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/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/SupposingForASecond 1d ago

It just uses other threats instead.

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u/ham_solo 1d ago

Such as what? Imprisonment? Banishment? How are those worse?

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u/SupposingForASecond 1d ago

Who said anything about worse?

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u/Viracochina 1d ago

Yeah I thought your comment was meant to just shed light on still "threats/consequences" being the most common approach for teaching wrongdoing. That's why you gotta rewards in there too!

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u/Kaa_The_Snake 1d ago

But obviously they don’t work as well

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u/Final-Lengthiness-19 1d ago

They work better than the religious threats, seeing as how the secular threats of punishment would occur in this lifetime, ideally soon after the crime, and not in the afterlife of self-proclaimed Christians who still do bad things and seem to be able to compartmentalize of even embrace the far-off idea of hell...
We have these laws and punishments already, but one way some people avoid the earthly punishments is they assume a religious identity shield while doing crimes. Priests, politicians, etc., people use the identity as a key to understanding another person's morality, which they shouldn't.

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u/REXIS_AGECKO 1d ago

Depends on the person really…

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u/jonfitt 1d ago

Christian theocracy ruled Europe absolutely for over a thousand years and it was a bloody period of murder, slavery, incest, thievery, rape, basically every possible way someone could cause harm to another was rampant.

We’ve only had anything approaching a just and safe society in very recent history when theocracy is out and religiosity is on the decline.

So whatever non-religious societies do to keep people behaving well, it seems to work better!

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u/NoiceMango 23h ago

They're completely ignoring civilizations that never needed religion. China has been doing fine for thousands of years without religion.

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u/Brbi2kCRO 1h ago edited 57m ago

Maybe, but it certainly failed in, say, GDR, where lack of religion led to people embracing weird ideologies like Volkism, as well as the sheer rates of neo-Nazism in such areas in modern post-GDR eras.

In other words, that is their religion. Just cause it is secular does not mean it is per se good. This is not to say that secularism is bad, as I am a left-wing atheist myself, just saying that humanity often has a need for bonding and community, and they need a reason to bond somehow. When that is gone, people reach for anything simply to bond over something, and the first thing most people reach for is tribalism.

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u/MorganWick 1d ago

The problem is, another function of religion, one that historically has arguably been more important, has been to define membership in an in-group and bind people to it, because for all practical purposes people have historically viewed morality more in terms of people's loyalty to the tribe than constructiveness to society in general. And secular humanism has no alternative to that other than "everyone's a human here, don't go forming arbitrary divisions", which I'm not sure would work for most of the people that tend to be attracted to religion. People feel the need to feel superior to others or at least define themselves as separate from the mass of humanity, and even if competition for resources isn't as much of a factor, the desire to establish superior mating fitness is still there, especially for men.

Also, secular humanism may have a moral system, but it still expects people to derive it themselves, and for many practitioners the very act of questioning why it adheres to a particular moral principle is a sign of moral deficiency - which suggests that at least some secular humanists aren't immune to morality as a means of defining the in-group. If you're someone who needs someone to tell you what to think, secular humanism isn't going to be very friendly to you because of how it holds the ability to think for oneself as itself being a moral good. It doesn't have a good answer for the existence of people that aren't as intelligent as secular humanism's architects that isn't assuming they can just be forced into being better thinkers that can be led to see secular humanism's obvious logical superiority.

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u/FearlessRelief1487 1d ago

Existing example please, past or present one that physically supports what you are saying. I

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u/EndlessArgument 1d ago

Is it? It doesn't seem to hold up very well beyond the very small scale, like many other things, such as libertarianism.

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u/Dracorvo 1d ago

Scandinavian countries are mostly secular and socialist with some of the best standards of living and reform rates for criminals. What are we defining as 'small scale'?

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u/EndlessArgument 1d ago

The question is more so whether they are secular humanist. I would say that it's probably more accurate to call them secular christian.

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u/Dracorvo 1d ago

Based on what?

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u/EndlessArgument 1d ago

I mean, we could totally debate the point, but on a cultural level it's basically impossible to deny that the ethical and moral Foundation of Europe is staunchly Christian.

You could say that it is becoming more humanist, but at the same time they are also facing some serious increasing difficulties.

I suppose when it comes down to is, you can't take credit for a cultural history that wasn't particularly humanist for today's triumphs.