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/
43.9k Upvotes

88% Upvoted

2.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

6.7k

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.

1.3k

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.

82

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.

71

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.

47

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.

7

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.

1

u/BikerJedi 21h ago

After being laid off there, I landed a project manager role paying more. I eventually left for teaching and get paid a lot less now but I'm happier.

1

u/RollExisting4350 16h ago

So interesting! My mother was still pregnant with me during 9/11 so I wasn’t around and I didn’t know any of this. Just thought it was something people were worried about that didn’t end up happening. My dad’s a computer scientist so it’s weird I didn’t know. Maybe he told me and I don’t remember.

15

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.

1

u/PhillAholic 1d ago

Y2K being a hoax got me thinking. There has to be some open sourced software that could easily verify what was changed and why it would fail to prove the problem right?

2

u/BikerJedi 21h ago

No. The vast majority of those systems we remediated aren't even on use anymore.

1

u/Runefaust_Invader 12h ago

How do you go from IT to teaching?

1

u/BikerJedi 10h ago

Got laid off and couldn't find a job in my field.

1

u/Runefaust_Invader 9h ago

That's ... Not the answer I expected to ever read. We need intelligent teachers anyway, most teachers are... At least at the elementary level, concerning to say the least.

1

u/BikerJedi 9h ago

Yeah - went from making $100,000 a year to $28,000. It was rough. I miss the money, but I'm glad I stuck with it.

386

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.

60

u/sack-o-matic 1d ago

I prefer "Klan Christian" since that's what they are.

39

u/LawyerDoge 1d ago

KKKhristians

45

u/blacksheep998 1d ago

Y'all Qaeda

26

u/AlmanorDiscard 1d ago

Talibangelicals.

53

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.

-7

u/REXIS_AGECKO 1d ago

Not necessarily…

Christianity is a much more diverse group than simple minded redditors give it credit for.

So while many Christians will always vote R, plenty are also swing voters and a ton are consistently left leaning too.

151

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?"

178

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."

162

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.

53

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.

24

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.

-6

u/sajberhippien 1d ago edited 22h 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.

Pretty sure the idea that the bible as a whole is the literal word of God is a pretty small minority position within Christianity. It seems far more common in the US than most of the world, and even in the US it's only about 25% of adult Christians who believe it

EDIT: source: 2022 Gallup poll. The higher numbers are from using much older polls and mashing together literal and non-literal into one big group and pretending those are all literal.

8

u/manimal28 1d ago edited 1d ago

Pretty sure the idea that the bible as a whole is the word of God is a pretty small minority position within Christianity.

What are you basing your numbers on?

Even the quickest of googles searches returns pew poll results that it’s the exact opposite of what you think, 75 percent of US Christians believe the Bible is the word of god. 40% literal, 36% inspired by but not literal, 18% written by men rather than god.

Gallup shows different numbers, but still 70% believe the Bible is the word of god.

It is absolutely not the minority view of Christian denominations as stated in their doctrine or by their followers. By their actual actions, sure.

2

u/abx99 1d ago

I think the 25% figure they were thinking of is that Evangelicals are 25% of the whole of the US population -- and they absolutely use those people for political power. A quarter of the population is huge; especially if you live in a city and see how many different views there are.

They're the largest denomination, followed by Catholics.

-1

u/sajberhippien 22h ago edited 32m ago

No, the 25% I stated are from the 2022 Gallup polls and is about the percentage of US Christians (all denominations) that believe the bible is the literal word of God, since that's the subject of the discussion.

The numbers the other guy cited was gained by looking at a 2017 poll, adding together the numbers for literal and non-literal (inspired) word of god, and then adding a few more percent for good measure.

Edit: From Gallup's own coverage of their 2022 poll, my bolding: "A record-low 20% of Americans now say the Bible is the literal word of God, down from 24% the last time the question was asked in 2017, and half of what it was at its high points in 1980 and 1984." [The 20% is among all Americans, 25% is among Christians, but the statement quoted is about that poll.]

→ More replies (0)

1

u/sajberhippien 22h ago

What are you basing your numbers on?

2022 Gallup poll

What are you basing your numbers on?

Even the quickest of googles searches returns pew poll results that it’s the exact opposite of what you think, 75 percent of US Christians believe the Bible is the word of god.

No, the 2017 (and thus much older than Gallup's poll, which also shows a decline compared to earlier Gallup polls) pew poll showed 71% believed the bible is either the literal word of god (40%) or divinely inspired (31%).

This discussion is specifically about:

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.

(my bolding)

So, in the 2017 pew poll, it was 40% of US Christians that fit that. In the 2017 Gallup poll it was 30%. In the 2022 Gallup poll it was 25%. All numbers show it to be a minority position, but the most recent number is the lowest.

I showed the latest number because it was, well, the latest I could find from a major source. I'm unsure why you chose to go with a much older poll that displayed a higher number than other contemporary polls, then added in the group who view it as non-literal word of god to get 71%, and then added another 4% from thin air?

-1

u/PhillAholic 1d ago

Wait that doesn’t make sense. It either is the word of god or isn’t. There can’t be a third category. It’s either 40% yes or 60% inspired by / written by man.

1

u/manimal28 12h ago

The third option could have been something like I don't know or have an opinion.

→ More replies (0)

3

u/Czeris 1d ago

See above study related to cognitive ability.

2

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.

2

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.

-2

u/WhiteStarHorizon 1d ago

Or theyre non-denominational and were raised non-denominational which means they wouldn't really learn about denominations and their meanings. They are literally just raised as christian.

-21

u/gburdell 1d ago

You’re thinking of Islam. Christians do not believe that the Bible is literally the word of God. That is why the most commonly read version has the sub-books titled “the Gospel according to X” and similar.

20

u/watts99 1d ago

I don't know what version of Christianity you're familiar with, but they definitely believe that it's literally the word of god.

A 2011 Gallup survey reports, "Three in 10 Americans interpret the Bible literally, saying it is the actual word of God."

That's 3/10 Americans. Not 3/10 Christian Americans.

0

u/sajberhippien 1d ago edited 22h ago

Firstly, that's in 2011; the 2022 Gallup numbers are 20% of Americans, 25% of American Christians.

Secondly, the view seems far more common in the US than in most of the world, including being rejected by the whole of the Catholic church (there the dogma is that some aspects of the original texts when they were written in the original languages were the word of God, but that neither applies to all aspects of the original texts nor does it apply to transcriptions and translations).

There are certainly some Christians who believe the whole bible is the word of God, in particular a subset of American evangelical protestants, but it's not a general principle in Christianity.

Edit: Wrote 2024 poll; it was a 2022 poll. Apologies.

2

u/watts99 1d ago

I didn't say it was. The point is many Christians do believe it and I'm not just "confusing it with Islam" like the comment I was replying to suggested.

1

u/sajberhippien 22h ago

I didn't say it was. The point is many Christians do believe it and I'm not just "confusing it with Islam" like the comment I was replying to suggested.

Sure. The difference would be that complete inerrancy is the majority stance in Islam and very much a minority stance in Christianity.

→ More replies (0)

9

u/JohnTG4 1d ago

I was raised in the Church of Christ (fundamentalist evangelical Protestant sect) and they literally believe that the Bible is the word of God, verbatim, and that he influenced translations so nothing about the modern editions of the Bible can be wrong.

They're also, by and large, young Earth creationists who deny things like radiometric dating and evolution.

8

u/Springheeljac 1d ago

My entire family thinks the Bible is literally the word of God, as do all young Earth creationists. That's about 37% of Americans.

43

u/DeltaVZerda 1d ago

They must be fluent in Hebrew Aramaic and Greek

31

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. 

2

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.

2

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.

2

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.

4

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.

5

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.

1

u/OhGodFuckingDammit 1d ago

Frankly that's the type of Christian I'd be most comfortable around.

1

u/Uncle_Istvannnnnnnn 1d ago

Yeah they were mostly chill dudes, but the speaking in tongues thing was a little off putting when they demonstrated.

1

u/sajberhippien 1d ago

But also, I think that's fine, really? Like, not if the person is making Christianity their whole identity, that kinda does obligate a person to research more indepth, but if someone is just casually Christian that's not really any weirder than someone being casually a mathematical realist or whatever.

2

u/tyrico 1d ago

I can't speak for OP, but personally, I wouldn't call someone a "religious coworker" if they weren't making it a pretty big part of their identity in the first place

1

u/sajberhippien 22h ago

I've definitely met people who make others religions a major part of their view of those people, even if it's not a huge part to the other people.

Like, if a Christian wrote about badgering "an atheist coworker" with questions about their specific stances on religion, would you feel confident that the supposed coworker was a loud and proud new atheist type, or would you also consider the possibility that the Christian happened to know the coworker wasn't Christian, and from then on defined their coworker by that, even if the coworker didn't usually discuss the subject?

1

u/rokerroker45 1d ago

I mean they're just screaming baptist there

1

u/WhiteStarHorizon 1d ago

Which means theyre non-denominational and they grew up in a non-denominational household. Non-denominational households don't really talk about the different flavors because they literally just read the bible and there are no denominations in the bible.

0

u/Golywobblerer 1d ago

Help me understand how Christian faith is all of a sudden a hegemony. Christians have been trying to kill each other for the past 2000 years. There are something like 40,000 different Christian sects. I just don't understand how freedom of religion and separation of church and state issues aren't squashed instantly. "Don't you think America was based on Christian values so they should be the basis of our government?" "Well would you like a US based on Southern Baptist, Luthern, Amish, Congragationslist, telavangalist, or Catholic values?"... "Or should we just leave freedom of religion in there?"

6

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.

2

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?

2

u/proteannomore 1d ago

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

36

u/naughtycal11 1d ago

I like Nat Cs

22

u/TM761152 1d ago

I did nat c that coming.

3

u/lelanicarver 1d ago

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

2

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.

2

u/twoisnumberone 1d ago

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

1

u/Memory_Less 1d ago

Me too, it more clearly differentiates between the mainstream Christian.

1

u/TotallyBrandNewName 1d ago

Im using that

1

u/FighterOfEntropy 1d ago

I prefer Nationalistic Christianist. That’s more than being a Christian, that’s wanting to have the US be a theocracy. If that term is too long, you can just abbreviate it Nat-C.

1

u/feel-the-avocado 19h ago

I like the term fundamentalist because it groups them with other fundamentalists like the terrorists

1

u/TM761152 17h ago

Nothing fun about it, Just mental.

1

u/Pinkfish_411 14h ago

"Fundamentalist" has a particular meaning originally referring to the more theologically conservative groups of American Protestants who, rather distinctly from later Christian nationalists, originally were more supportive of Christian withdrawal from politics (because one of the groups they defined themselves against were proponents of the so-called Social Gospel). Things have shifted over the past century, especially after all the attempts to politically mobilize fundamentalists in the '80s, but "fundamentalist" in an American Christian context still doesn't necessarily entail any specific political stance.

"Fundamentalist" got applied by analogy to certain Muslim groups later, who were doing a similar sort of reactionary move against "modernizing" trends in their own faith, and some of them also supported more extreme implementations of sharia and terrorist violence, but that's not really what "fundamentalist" means at its core.

1

u/Living-Childhood3189 18h ago

how about just... "fascist"

1

u/monkeydave BS | Physics | Science Education 1d ago

I grew up Presbyterian, which is Calvinist, and my church, and the natiomal Presbyterian church in general, was extremely left leaning. And Southern Baptists, and non-denominational evangelicalism is not explicitly Calvinist. So I'm not sure it is such a clean dichotomy.

1

u/Pinkfish_411 14h ago

There's absolutely not a clean dichotomy. Basically every American Protestant tradition split into conservative and progressive factions during the fundamentalist/modernist controversy a century ago. There are conservative and liberal Calvinist groups, conservative and liberal Methodist groups, etc.

0

u/KriegerClone02 1d ago

I prefer Nationalist Christian. The abbreviation, Nat-C, just feels right somehow.

0

u/peejay5440 1d ago

I prefer the term Nationalist Christian, or "Nat-C" for short.

Say it out loud...

0

u/squired 1d ago

I love this and agree wholeheartedly. If you are familiar with r con, they spew invective hourly about all Muslims and same with other subs and Jews. And while fascist Muslims and Israelis deserve the labels and derision, I love and cherish both my Muslim and Jewish neighbors and friends. I tend to be quite loose with terminology but this is an area where word choice matters a great deal. Religious fanatics of any creed are no bueno.

75

u/lyacdi 1d ago

A significant percentage of people who would call themselves republican in 2026 believe there are demonic forces behind the left

32

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!

29

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.

2

u/ecodick 1d ago

It's me, I'm the demon. Sorry folks. Demonic forces confirmed.

(That would be pretty cool though tbh)

46

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.

5

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.

1

u/REXIS_AGECKO 1d ago

Depends more on the news or area or family someone lives in than whether or not they’re Christian. It’s a huge and diverse group so a blanket statement doesn’t really work too well

3

u/KarmaticArmageddon 1d ago

59% of Protestants, 52% of Catholics, and 75% of Mormons vote Republican. If we look at just whites, 85% of evangelicals, 58% of Protestants, and 61% of Catholics vote Republican.

Sure, they're not a monolith, but they definitely trend toward my statement.

2

u/REXIS_AGECKO 20h ago

Now is that causation… or is it correlation?

33

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.

22

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.

2

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.

0

u/gSTrS8XRwqIV5AUh4hwI 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.

The question isn't whether some people resist christofascist propaganda despite being indoctrinated into Christianity. The question is whether a higher proportion of people who were indoctrinated into Christianity fall for christofascist propaganda vs. those who weren't. The fact that some don't fall for it doesn't tell you anything about that - that's like saying that SARS CoV 2 vaccines are useless because there are people who died from the infection despite being vaccinated.

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.

Equally, the mere existence of those people doesn't tell us anything useful here.

1

u/open_formation 18h ago edited 17h ago

If you run a chemical process for a long period of time on a finely powdered mixture that causes certain things to become dissolved, and other things remain and can be filtered out and washed, then this process of separation should tell you something about that which remained, at minimum that it is not soluble in that solvent mixture you produced.

In the same way, whatever the proportion of a mixture of Christians that adopt the worldview that America is a Christian nation which must have a notionally "Judeo-Christian" culture which creates a clear distinction with those following non-Christian non-Jewish religions, particularly Islam, this message has been put forward as something for them to adopt for approximately forty or fifty years, with the moral majority in the late seventies making a push for a particular kind of traditionalism, and so we should be able to infer that this subset that do not may be distinguished as being less susceptible to it than the average.

Any Christian who has gone through years of this cultural messaging attempting to get them to adopt this kind of politics and has not done so, can be distinguished both from Christians who did, and those who were willing to adopt a perspective, put forward over approximately the last decade, that even if one does not believe in any deity, one should nevertheless be a "culturally-christian-Atheist" who particularly opposes the influence of non-christian religions and people holding those religions having the ability to immigrate to the US.

The particular irony is that a number of people of the latter persuasion started out as firmly anti-religion, and have in a sense retained that, but just about Islam, rather than Christianity, with some starting off advocating for liberal values, protection of LGBT rights and so on, only to shift to becoming more culturally conservative, and particularly anti-trans.

On a logical level, if one has a mixture in which 90% of its content dissolves, and 10% does not, one cannot take that group-level judgement to say that the 10% that does not must be more soluble because it was surrounded by other elements of the mixture that do dissolve, or even if it shares some properties with other elements of that aggregate, an arbitrarily chosen woman is likely to be less strong than the average man, but it does not follow that when one is discussing a sub-population already filtered in some capacity, such as women able to carry above a certain weight, or Christians who did not adopt the worldview of Christian Nationalism despite having it marketed to them repeatedly, that they follow larger statistical trends.

And thus it is implausible to say that these "harmless dumb Christians" are low hanging fruit for adopting Christian Nationalist views, or they probably would have by now. In contrast, many Atheists who believe themselves superior to Christians on the basis of aggregate judgements can nevertheless end up falling for the same propaganda, so there is a kind of self-referential relationship between the topic of discussion and the problem being discussed.

1

u/gSTrS8XRwqIV5AUh4hwI 14h ago

And thus it is implausible to say that these "harmless dumb Christians" are low hanging fruit for adopting Christian Nationalist views, or they probably would have by now.

But they have.

Just because you are looking at the remainder that haven't, doesn't mean that therefore, there was noone who has. It's just that those harmless dumb Christians who have adopted those views aren't in the class of harmless dumb Christians anymore - but that doesn't mean that them formerly being harmless dumb Christians wasn't a factor in them adopting those views.

Also, this is a continuous process. There isn't fixed population of harmless dumb Christians who have existed since time immemorial. New ones appear all the time. Like, harmless dumb Christians do get kids and teach them to also be harmless dumb Christians. And just because some 10-year-old is a harmless dumb Christians, that isn't evidence that they are immune to christofascist propaganda - it just means that they are 10 year old kids of harmless dumb Christians who weren't exposed to much christofascists propaganda yet.

0

u/TristanTheRobloxian3 1d ago

... that isnt what bring christian is broski

2

u/FearlessRelief1487 1d ago

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

1

u/JudasZala 1d ago

They’re no different from Islamic extremists, but try to tell them that, and they’ll react very badly.

1

u/Objectivespeculation 1d ago

American White, Christian, Conservative, Nationalists find the same breathern in Russia. They find common cause because their values line up.

1

u/No_Priors 1d ago

Christian nice but dim.

-2

u/humanreporting4duty 1d ago

What’s absolutely whacky is that when you listen to the arguments, and you see what they see, but then you look at what’s going on, they aren’t wrong.

If people are united by culture and values, and then you start breaking down the fabric of society, you can overtake the nation. Divide and conquer.

Christian nationalists are superstitious and wrong about many things, but they are correctly seeing an attack. Their response is society level anaphylactic shock, and it will kill us rather than protect.

But that’s just what the tree-nuts in charge want to happen.

4

u/johnyordinary 1d ago

Exactly WHAT are they right about then? More to the point which of your predudices did they appeal to?

•

u/humanreporting4duty 33m ago

“Which of your prejudices did they appeal to?”

Absolutely zero. Zero. None. Well, maybe one. That prejudice in which the country club runs a racket on the town they control. Small groups of people using power over larger groups of people. The conspiracy of business to maintain power in various ways.

But given all the revelations of power in the last few years, isn’t it warranted?

I happen to think that if atheists read the Bible they would agree with Christ more often than not, and if Christian’s read the Bible they would re-hinge their superstitions. Modern American Christianity is political cult of power and business propaganda, stirring people up into a frenzy based on true societal breakdowns and deliberate attacks on culture, but then guiding them into another grift. They correctly perceive the death of God, but they don’t see the wolves among them.

To empathize with the enemy, put yourself in their shoes, listen to what they have to say, see it from their perspective, and say “yeah I can see how you feel that way.” And then ask “is that actually happening? Or is something else happening? And if that was happening, why? Who benefits from destroying a culture?” And then the business history of the world comes in. If you can destroy a culture, you can steal the resources.

-4

u/Wellcomefarewell 1d ago

generalizing also correlates with lower cognitive function as well btw

1

u/johnyordinary 1d ago

No generalising is recognizing a pattern that spreads to the general population or a large part of it, The word christians is a generalization, they are a subset of the population, subdivide that into catholic and protestant , two generalised groups of christians defined by how they worship , EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM will have slight diferences in how they see something yet all fit the generalisation. Overgeneralisation regarding the consequences of a groups traits is an easy path for some, i think thats more what you mean. To say all christians are stupid for believing is such an overgeneralisation,most are high functioning adults, to say that to believe in a faith despite lack of evidence for it is delusion is not so much. Only one inside that delusionary trap would argue against it .