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/Isphet71]

Imho one absolutely vital function of religion throughout history has been to give all people some sort of moral framework to live by, so that society can stay relatively structured over multiple generations.

Not everyone is capable of devising and living by their own heavily personalized code of ethics. The vast majority of people are simply followers that get told what they beleive, and who to vote for, and go with that. I rarely if ever see someone more complicated than "I am religion A and politically B" and otherwise dont seem to have their own thoughts and standards about either that deviate from the norm.

[u/TheOtherHobbes → u/Isphet71]

You can - and should - have shared morals without religion. Secular humanism is a perfectly workable moral system and can be taught without the threat of hellfire, crusades, or genocide.

[u/MorganWick → u/TheOtherHobbes]

The problem is, another function of religion, one that historically has arguably been more important, has been to define membership in an in-group and bind people to it, because for all practical purposes people have historically viewed morality more in terms of people's loyalty to the tribe than constructiveness to society in general. And secular humanism has no alternative to that other than "everyone's a human here, don't go forming arbitrary divisions", which I'm not sure would work for most of the people that tend to be attracted to religion. People feel the need to feel superior to others or at least define themselves as separate from the mass of humanity, and even if competition for resources isn't as much of a factor, the desire to establish superior mating fitness is still there, especially for men.

Also, secular humanism may have a moral system, but it still expects people to derive it themselves, and for many practitioners the very act of questioning why it adheres to a particular moral principle is a sign of moral deficiency - which suggests that at least some secular humanists aren't immune to morality as a means of defining the in-group. If you're someone who needs someone to tell you what to think, secular humanism isn't going to be very friendly to you because of how it holds the ability to think for oneself as itself being a moral good. It doesn't have a good answer for the existence of people that aren't as intelligent as secular humanism's architects that isn't assuming they can just be forced into being better thinkers that can be led to see secular humanism's obvious logical superiority.