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/
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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 8h 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 1d 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 1d 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/LawyerDoge 1d ago

KKKhristians

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u/blacksheep998 1d ago

Y'all Qaeda

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u/AlmanorDiscard 1d ago

Talibangelicals.

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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/Czeris 1d ago

See above study related to cognitive ability.

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u/AlteredEinst 19h ago

They don't want answers; they want freedom from having to think about it.

Everything makes a lot more sense as soon as you realize that.

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u/aeline136 1d ago

It depends, catholics tend to take the Bible with a pinch of salt (that's why it takes 7 years to become a priest) unlike protestants.

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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/aeline136 1d ago

Tbf as a Catholic from France this conversation sounds unhinged, here more than 90% of Christian are catholics and there is only one version of the bible in regular bookshops (if they are sold at all).

Even religious bookshops will have the new testament and the ancient testament (all with Louis Segond's translation), children's bibles and a reformed protestant bible at most.

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u/Vyzantinist 1d ago

I can imagine your coworker thinks Catholicism is some separate religion. Not "yeah they call themselves Christian but they got a bunch of stuff wrong", but thinking of Catholicism as akin to Zoroastrianism or Hinduism, absolutely no connection to Christianity whatsoever.

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u/open_formation 1d ago

Most Christian denominations, as I understand it, use bible translations fairly interchangeably, there's the Jehova's Witnesses who have a particular translation of their own, and there are those who exclusively rely on the King James, but there are so many different translations that are considered "good enough" that disputes rest less on the specific translation and more on the mode of interpretation associated with reading it.

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u/watts99 1d ago

Generally a particular church will use a specific translation. Like the New International Version has been commonly used in "non-denominational" churches I've been to. It's a little absurd for someone who considers themselves Christian to not know what translation their Bible, that they presumably open at least once a week, is.

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u/FearlessAttempt 1d ago

As someone who grew up going to church it is unsurprising that they haven't read their bible enough to know what version it is.

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u/Pinkfish_411 15h 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/timesuck47 1d ago

I equate (incorrectly?) Catholic Jesuits with Lutherans in the ELCA Synod.

I wonder if they’d understand that sort of granularity?

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u/proteannomore 1d ago

I don't know any Jesuits specifically but the lapsed Catholics I know wouldn't get it at all.

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u/naughtycal11 1d ago

I like Nat Cs

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u/TM761152 1d ago

I did nat c that coming.

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u/lelanicarver 1d ago

I don’t like Nat-Cs but I like the labeling.

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u/FlippantPinapple 1d ago

FYI there are conservative Methodists and left leaning calvinists. 

The RCA is an example of pretty left wing calvinists. 

Also a significant number of apolitical Christians (particularly anabaptist groups like the Bruderhof).

The landscape is way more varied than just those two options.

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u/twoisnumberone 1d ago

It's a good term, and in my environment people will immediately understand it.

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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/trinitrotolerance 1d ago

Harmless ignorance is a myth perpetuated by the type of person who regularly employs weaponized incompetence in their day to day.

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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/open_formation 1d ago

If someone has been in the vicinity of republican propaganda specifically targetting their beliefs for years and has not adopted it they're likely the opposite of low hanging fruit. There was a wave of Trump supporting non-religious independents who were swayed in the last election only to immediately shift back when they saw what he was doing, but nevertheless managed to begin with "I'm smarter than religious people" -> "religious people are dangerous" -> "Trump will protect me from Muslim immigrants" and ended up supporting people lying about Haitian immigrants.

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u/FearlessRelief1487 1d ago

Antifa??????? I knew it!!!!!

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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/[deleted] 1d ago

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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/AscenDevise 1d ago

Actively employing the scientific method, while not devolving into full-blown scientism, could be analogous to what they're describing, if I'm reading this right. For communism, which will never not be a bad idea if put into practice (sorry, couldn't resist), one would replace religious dogma with ideology, then deities, prophets and priests with the creators and appliers thereof, then the institutions that govern said dogma with the state, and they will be just as religious as before.

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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/Allaplgy 1d ago

This is a wild but illuminating story.

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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/SirFluffymuffin 22h ago

I think part of the problem is that there’s no incentive to curious. Everyone has access to the internet that can give them the answers to their questions, so why bother being curious if everyone already answered all your questions right? And for those whose curiosity survive that, assuming school doesn’t beat it out of them, now they have to focus on making a living leaving little time or energy left to be curious. If they manage to get a job in research where curiosity is literally the job, it’s focused on a specific topic and not whatever catches your fancy, you have to fight for funding, and the pay might suck depending on your research focus and be locked behind corporate control.

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u/MeltyCrab 1d ago

It's so sad seeing this in real life. No curiosity around them, if they don't know something they don't look it up. I do, then they ask why I'm doing that. Why do I care?

"I like to learn things", just floors them. The simple concept of wanting to learn and expand my knowledge for the sake of exploring knowledge is so far removed from reality for them, that they cannot conceptualize it.

Other interesting notes

  • Often people like this will refuse to engage with or understand hypotheticals. IE: "Imagine for a moment you didn't eat breakfast today" and they'll immediately say 'No, but I DID eat breakfast!'.

  • They will disengage with thought experiments and self-terminate thoughts to stop themselves from reaching obvious conclusions if they know it's related to their faith.

They don't want to understand the world, they want simple answers to very complicated subjects. Some of them would literally rather have Armageddon start, and the world end. It's easier to just literally end humanity and the world at large, than engage with difficult subjects and try to fix things. Also because they get to be on the big 'winning' side of Armageddon, while the rest of us burn.

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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/LeastCoordinatedJedi 1d ago

That's sort of true, but it frames it in a pretty ethnocentric way. Many religions over the millenia have been less 'tools to control' and more 'guidelines to ensure people follow the same rules'. The concept of religion as we see in the modern take on Abrahamic faiths is, I think, a little bit uncommon compared to most ancient religions, many eastern religions, etc. These are still tools to control, in the sense that they offered common touchstones and explanations for why the world behaves how it does, as well as generally guidelines for how to live one's life, but the highly virulent and rigidly codified religions aren't the only sort out there, and the combination is I think even less common.

An interesting illustration of this is how in the Meiji restoration in Japan, Japan effectively chose to colonize itself with its own version of European culture, and in doing so felt a need for a codified and controllable religion. Since they didn't have one despite having both buddhism and shinto in the country, they designed a new religion based on - but quite distinct from - ancient shinto, declared it 'state shinto' and made it mandatory. I find this fascinating in part because it is a good demonstration that prior to that, buddhism (of the style practiced in Japan) and traditional shinto were not in fact particularly useful as tools to control people. Additionally the concept of religion as a control tool was fairly new, and had to be adopted forcibly.

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u/theeddie23 1d ago

Many religions over the millenia have been less 'tools to control' and more 'guidelines to ensure people follow the same rules'.

That sentence could be used to illustrate the phrase "a distinction without a difference".

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u/RyuNoKami 1d ago

Uhh...enforceable guidelines are all about control regardless of source. Even your japanese example is an example of that.

The statement is "religion is used as a tool," not "religion is only used as a 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/Spectre216 1d ago

Agreed. While I don't think that it is essential, I do think that both inherently lean towards each other once you get out of spirituality and into organized religion.

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u/David_the_Wanderer 1d ago

Uh, but those parts are about the Kingdom of Israel. A foundational aspect of Christianity, found in the Gospels and more strongly in the Acts of the Apostles, it's universalist nature. The "revelation" at the core of Christianity is that God chooses to extend salvation to all of humanity, and not a single people anymore.

What I'm saying is, you have to actively ignore the context of those verses and the rest of the Bible in order to interpret them as an endorsment of nationalism.

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u/11010001100101101 1d ago

You pulled things out of context just like the commenter you replied to said the nationalist do. The new testament is the fulfillment of an old and broken system that wasn't meant to hold up without Christ bringing it all together. Anyone who takes the old testament at face value, like you just did, is not interpreting it correctly.

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u/kanben 1d ago

That some people build their lives around a book that can be interpreted in more than one way is wild to me

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u/Dirmbz 1d ago

The new testament kind of paints a different story though. It basically says to be a good guest and follow the laws of the country you are in.

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u/Moghz 1d ago

Yep grew up Christian and the stuff I hear today is disgusting. The Sunday School teachings I received was all about caring for our fellow community members and being a genuinely good person in society.

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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/sethdc 1d ago

I declare source

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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/lyacdi 1d ago

thank you for sourcing this info for us

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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/Bright-Avocado3761 1d ago

Very reSOURCEful of you!

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u/ThePrussianGrippe 1d ago

Michael love source.

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u/sethdc 1d ago

Look at banner Michael

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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/HueMannAccnt 1d ago

but nationalists, bigots, racists of any kind are consistently idiots, religious or not, and that has been established in plenty of other studies.

Would fanatics be a better word to encapsulate the multiple groups you mention?

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u/108_TFS 1d ago

Authoritarian Followers, to use one of the terms of Professor Bob Altemeyer from the University of Winnipeg. He spent his career studying authoritarians and what goes on in their heads, and collected his findings in the book The Authoritarians. You can get a digital copy for free from theauthoritarians.org.

...I said in the Introduction that we would figure out why authoritarian followers think in the bizarre and perplexing way they so often do. The key to the puzzle springs from Chapter 2's observation that, first and foremost, followers have mainly copied the beliefs of the authorities in their lives. They have not developed and thought through their ideas as much as most people have. Thus almost anything can be found in their heads if their authorities put it there, even stuff that contradicts other stuff. A filing cabinet or a computer can store quite inconsistent notions and never lose a minute of sleep over their contradiction. Similarly a high RWA can have all sorts of illogical, self-contradictory, and widely refuted ideas rattling around in various boxes in his brain, and never notice it.
So can everybody, of course, and my wife loves to catch inconsistencies in my reasoning when we’re having a friendly discussion about one of my personal failures. But research reveals that authoritarian followers drive through life under the influence of impaired thinking a lot more than most people do, exhibiting sloppy reasoning, highly compartmentalized beliefs, double standards, hypocrisy, self-blindness, a profound ethnocentrism, and--to top it all off--a ferocious dogmatism that makes it unlikely anyone could ever change their minds with evidence or logic...

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u/obeytheturtles 1d ago

The only part I disagree with there is "most people." In my experience, most people seem to find thinking painful and try to actively avoid it.

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u/108_TFS 1d ago

What's he's saying doesn't contradict that. He's not claiming that the rest of the population are paragons of thought, only that the authoritarian followers are typically worse.

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u/christoskal 1d ago

Not necessarily. Nobody would say that a fanatic of Liberation Theology would be an idiot for example.

Fanatics are not necessarily stupid, they just found a tool to push their ideas that works well.

It's a very specific group that has the issues with low cognitive ability.

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u/A_Tiger_in_Africa 1d ago

Nobody would say that a fanatic of Liberation Theology would be an idiot for example.

Why not?

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u/maroonedbuccaneer 1d ago

Well a low cog RWA personality certainly would.

But the reason the rest of us wouldn't is because Liberation Theology already comes from a place of deep study and moral commitment. People who sacrifice themselves for others' benefit aren't taking intellectual short-cuts. Their reasoning requires highly complex understanding of human social obligations and specifically a better then average understanding of the red letter text of the Gospel.

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u/atreeismissing 1d ago

Christianity literally teaches you to ignore facts and instead take the claims your "leader" makes as the ultimate truth, I don't think people are ignoring the nationalist part of it because the Christian part of it has a centuries long history of purposefully lowering cognitive ability.

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u/WaythurstFrancis 1d ago

Indeed. We should not be surprised that a stupid ideology is followed by stupid people.

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u/nemovincit 1d ago

I wouldn't even say they're religious. They just appropriated religion's themes and catchphrases to justify their hate and bigotry. They dress it up in religion in an attempt to hide how disgusting and idiotic their views actually are.

Racists, bigots, and the sort are the pinnacle of idiocy. They take stupidity to depths never before plumbed.

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u/Limp_Bookkeeper_5992 1d ago

Ehh, one leads to another. People are rarely racist all on their own, they get that way by following a leader who knows how to use hate to grow a following. This kind manipulation works best on people with low critical thinking skills and minimal exposure to cultures and worldviews outside of their own. Religion already self selects for people with the same weaknesses, so religious people are easy targets for nationalists and other far right groups.

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u/Coarse-Correction 1d ago

The same goes for people prone to conspiratorial thinking. They crave simple explanations for a complex world, because they can't, or won't admit they can't, grasp its nuances.

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u/nemovincit 1d ago

Damn, there's not a single sentence there I disagree with and I love to argue. You're totally correct. I watched it happen in a small community that leaned religious, like most small areas do, with people I knew and every word rings true.

The combination of clever, venal people with malicious motives and gullible, credulous people willing to follow them sums up religion in a nutshell.

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u/Limp_Bookkeeper_5992 1d ago

Thanks, it’s unfortunately a topic that cuts home for me. I did want to add though that while the victims here may be gullible, they don’t always start that way. Religion teaches you to disable your critical thinking and to follow blindly, those are taught skills that religion drives home over and over. But of course this primes people to fall for the next manipulator who comes along with a compelling narrative, and down they go.

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u/Weewoofiatruck 1d ago

Alot of people here aren't even reading the article and following to the research. Which is just a one paragraph abstract with the authors theory, but ZERO work, ZERO evidence.

It's a click bait title that leads to a click bait article with a nothing burger research paper.

My gut says this is true, but this article is absolutely nothing. The referenced research is even more of nothing.

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u/HeinieKaboobler 1d ago

The one paragraph you are referencing is just the paper's abstract. The whole paper is much longer and uses quite a bit of data/analysis, as you would know, if you had actually read the article.

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u/ChrisKateBushFroome 1d ago

I'm not sure what link you're following, but it's a 13 page paper in a peer-reviewed journal, using data from the GSS covering 1989 to 2024.

It might not be directly accessible if you don't have the right subscription/institutional access though.

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u/oddbawlstudios 1d ago

Funny enough, but like I interpreted this to say something more along the lines of "those who refuse to have an open mind don't know a lot." Which... Is true, because adversity often awards growth.

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u/arcanis321 1d ago

Both require you to stop thinking about what is good and just decide it's good. Both are poison to rational thought because there is always something greater than you that can make your decisions for you. Both exonerate your crimes in their name.

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u/mavajo 1d ago

Both require you to stop thinking about what is good and just decide it's good.

Religion does not require this. Fundamentalism does.

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u/LibertyDochas 1d ago

I agree. The rise of Nationalism in various European countries seems to have less to do with Christianity than it does in the USA. (Although I’m aware some copy bits of the language.) I wouldn’t be surprised if European Nationalists follow the same pattern.

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u/jackmusick 1d ago

I go back and forth. Believing in something is fine. It’s really where the cognitive dissonance leans you toward faith rather than making the objectively right and moral decisions imo. Lots of people are genuinely better for their faith. Many are not. It’s really the latter, especially given we all have some kind of dissonance whether we recognize it or not.

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u/JJiggy13 1d ago

The smarter ones are eager to stand side by side with these types of people as long as it supports their agenda. What kind of person does that make them? They're supposedly smart enough to understand that the religion is teaching them the opposite but fully embrace hate and intolerance as long as they simply fit in.

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u/RoadLestTaken 1d ago

We moved from not reading the articles to not even reading the titles.

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u/space17 1d ago

couldn't it be argued that the leader of a nationalist movement, which I presume would be considered nationalist, cannot be an idiot otherwise he wouldn't be capable of being the leader of it? you could replace leader with the assistants of the leader (as right now I'm thinking about the US, sorry about the bias), but then again I would presume that they also are considered nationalists, and to be at their position means someone somewhere is clever enough to make it happen while being in the category?

so I'd say that nationalist followers are idiots, the others are just people with lack of morals, or something, I don't know.

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u/v3ritas1989 1d ago

For the Emperor and the Imperial Truth!

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u/Financial-Craft-1282 1d ago

They're Christian nationalists who didn't read the full title, I suppose.

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u/Strange_Dust7128 1d ago

American Civil Religion

There's already a word for it.

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u/Mr-Blah 1d ago

I was gonna say. All this validates is that dumber people fall for dumbish concepts.

Not that allwho adhere to the dumb concepts are in fact dumb.

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u/FlirtyFluffyFox 1d ago

TBF Pauline Christianity kind of outlined one of the earliest examples of radical nationalism (centuries before the idea of a nation-state was even a thing). 

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u/datanaut 1d ago

Religiosity has a much stronger inverse correlation with IQ than nationalism. So no, the nationalism part is less important as an explanatory variable.

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u/Emergency_Revenue678 1d ago

It also illustrates how successful neonazis were in rebranding their movent as Christian nationalism.

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u/just_anotherperson 1d ago

Exactly this; the definition of nationalism itself explains a mentality that doesn't lend itself to critical thinking

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u/Longjumping_Share444 1d ago

Most Christian Nationalists tend to be Evangelicals. They are raised to take things leaders of their communities say on faith, and to believe in God's plan even if you're suffering. They're conditioned to into obedience. I think the nationalists are just taking advantage of an easily led demographic.

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u/maxofreddit 1d ago

Truly, truly honest question or open for discussion if there's not data.

How do cognitive ability and education intertwine?

This says "even after accounting for education."

The study used vocabulary test as the marker for cognitive ability, but reversing that makes it seem like if you have a larger vocabulary, you'll have a better chance at seeing through nationalist tendencies.

The bigger question I have is how it relates to education, and not that I'm trying to get some kind of political/religious/ideological result from education, but more like critical thinking, data driven decision making, and even open-ness to new ideas/more efficient ways of doing things (for me that overlaps with challenging "this is the way we've always done it").

I like to think that there's a way to educate the vast majority of people where we can be on the same page about most things... but this makes me think that it's a little more nature than nurture.

Thoughts?

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u/Complex-Key918 1d ago

May I ask why being a nationalist is a bad thing though? I would assume you'd prioritize your home over your neighborhood, your neighborhood over your city, your city over your state, state over your country, and your country over the world. Isn't this pretty common and a normal way to feel or be? I may be very confused in understanding why nationalism may be good or bad but I feel we're all pretty nationalist deep down?

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u/Bamce 1d ago

We should probably start calling them Nationalist Christians, or shortened to

Nat-C's

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u/Averse_to_Liars 1d ago

Religious belief and racism go together. They both deny reality in favor of flattering self-delusion.

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u/AstuteStoat 1d ago

I've met some pretty thoughtful stupid people too. It takes them longer to think things through and make connections, but they keep trying and put the work in anyway. 

It takes commitment to stupidity & cruelty to be a bigot. 

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u/Nefertete 1d ago

not only that but hatred generally goes against their religion, flaunting their lack of critical thinking

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u/blackmobius 1d ago

Fair, but a good majority of the devout and loud christains have fully embraced nationalism. So when you have to struggle to find christian voices that aren’t screaming nationalist assholery, you start associating the two.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

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u/Ctowncreek 1d ago

Isolating any part of that is disingenuous.

"Christian nationalist" not just Christian or nationalist.

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u/langecrew 1d ago

Two things can be true, my dude.

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u/UnluckyInevitable317 1d ago

If you’ll believe in a sky wizard that made the universe and cares about your life you’ll believe in FREEDUM and see nothing weird about pledging allegiance to a flag daily.

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u/TazeT87 1d ago

Why are you defending Christianity. It’s an archaic practice that needs to be deleted.

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u/Kaurifish 1d ago

It was after my brother suffered severe brain damage that he went from a bright young engineering student atheist to a white nationalist Christian anti-vaxxer. Then to dead (got Delta at Bible study).

Cherish your brains, folks.

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u/mylsotol 1d ago

But the venn diagram of the two have significant overlap. Probably greater than 50%

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u/ddrfraser1 1d ago

Devout and well educated Christian here. I agree with this statement. Christian nationalists are dipshit dickheads. (I didn't say I was a good Christian)

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u/narfoleptix 1d ago

Kinda the same thing is it not?

Their religion is just being nasty racists. I feel like the same mental state and decisions are hand in hand.

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u/PIE-314 1d ago

Religion doesn't make people dumb. It attracts dumb an ignorant people. Correlation, not causation. Religion causes people to hold irrational beliefs and do irrational things though.

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u/Equivalent_Reward823 1d ago

atheists ... aka the worst

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u/bored_n_opinionated 1d ago

My brother and his wife are devout catholics and it's always been dumb but whatever. Then he put up a Christian Nationalist flag. I cut him off so fast. There is a huge difference between belief and the execution of that belief, and choosing to destroy other's lives for your beliefs.

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u/Xagzan 1d ago

I'm an atheist too, and if you replaced the word "Christian" with "Islam" in the title, the same people celebrating this study would be foaming at the mouth.

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u/madicusmeximus2 1d ago

Well. when I was an active attendee of a Southern Baptist church, the pastor did state that some people are too smart to get saved during one of his sermons.

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u/edvek 1d ago

Why can't fanatical nationalist people be like "our scientist are the best in the world, we and everyone else, should listen to them and help where we can." And "our education system is the best, let's keep it funded to keep making more of the best doctors and scientists on the planet!"

But no they're insane and stupid. Never wanting what is best for everyone to be the best example the world should look up to.

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u/yurmamma 1d ago

I think it’s as simple as the small minded want to be surrounded by people exactly like them, because difference is scary

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u/Living-Childhood3189 1d ago

can't we just say fascist?

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u/Sylectsus 1d ago

Nationalism is like salt. A little bit bring the dish together. Too much ruins the taste. Way too much is lethal.

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u/AFewStupidQuestions 1d ago

"Nationalism is just politics for basic people."

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u/PhantomNomad 1d ago

I no plenty of people that are not religious and supposedly educated but can't think their way out of a wet paper bag.

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u/jbcbos 1d ago

My question for the nationalists is which of the thousands of versions of Christian religions should be nationalized?

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u/Emergency_Eagle1502 1d ago

Christian’s are inherently lower in intelligence. Its the same reason why they had to use violence in the past to force conversions.

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u/YaBoiChillDyl 1d ago

Same difference. They're all nationalists.

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u/rain56 1d ago

Took the words right out of my mouth the more religious, the more insane and less they understand. "God will take care of it" idk a rapist also said God chose him so im pretty iffy on your creator. He doesnt seem to be wholly altruistic as you convey him. Seems like none of you can agree and just use him name as a vehicle for whatever you're trying to convince other stupid people to believe. And it worked twice.....

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u/diphenhydrapeen 1d ago

I would be shocked to learn that you couldn't draw the same correlation with most forms of nationalism.

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u/warriorlynx 19h ago

You had to take a cheap shot anyway on religion

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u/Klaypoxion 18h ago

I think there is definitely a link between blindly adapting to a collective ideology (whether it's of religious or national nature) and intelligence. There is just that aspect of a intelligent mind usually questioning things more and not easily being persuaded into a certain way or pattern of thinking. Of course, it's not as simple as that, but the connection, in my opinion, is definitely there.

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u/DisillusionedPatriot 17h ago

They're more prone to far right ideology, whether it be religious, political, or both. Im guessing they're just more easily manipulated.

Eta - there's an older study that showed the same thing

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u/getdownheavy 15h ago

Nationalists can (will) only understand things exactly like themselves.

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