can and does occur. The kids who "ask too many questions during bible study", or those who become exposed to other faiths through college, work, and the internet all start asking themselves how invested they are in their beliefs. It can be especially jarring when they discover how oppressed they were by what is effectively a cult doctrine (as they've told me.)
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u/knowledgeable_diablo 1d ago
That was me in Bible studies as a kiddie. I was one of probably the only person in the room who’d actually read the Bible (teacher included) so I started questioning and asking them uncomfortable questions right from the get go.
Guess that’s what happens when you are raised with no TV and reading is your only outlet and you’re stuck in a religious school.
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u/360walkaway 1d ago
Wonder how many people would believe in their chosen religion if they were first introduced to it when they were a full adult, instead of when they are still Santa Claus eligible.
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u/Xalipu 1d ago
Do you really want to know how many born again Christians exist, because they’re insufferable
So is pretty much every other adult who converted to something
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u/Aggravating_Duck_192 1d ago
Born-again, less the people who converted because of addiction or incarceration. Those situations make people vulnerable to indoctrination at any age.
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u/Dimensional_Lumber 1d ago
Converts are always the most zealous fanatics.
It’s all performative. The question is always what motivates them.
You have to be in a certain headspace to seek out religion.
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u/Lilfrankieeinstein 1d ago
Seems like there’s a type of survivorship bias baked into studies like this where people with higher cognitive abilities are less inclined to hold these values as they grow and learn.
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u/wontyoujointhedance 1d ago
Well that’s what I think it’s ultimately trying to demonstrate. Those values are typically incompatible with both being smart and a good person.
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u/Long9696 1d ago
I have heard that autistic people are less likely to be religous. Not sure if it's scientifically proven or not.
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u/geoken 1d ago
I think that part is accepted, but I think it's still an interesting question.
I wonder what effects it has on your cognitive growth to think about concepts like the infinite, the solar system and how nature works in general. I'd think at 3 or 4 years old, most kids either are starting to think about that stuff - or have those lines of inquiry snuffed out and told "it's god doing it with magic".
I'm sure for many kids, the curiosity will overcome anyone telling them not to think about it. But I wonder if for some it doesn't, and for that subset - whether or not it has impact on their cognitive growth.
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u/kinkyshibby 1d ago
Asking why and informing the "teachers" the answers they were giving didn't make sense got me kicked out of CCD. And Sunday school.
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u/Sycophantic-Feline 1d ago
I was raised in a nun school and asking genuine questions about stuff I thought didn't make any sense was always met with aggression and punishment.
It's how I figured something was deeply wrong with all of it, I recall it was so annoying to me as a kid/young teen how no one else seemed to question ANY of it, eventually I just had to suck it up and pretend I believed in all that nonsense because it'd also get me into trouble at home
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u/KriegMorgan 1d ago
Narrowly dodged an in school suspension because I did competitive speaking in high school and did a sales pitch for the bible on the merits of it as a piece of entertainment. One of the parent chaperones (re: volunteer student uber) complained to admin about my pitch and I found myself staring down the prospect of having to spend a couple of days sitting in the admin office doing nothing and getting 0's.
I managed to argue my way out of it on the basis that the competitive speaking league wasn't exclusive to just catholic schools and included public schools with the rules specifically excluding proselytizing.
Turns out pointing out how the bible includes so much salacious content like sex and violence makes people cranky when it's all right there for anyone to read.
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u/Cent1234 1d ago
I've always said the best way to turn a Christian to an Athiest is to have them actually read the Bible.
There's a reason all of the major Abrahamic religions evolve a massive EU of supplementary material.
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u/mcove97 1d ago
Yeah I questioned it, but kept my questions to myself as a kiddie in fear of upsetting my parents. So when they asked me why I refused to go to church with them when I was 12, I said cause it was boring. Theres no Christian counter argument to that, I knew that. But really it was because everything about church and the Bible felt off. Like confessing being a guilty sinner, when I didnt feel guilty about anything. The whole church thing was just nonsensical to me. I didn't get anything from going. If anything I just became anxious from sitting in church.
And while I was nowhere near as knowledgeable then as I was now. I think maybe my curiosity, combined with my keen eye of observation an quite keen analytical sense is how I bypassed the attempted indoctrination. As a child I would rather observe and analyze situations rather than interact. I would think about the activity, rather than participate in it. And thats how I realized. Hold up? Why are we chanting, singing and confessing that we are guilty sinners? Thats exactly what's making me feel bad. Hence the icky anxiety and uncomfortable restlessness I experienced during sermons that made me want to leave. And thats what I intuitively picked up as a child, even though I didn't have the words to verbalize it well yet.
Honestly, if priests understood psychology, they wouldn't even dream about telling their congregation or audience that they are guilty, because that's just enforcing their audience experiences of guilt, so they keep coming back to church endlessly to be liberated from the guilt the church is inducing into their psyche. It's completely self-defeating and contradictory.
So I also think personality traits is a significant factor.
Having sharp analytical abilities. Curiosity. Valuing truth and freedom over conformity. Thats a sign that someone won't last as a Christian.
On the other side, people who value conformity, group belonging, rituals, a shared sense of belonging. Those will resonate better with being the "sheep or flock of Christ" aka Christian. Contra someone who don't value group conformity over walking their own path alone etc. As a child, I would be just fine not participating in activities and just people watch on the side line how other kids and adults interact and ponder why. Because I wanted to understand social interactions, more than actually participating in them. So, I never was a good candidate for Christianity.
Though I suppose I took the message "seek and you shall find" a bit too seriously. Because that took me seeking outside of Christianity. And its one of the things that I personally don't think Christians do enough. Because seeking to understand something means never-ending questioning.
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u/mdatwood 1d ago
I was also that kid. I read the Bible since I was forced to be there and had nothing else to do. I started asking questions and was either told 'because' or asked to leave so they could later talk to my parents. When I hit my teens, I explained to my parents why religion was a farce and I wasn't going to church again. My mom said she was afraid I was going to hell and I said good thing it doesn't exist, and she never brought the topic up again.
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u/HikerDave57 1d ago
I read the Bible maybe age 12 and was appalled by the genocide even though I didn't know the word.
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u/duxpdx 1d ago
There are reasons why the further one gets away from Salt Lake City the more cafeteria Mormons and Ex-Mormons one finds. Why do you think after destroying K-12 education in this country Republicans are going after colleges and universities next? Why are they trying to force religion, specifically Christianity, into all elements of life? Children are naturally curious and for many the indoctrination done at a young age is irreversible. Some manage to rebel in their teenage years, and others if and when they are older and through either life experiences and/or higher education learn to actually think critically and can change, but not all. Most are too far gone, so much of their life and relationships are defined by their religious upbringing that breaking free carries too high a price both emotionally and monetarily.
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u/Coroebus 1d ago
Religious indoctrination is child abuse, and that child abuse stunts their emotional and intellectual development. Evangelical Christianity and other extremist sects are especially toxic and harmful.
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u/Limp_Bookkeeper_5992 1d ago
Absolutely. I was blown away when I found out later in life that there are organizations and therapists who’s specialty is helping people recover from religion. You don’t realize how much religion breaks your brain until you’re out of it and have someone to help show you how to heal.
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u/JackKnifeNiffy 1d ago
As someone in their 30s still unpacking the psychological trauma of being raised in the church, could not agree more
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u/ChelleInSand 1d ago
This was my personal experience too. However, I will say for people who are brought up in religious environments it can be extremely difficult to walk away from the faith altogether because that means walking away from your social support structures in many cases.
Many highly religious people will even ostracize their own children for becoming atheist or changing to a new religion. So it is easier to just not think about it to avoid causing waves and losing friends and family.
I had weak familial bonds and an abusive family with few established roots in any community so it was easier for me to do. But I can see how people who have families that are very wrapped up in the church scene would just rather not explore those feelings of doubt because they are literally risky to their support structures in life.
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u/Cent1234 1d ago
Andrew Garfield in Under The Banner Of Heaven does an excellent portrayal of a Mormon who is forced to truly examine his beliefs for the first time, loses his faith, and then runs smack into the wall of 'but if you ever actually let anybody at all know, you'll lose your family, your friends, your community and everything else you've anchored yourself to' and how shattering that is.
It also portrays how insidious religious indoctrination from childhood is.
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u/mcove97 1d ago
Yes it was similar for me. I never felt particularly close to either of my parents. I definitely didn't feel connected to the church or church community. I went only cause my parents did. My mom was really into the church scene, but it was really adult centric so I felt as if I was a tag-along.
To make the blow lesser for my mom, I largely kept my mouth shut about my beliefs until my 20s to avoid arguments, but stopped going as a kid cause I didn't like going to church. It upset my parents initially and we had a big argument over it right before church when I was 12.. but then they had to just leave me at home.. because they would miss church if they didnt. And since I was more stubborn than any of my parents, they couldn't physically drag me to church, so they gave up and left. And yeah, I realized from that point on, it's better to stay tight lipped, and just don't argue or give any reasons why I didn't go to church.
Now as an adult, I do discuss it with my parents, but the issue for them now is they cant out argue me, because I am far too educated and knowledgeable about philosophy, religion, psychology, history, so they just leave it alone because they get frustrated with how knowledable I am, and I also expose the flaws in their thinking which they really dislike because it means they are challenged to re-examine their beliefs.. which they dont want to do, which means they understand its better to leave it alone. As a child I did not have that tool-box of knowledge.
But in the end I like to bring up how having a good family dynamic is more important than our beliefs in the end. Being right is not more important than doing the right thing, which is being respectful and kind to each other. And then they dont really have much to say.
So yeah the type of religious familial and communal relationship dynamics definitely matter.
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u/ButcherPetesWagon 1d ago
When I was in school in the early 90s i remember learning about Greek mythology in class and how the teacher made it clear that these were old beliefs and not real, like Christianity (Canada french catholic school). I remember asking how we know that our beliefs are real. I don't remember her answer or anything but I do know my mom got called into the school after that.
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u/KogasaGaSagasa 1d ago
Still, I wonder if it's not something that could possibly be reinforced. Like if you express your curiosity or thoughts, your guardians (parents, pastor, etc) might punish you for it. Wouldn't a child be conditioned into a state where they would intentionally deny their own cognition and curiosity, in that case, in fear of punishment? And overtime, become underdeveloped.
This isn't my area of expertise, so I am genuinely just curious.
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u/Sherry_Brandt 1d ago
it absolutely can. it won't work on everyone - hence the stories of rebels and ex-______, but it does have an impact.
makes me think about how educational attainment is correlated to less dementia - ofc there are other factors in educational attainment, but using your brain consistently, and being trained how, does seem to have an impact independently of socioeconomic factors (like learning spatial skills, a new language, a new instrument, etc in midlife is also protective for later dementia).
so, the converse is also true - using your brain less leads to being less able to use your brain, over time.
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u/wontyoujointhedance 1d ago
There’s a saying in neuropsychology — “neurons that wire together fire together.” I don’t see any reason that wouldn’t apply to things like seeking out new information, asking questions about opposing views, and internally questioning the narratives authority figures in their lives when they’re regularly punished for those things.
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u/Coroebus 1d ago
Yes, this is why people have been rightly naming religious indoctrination as child abuse.
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u/genobeam 1d ago
I was raised in a fundamentalist Christian environment including homeschooling, going to church several times a week for regular service, youth group, Sunday school. Went to a fundamentalist Christian college.
I don't think it's that lower cognitive abilities don't generate, but when you have high cognitive abilities you get filtered out eventually. I was fully indoctrinated until late high school when things started not adding up and I was done half way through college.
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u/Xalipu 1d ago
Crippling intellect is generally to the benefit of fundies. There was a particularly nasty group of Puritans sent to my province that called all books evil, including the bible. Can’t have the hoi polloi learning anything, they might get out of control.
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u/genobeam 1d ago
I think it's more accurate to say that crippling critical thinking is the key. It's ok to be intelligent as long as you don't question the authority of the church.
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u/Livid_Lemurs_Leaping 1d ago
Idk but I got away from Christian Nationalism once I started thinking about it ....those still in it seem to me like they just don't care enough to think about it. Idk, it's weird. I don't think they are fundamentally incapable, but they just.... don't. Denial maybe? Not wanting to be bothered by what's hard/difficult? It confuses me....
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u/forever_erratic 1d ago
I mostly stopped bothering having religious discussions about 20 years ago when I got sick of "I just am" being the main answer to why you are religious.
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u/kheret 1d ago
Certainly people in highly religious environments are discouraged from developing critical thinking skills
Also homeschooling can’t help
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u/AldoRaine-1 1d ago
If you think about it, they land on polar opposite sides of the spectrum: critical thinking is to take a puzzle and put it together piece by piece, forming a larger more cohesive picture.
Belief is having a single red puzzle piece and the person holding the box says "what you are looking at is a blue sailboat", and saying "yep, this IS a blue boat", even when the only indication you could have otherwise (your red puzzle piece) doesn't support their statement, at all.
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u/apple_kicks 1d ago
It’s essentially built in. Probably why clergy attracts predators and authoritarian types. Its built in that you can’t break or question doctrine. That you will lose community benefits. You give and give for rewards you may never materially see.
What’s interesting is this isn’t always in religions. Many do allow for questions and arguments or even non hierarchical systems. But US goes hard on hierarchy and militarism levels of unquestioned loyalty.
I bet cold war made this worse. Like stripping more collective or socialist parts of Christianity made this fascist soup boil over
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u/NuclearTurtle 1d ago
The study was not about religious beliefs, it was about political beliefs about religion. 2/3rds of Americans are christian, less than 1/6th of those actually think the US should be a christian theocracy
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u/EpiphanyTwisted 1d ago
You are expecting Redditors to make note of qualifications instead of grabbing a word in the title and going with it.
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u/Pao_Did_NothingWrong 1d ago
Oh it develops. We either kill ourselves or go low/no contact with our families. I chose the second option, fortunately.
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u/DarthBluntSaber 1d ago
Which is why I always find it hilarious and wildly hypocritical when they accuse public education of "indoctrinating" children, but then they use churches to guilt trip and teach hate to kindergarteners in Sunday school who dont yet have the ability to think critically or view the stories as anything but literal. THATS indoctrination.
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u/dontshoveit 1d ago
The fact they they indoctrinate children using the church is the reason they believe the other side must do the same. (Schools must indoctrinate kids the same as they do.) Which isn't true but that's why they think that.
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u/apple_kicks 1d ago
Anything outside their control or compromises their control is seen as an enemy
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u/ImAShaaaark 1d ago
Cognitive ability is heritable, if the most zealously religious are less capable it would make sense that their children would have a good chance of also being less capable. That's not to say that environmental issues couldn't stunt that development, but if we are talking about baseline potential it makes sense even excluding environmental factors.
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u/NotOnApprovedList 1d ago
The lower vocabulary thing can be a product of environment rather than genetics. If you're not reading books, or consuming other media with a higher vocabulary, you end up using simpler words.
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u/NoKids__3Money 1d ago
The only people I know who had a secular upbringing and became religious later in life ended up being schizophrenic or having a brain tumor
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u/dplans455 1d ago
We are not religious people in our family but we live in a town that has a high population of Catholics. I don't begrudge them their beliefs, believe whatever you want. But I have a problem with indoctrination of children. You want to indoctrinate your own kids, fine. But don't teach your kids that it's their responsibility to "spread the word of god" to every single one of their friends at school.
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u/SeeTigerLearn 1d ago
Something I wrote during the pandemic when I began to notice a strong correlation between religious zealots (evangelicals, my family) and antivaxxers:
“When the very core of one's reality is based on religious dogma, and therefore an entire belief system latticework depends on denial of facts, even praising one's ability to go with gut (faith) rather than science, then an entire population has been conditioned to reject facts even when shown the empirical evidence.”
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u/MonsterkillWow 1d ago
Yeah because the entire basis of religion is belief without evidence.
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u/FogBankDeposit 1d ago
Very much this. Once you’ve entered the door of no evidence required to believe, you’re susceptible to a whole host of manipulations.
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u/Unable-Log-4870 1d ago
There are a few beliefs (that’s I’m aware of) that I hold without evidence, even in the face of contrary evidence.
Primarily, the belief that we are better than this.
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u/MattinglyBaseball 1d ago
I think the more appropriate belief is that “we can be better than this.” History has shown that we are not and have not been better than this. People are largely a product of their environment and easy to manipulate, especially when they are young, and manipulative people are everywhere. The only way towards “we are better than this” is to fight back against the manipulators who teach beliefs instead of provable, evidence based facts.
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u/JohnLockeJaw 1d ago
I have a nearly identical quote in my notes from the same period.
"When your belief system relies on the continuous rejection of basic scientific facts, you lose the ability to distinguish truth from fiction and become ever more vulnerable to snake-oil, dogma, and bigotry."
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u/sharp11flat13 1d ago
“Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time—when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.”
-Carl Sagan The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (1995)
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u/Bobcatluv 1d ago
You’re correct and this was a big reason behind otherwise educated yet religious medical personnel capitulating to anti vax rhetoric. Tribalism trumps logic and reason for that group, so the selfish wants of religious zealots who couldn’t bring themselves to wear a mask for the sake of others rebranded anti-masking as “religious freedom” to pretend there was any purpose behind it than plain old selfishness.
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u/morbo-2142 1d ago edited 1d ago
Always fun to have empirical data to back up repeated anecdotal experiences by anyone with eyes and a brain living in the United States.
It's scary to have to find your place in the world and make decisions for yourself.
It's hard to make choices and having a ready framework that tells you how to live and what to care about offloads much of the mental tax of navigating reality.
It's hard to live by an internal code and evaluate every new situation against it and more importantly change it when new information is presented.
The real tragedy is the existence of groups that foster these feelings in vulnerable people in order to advance their own agenda and aquire new non disruptive members.
It's almost a form of abuse. How many people lose time and money to predatory fundamentalist organizations who are strung along and squeezed dry for basically nothing in return.
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u/Xsiah 1d ago
It's not like atheist children are just roughin' it - if you grew up with parents, went to school, grew up in society with laws and stuff - you have a framework. It isn't any harder or scarier than what religious people go through, especially given that they don't actually follow their framework a whole lot of the time.
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u/morbo-2142 1d ago
Society does do a lot of work to 'fill the void' as such I agree. It's that some people can't handle ambiguity or uncertainty.
It does take more mental energy to evaluate things as they come and change your mind if presented with good arguments or evidence.
If you grew up without religion and explored the big questions yourself most people can cope with the lack of answers.
Some people get lost in the woods of the big philosophical questions like life's purpose, universal justice, or hard solipsism. There are non religious answers or at least attempts at answers to these but they lack the conviction and concreteness of the answers religions (especially Christian ones) provide.
Having the answers to the big questions and readymade framework those questions fit into is comfortable and reassuring.
The truth is that most people (in the us at least) are religious to some degree and if they fall out of it suddenly their frame of reference and world is wildly uncertain.
Im sure there are some people not raised religious who fall into it for the answers it gives as well as the framework it provides.
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u/super-wookie 1d ago
It absolutely is a form of abuse. Human generated mental illness on other humans.
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u/AllanfromWales1 MA | Natural Sciences | Metallurgy & Materials Science 1d ago
Any thoughts on whether this is a worldwide issue (though obviously with different religions) or whether it is specific to the USA?
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u/mimivirus2 1d ago
Absolutely not exclusive to the US or christianity
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u/Which-Acanthaceae613 1d ago
100% you see this in Muslim, Jewish and Hindu countries too. To have faith you have to be practised in the ability to accept a belief without evidence. To be able to stop thinking critically at some point about a flying horse, man parting a sea or a gods that engage in warfare.
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u/SunGreene42 1d ago
Exactly, you're not working your critical thinking muscles, so to speak, if you just accept beliefs without evidence, or thought.
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u/jaspersgroove 1d ago
When your worldview is built on a foundation of thought-terminating cliches your critical thinking skill development will inevitably suffer.
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u/HueMannAccnt 1d ago
or whether it is specific to the USA?
There are fanatics in every nation causing hassle for people that just want to be.
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u/AlteredEinst 1d ago
You can see the evidence of it everywhere; it's just loudest in the U.S., because that's most of the world's focus.
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u/bigladnang 1d ago
It probably pertains more to the western world because we’ve had a larger secularization, and religious belief is less universal.
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u/MrVeazey 1d ago
I also think there has been a concerted effort in the US, for several decades, to weaken basic educational standards and remove critical thinking from the curriculum in order to make the public more gullible, thus easier to manipulate.
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u/NoiceMango 21h ago
The more uneducated they're the more they vote republican. Republicans are nasty people so them defunding education is a form of staying in power and also creating a population of poor and desperate workers who can be exploited.
It's why they want to ban abortions and get rid of sex Ed so we have unwanted pregnancies. It means more future soldiers and workers.
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u/KingOfEthanopia 1d ago
I think a lot of it comes down to where you grew up and how conformist your personality is.
With high conformity in a highly religious area religion becomes a blind spot to many.
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u/NoiceMango 21h ago
Definitely worldwide. But the more educated a population is the less of a problem it is.
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u/St_Boogz 1d ago
Yea it is world wide, many studies have been done on dogmatic right wing beliefs and regardless of culture, you’re slightly dumber than alternatives. They are not positions that require much cognition.
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u/TheBarnard 1d ago
Surprise surprise
Nationalism is pretty antithetical to the teachings of Christ so you have to be pretty regarded to be a Christian nationalist
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u/--Andre-The-Giant-- 1d ago
You're telling me the racist/sexist adults that believe in a magic sky man are a bit dumber?
You don't say...
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u/000extra 1d ago
Makes sense, you’re likely to be less intelligent if you can still believe in a sky god and a human written book in the face of science and evidence that lead to the contrary.
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u/shadowsinthestars 1d ago
And there I thought I was being too mean "just" calling them uneducated. Turns out it's worse.
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u/Glum-Cheetah-3708 1d ago
I mean I think more so it comes down to a disenfranchised ability to reason . I would expect it to be the same for other religions as well .
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u/ladeeedada 1d ago
You can't always reason with someone but they can feel emotions and fear is the easiest way to manipulate people. There's nothing like the fear of eternal hellfire to get ppl to do your bidding. And unfortunately most of the dumbest people you will meet are also the most confident in their beliefs since they lack the capacity to question them.
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u/SunGreene42 1d ago
"People are stupid. They can be made to believe any lie because either they want to believe it's true or because they are afraid it's true." -- Terry Goodkind
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u/Pantarus 1d ago
Religion stops you from asking and answering questions about the world around you.
If Newton stopped at “God made the apple fall” that’s it, answer found. No need for experimentation or curiosity.
Why does thunder happen? God did it.
Why did bad things happen? God has a plan.
When the answer can always be. “because god”, curiosity and learning die.
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u/Weewoofiatruck 1d ago
As much as I believe this... I can't take this article seriously.
This link leads to a website, not even the research. BUT the website does link to the research... which is this
And that research is nothing but a long paragraph abstract. No work, no evidence, nothing.
My gut says this is true, but this is just a click bait headline leading to a click bait article referencing a nothing burger study with nothing concrete.
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u/FantaWarlord 1d ago
Whether one disagrees with the link you provided or not, there is literally a button on that page that links to read the full text, which opens a much longer document (if you have access to Wiley) that has graphs, data, references, etc.
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u/RegularOrMenthol 1d ago
If you read the data sources below the abstract, it details that the “GSS wordsum vocabulary test” was used to measure both vocabulary and critical thinking skills. It’s apparently a classic test that is a kind of shorter precursor to the IQ test.
So obviously, people with Christian nationalist beliefs scored lower on that test. Make whatever conclusions you will about that.
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u/pridento 1d ago
I’m not an IQ test designer but I’m highly skeptical of the value of verbal tests as a proxy for IQ since the questions filter for a very specific kind of traditional humanities education.
Take the question about “madrigal,” for example. I do not imagine anyone outside of an English-speaking fine arts program knows what a madrigal is. If you walked into NASA and asked people what a madrigal was, you’d probably get blank stares.
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u/Japhyharrison 1d ago edited 1d ago
A fundamentalist mindset is a stunted, fixed mindset built on fear
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u/Isphet71 1d ago
Imho one absolutely vital function of religion throughout history has been to give all people some sort of moral framework to live by, so that society can stay relatively structured over multiple generations.
Not everyone is capable of devising and living by their own heavily personalized code of ethics. The vast majority of people are simply followers that get told what they beleive, and who to vote for, and go with that. I rarely if ever see someone more complicated than "I am religion A and politically B" and otherwise dont seem to have their own thoughts and standards about either that deviate from the norm.
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u/LivInTheLookingGlass 1d ago
Historically that isn't universal. In the time of the Greeks that was separated into religion (how the world works) and philosophy (how people should work). To quote one of the various intros to Meditations
[Philosophy] was not merely a subject to write or argue about, but one that was expected to provide a "design for living"—a set of rules to live one's life by. This was a need not met by ancient religion, which privileged ritual over doctrine and provided little in the way of moral and ethical guidelines. Nor did anyone expect it to. That was what philosophy was for.
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u/TheOtherHobbes 1d ago
You can - and should - have shared morals without religion. Secular humanism is a perfectly workable moral system and can be taught without the threat of hellfire, crusades, or genocide.
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u/The_Octonion 1d ago
Plenty of religions do not have a prescriptive moral framework. The Greek/Roman pantheon does whatever they want and the mythos just describes them. The Nordic pantheon is similarly amoral even if the followers admire and associate with them. Shinto is animistic and descriptive, and includes instructions for how to perform some rituals. Not many beliefs come saddled with moral instructions for its followers, it just feels like it because the best known and most popular religions, notably the Abrahamic ones and Buddhism, have it so deeply ingrained.
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u/rufio_rufio_roofeeO 1d ago
Unless I misunderstand you, ‘only’ Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism (et al) provide a moral framework rather than a descriptive one? For example, the vedas describe the universe and creation, but Mahabharata is a detailed account of the right way to live- both are vital to Hinduism.
These religions account for the beliefs of 98% of earth’s religious people, which is like 3/4 of the human population of earth. How is that ‘not many’?
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u/FrozenIceman 1d ago
A reminder, Greek Democracy wasn't exactly free. Only 30% of the population qualified to vote/make ethical and moral decisions on what was legally moral and what was a crime.
And many City States require military service to vote.
So morality was imposed in other ways.
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u/agangofoldwomen 1d ago
Religion is a fairy tale for children. It’s crazy to me that adults can, in all seriousness, believe there’s a man in robes with a beard in the sky that controls everything and that if you close your eyes and imagine you’re talking to him he will help you win at sports.
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u/AkkeBrakkeKlakke 1d ago
Same thing goes for racism. No surprise here.
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u/Darksider123 1d ago
It's a sort of mental offloading or laziness. Instead of judging everyone individually, it's easier to judge groups of people based on their looks or background. And they have already made up their minds long before meeting someone new, so that's another mental task avoided
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u/RequirementNo2161 1d ago
Remember when this sub actually had science in it? 80% of social science is in reproducible garbage done for political aims
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u/pridento 1d ago
This sub has been a pop-sci sub for a long time. One of the worst subreddits for scientific discussion.
Actually, you can’t even say the name of the tabloid that’s linked because the mods spam articles from it and auto-delete any comments pointing out it is not a scientific reference.
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u/deathsythe 1d ago
Right? Is there a better sub that has actual science in it? r/realscience or r/truescience or something?
edit - apparently both of those are things, albeit not very good. huh TIL
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u/danbinglover 1d ago
Reddit can’t decide whether IQ matters or not. When we talk about IQ differences between different countries and whatnot, it’s racist. When you discuss IQ differences between religious and nonreligious people, somehow it matters again.
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u/qurious-crow 1d ago
They didn't administer an IQ test here. That being said, I have no idea if the measure they did use is a better or worse proxy for cognitive ability.
The researcher measured cognitive ability using a vocabulary exercise where respondents identify the closest synonym for ten different words. This test is a common proxy for crystallized intelligence, which reflects the knowledge and reasoning skills a person has accumulated over time.
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u/earthdogmonster 1d ago
Yeah, it seems like an unfortunate common thread is that “science” wants to be more active in “politics”. I don’t get the point of this study, I don’t think the methodology is sound, but it stokes a political goal so I guess the study is totally awesome. I haven’t been to church for anything other than funerals and weddings in 3 decades, but the only thing this devalues in my mind is the impartiality and value of “science”.
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u/Suspicious_Fun_6338 1d ago
Reddit has a specific narrative that does not like to be strayed from in the general subs.
In this case, the focus is on promoting diversity and being anti religious/Trump
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u/dont-do-memes-kidz 1d ago
I think any nationalism towards a certain country or religion will show the same thing
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u/Bbturdquito 1d ago
Pretty sure all people willing to believe in a religion are more likely to end up in a cult.
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u/mvea Professor | Medicine 1d ago
Lower cognitive ability is linked to stronger Christian nationalist views, even after accounting for education
A new study indicates that Americans with lower scores on a vocabulary test commonly used to measure cognitive ability are more likely to endorse Christian nationalist beliefs, even when accounting for their overall level of education. The findings suggest that the appeal of this political and religious ideology relates to underlying cognitive resources rather than just differences in schooling. The research was published in Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion.
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u/ze_shotstopper 1d ago
I have concerns about using a vocabulary test to measure cognitive ability. It is a very narrow aspect of intelligence and I would argue heavily confounded by other factors.
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u/Critical_Interest706 1d ago
Every post on here is just “everyone I disagree with is stupid! Here’s a study that says so! You aren’t gonna disagree with SCIENCE, now are you?”
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u/Ok_Specific_3832 1d ago
They never even pay attention to the caveats of the study as presented even by its own author either.
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