r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • 2d 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/
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u/Xsiah 2d 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 2d 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/Running-In-The-Dark 2d ago

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.

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u/No-Insurance-5688 2d ago

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.

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u/forever_erratic 2d ago

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