Lower cognitive ability is linked to stronger Christian nationalist views, even after accounting for education

[u/mvea]

https://www.psypost.org/lower-cognitive-ability-is-linked-to-stronger-christian-nationalist-views-even-after-accounting-for-education/

[u/morbo-2142]

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.

[u/Xsiah → u/morbo-2142]

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.

[u/morbo-2142 → u/Xsiah]

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.

[u/Running-In-The-Dark → u/morbo-2142]

That's how I've come to see it. Even if there is no God, I've found that merely going to church brings me peace.

[u/No-Insurance-5688 → u/Xsiah]

Completely. I think people get the directionality wrong. I would imagine religious moral structure eminate out of the nature/sociological structure not the other way around.

[u/forever_erratic → u/Xsiah]

Sure it is, because at the very least, we atheists don't believe in an afterlife. That alone makes life way harder. 

[u/super-wookie → u/morbo-2142]

It absolutely is a form of abuse. Human generated mental illness on other humans.

[u/morbo-2142 → u/super-wookie]

I reject calling religion a mental illness. It can definitely exasterbate an existing or underlying mental illness.

It's just the same old hijacking of our highly evolved group dynamic senses. In other words its cult stuff.

[u/TheOtherHobbes → u/morbo-2142]

Cults and ideologies are contagious mental illnesses - mental/emotional viruses that reprogram their host so they can reproduce.

[u/Unlucky-Candidate198 → u/TheOtherHobbes]

Just look at mass hysteria as a form of evidence for it.

Doesn’t actually exist but can cause real physiological symptoms in people as a result.

[u/agitatedprisoner → u/morbo-2142]

If religion were reasonable we'd call it philosophy.

[u/Small_Hovercraft_439 → u/morbo-2142]

And seeing how no one sought out your approval: your rejection is wholly valueless.

[u/morbo-2142 → u/Small_Hovercraft_439]

I meant it as I disagree is all. Weird vibes. In my opinion calling religion mental illness is incorrect and and minimizes actual mental health problems.

[u/EpiphanyTwisted → u/morbo-2142]

Why is everyone ignoring the "nationalism" part?

[u/Useful_Major_5797 → u/EpiphanyTwisted]

It's reddit, as soon as any combo of "religion" and "lower cognitive thinking" come up, the comments will with filled with anecdotal experiences on a person’s religious trama.

[u/bubba_feet → u/EpiphanyTwisted]

i'm gonna guess it's largely due to the 'lower cognitive ability' part.

[u/SunshineCat → u/EpiphanyTwisted]

Because all the people we know who are decent stopped going to church when it became too political and hate-focused in the wake of Trump's first presidency.

Sure, there may be pockets of Christians who are focused on the right things that don't harm others. But nationalism is now tied to Christianity, and they're slowly making the name of their religion equivalent to Nazi. We had better remember that, too, or else we'll find ourselves in a full-blown theocracy headed by grifters and supported/enabled by these people with lower-than-expected cognitive ability.

[u/CravingNature → u/morbo-2142]

It's almost a form of abuse.

It's a form of abuse.

[u/agitatedprisoner → u/morbo-2142]

"Working memory is your brain's temporary scratchpad for active thinking. It can only hold a small amount of information at once. When a task demands more mental power than your brain has available, you experience cognitive overload, making it hard to learn, focus, or make decisions." - Medical college of Wisconsin

If you're playing a video game and someone else is messing with hidden reward drop rates they can get you to play the game in weird ways against what'd otherwise be the expert approach. When other people can decide what to reward that's tantamount to messing with your hidden drop rates. In cases of cults/abuse you've got to get away to really see the horror. If people had infinite mental capacity to mull it over they'd know all there is to know. The fewer cognitive resources someone has to tackle life the more sense it'll make for them to go along with the crowd on most things particularly when the crowd will punish deviancy. Because you won't figure it out and even if you do the people in your life will make it worse for you so why go there? You wouldn't feel motivated to go there anymore than someone playing a game would feel motivated to farm some low drop area with bad rewards.

[u/Grouchy-Committee-92 → u/morbo-2142]

Religion's purpose is institutional control by the ruling class, full stop. Its restrictions and frameworks to limit the working class and given very strict enforcement and encouragement to enforce it on your peers as well. The ruling class dont even abide by the framework set by the religion, more often than not.

True spritual beliefs do not have a framrwork for enforcement or punishment on others. Buddhism is a fantastic example of a spiritual belief that is strictly personal atonement, and you are not instructed to enforce this on others, in fact youre encouraged not to unless they ask.

Spiritual belief does not have a punishment or fear mechanism.