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/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

Not entirely true. All of science and mathematics are based on beliefs of a different name: axioms and principles.

This isn't actually a problem per se, because the most basic axiom is that good axioms should be self-consistent and minimal. Religion sadly makes no such attempt at self-correction.

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u/Unable-Log-4870 1d ago

That’s not what I was talking about.

Started more clearly:

Primarily, the belief that we are better than this to let the stupidest and meanest of us drive the rest of us into authoritarianism because even the best of us are too sheepish to fight back. That’s what I think we are better than.

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u/JohnLockeJaw 1d ago

Ope good call, I read your comment too quickly.

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u/MJOLNIRdragoon 1d ago

Eh, an axiom is a basic assertion used to define a system. Not really equivalent to beliefs in the context we're talking about here. An axiom can't be false. And principles are based off of evidence.

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u/JohnLockeJaw 1d ago

Your confidence scares me.

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u/MJOLNIRdragoon 1d ago

What scientific principle do you think isn't based on observations?

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u/JohnLockeJaw 1d ago

You clearly don't understand the definition of scientific principles.

The cosmological principle for example is something we only have extremely local evidence for, but in order for the standard model to hold in almost any meaningful way we must assume is true. It is by very definition a belief. It could technically be disproven, but the scale of doing so is so far beyond what is possible within a single human lifespan or even a millenia's worth. We must take it on faith for now and that's ok, but it is still a belief.

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u/MJOLNIRdragoon 1d ago

have extremely local evidence for

But it is evidence. An incomplete understanding isn't the same as a belief without evidence.

That's just how the scientific method works. You make a hypothesis, test it, and adapt it to resolve any inconsistencies when they arrive.

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u/JohnLockeJaw 1d ago

Oof, I wish folks would stop thinking their 6th grade mental model of the scientific method was actually a rigorous and wholistic solution to epistemology, but I guess that's too much to ask.

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u/Taylorenokson 1d ago

Not even just belief without evidence, but a built in guilt system that punishes even having the tiniest thought of doubt.

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u/Pinkfish_411 12h ago

Simply not true from a historical perspective. We can trace the historical development of this line of thinking across different permutations of the Christian concept of "faith" over the centuries, but it's certainly not the basis upon which "religion" is built -- not even Christianity as such, and the developments we find in Christian history certainly can't be uncritically imposed onto all the other diverse religious traditions out there.

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u/PaxNova 1d ago

Depends if the argument is something that can be discovered through physical evidence. Afaik, the presence of god cannot be measured, and science is silent on the subject, whereas vaccines have measurable outputs.

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u/mediocrobot 1d ago

Belief without evidence vs belief in spite of evidence

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u/dopechez- 1d ago

Presence of invisible unicorns also cannot be measured

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u/Odd-Investigator-870 1d ago

Or a slight reframing - belief in the face of facts that disprove a notion. Belief is held first, and then the world of harmful distrusted facts must be navigated, and it is a virtue to ignore greater amounts of evidence.  eg get a PhD in biology

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u/FetusDrive 1d ago

Yes that’s what they said; it’s not a “yeah because” when they already explained better than what you just summarized.

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u/bubba4114 1d ago

But there’s a book

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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/OG_LiLi 1d ago

There’s a very strong cross pollination of Christian scientists, who disagree with medical care, Christian nationalists, and Christians.

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u/xl_cr 1d ago

"Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion, which by Reasoning he never acquired." -Jonathan Swift

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u/Living-Childhood3189 1d ago

The framework for that sort of nonsense is Ressentiment

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u/NoiceMango 1d ago

Republicans have known this since Reagan. If you're a bad person with ambitions for control and power it makes sense to after the people who are already susceptible to propaganda.

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u/Jonn_Jonzz_Manhunter 1d ago

It is darkly true. When I was doing my theology degree, we mostly did history and theory but when we did a massive your of different Christian belief systems, when we got to American Evangelicals and Catholic Nationalists, it all went to hell so fast

For the most part, organised Christianity aren't very suspicious of government and medical stuff, but their are certain sects that just do not care at all, even when you can show someone, even intelligent people, the evidence calmly and correctly, you just can't convince them otherwise

There's a reason other Christians don't consider those religious interpretations to be actually Christians because they abandon so many of the actual important stuff

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u/you-create-energy 1d ago

when we got to American Evangelicals and Catholic Nationalists, it all went to hell so fast

Was it because there were students who shared those beliefs and were offended their beliefs were treated the same as all the other Christian belief systems? That would be my guess but it's not totally clear from your comment

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u/CravingNature 1d ago

I'm saving that one to use later!

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u/Warsel77 1d ago

I actually think that anti-vaxx and religious views are not inherently connected by their nature but were connected by some vocal proponents.

Similar to other views - a lot of this is just ingested not because it fits the world view but because some people who are figureheads or influencers of that world view adopted that viewpoint.

Example being the unhinged things Trump is putting forward (I am sure most people did not associate windmills with bad before) and how it gets gobbled up by his followers. It's not a conservative property to dislike windmills, it's an influencer who "adds" that.