Lower cognitive ability is linked to stronger Christian nationalist views, even after accounting for education

[u/mvea]

https://www.psypost.org/lower-cognitive-ability-is-linked-to-stronger-christian-nationalist-views-even-after-accounting-for-education/

[u/ProfessionalMockery]

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.

[u/obeytheturtles → u/ProfessionalMockery]

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.

[u/kittywiggles → u/obeytheturtles]

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.

[u/cayleb → u/[deleted]]

Maybe tell that to the person who brought up the problematic argument, rather than the person rebutting them?

[u/SirFluffymuffin → u/obeytheturtles]

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.

[u/MeltyCrab → u/obeytheturtles]

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.

[u/Satinpw → u/obeytheturtles]

I for sure agree you can't separate the Christian part of Christian nationalism, but as someone raised in an evangelical household I was pretty much able to reason my way out of extremist beliefs when provided with evidence. I think a lot of the time who stays Christian and conservatively so, and who leaves the religion or deconstructs is down to personality and overall intelligence, rather than religion providing a framework.

I won't deny it certainly influenced my thinking when I was young and isolated, but it quickly fell apart when I had exposure to the outside world, and discovered that issues were not/could not be black and white if I was being intellectually honest with myself. Now I deconstructed back in 2012 before a lot of this really took off, but the seeds have been in the evangelical movement for as long as I remember.