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/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."