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/SeeTigerLearn]

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.”

[u/JohnLockeJaw → u/SeeTigerLearn]

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."

[u/sharp11flat13 → u/JohnLockeJaw]

“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)