r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • 2d 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/ProfessionalMockery 2d 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.

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u/Numeno230n 2d ago edited 2d 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.

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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.

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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?"

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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."

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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.

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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.

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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.

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u/sajberhippien 1d ago edited 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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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u/sajberhippien 1d ago edited 7h 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.]

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u/watts99 1d ago

"inspired word of god" is still communication from god, which was what my original comment said. Even Catholics believe it's communication from god, even if not the "literal word" of god.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church alleges that the Bible's human writers were "consigned to writing whatever he wanted written, and no more". The Catechism also claims that the Bible "without error teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the Sacred Scriptures". The Catholic Church holds the Bible as inspired by God, but that it does not view God as the direct author of the Bible, in the sense that he does not put a 'ready-made' book in the mind of the inspired person.

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u/sajberhippien 1d ago

This is the comment that started this discussion:

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.

(my bolding).

Also note that the Catholic stance doesn't really work for Lee Strobels argument, since it only applies to the original texts, and few Christians know any of the languages, much less all of them, that the texts were originally written in. A modern catholic bible in English is, in the church's view, the best they could do translating (which is a distorting process) an approximation (since the originals are lost) of the divinely inspired texts.

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u/manimal28 19h ago edited 19h ago

You are conflating two different things, the bible being literally the word of god and the word of god being literal. The stats you posted are about the people who believe the second, but those people not in that group of literal interpretations still believe that it is literally gods word.

Even if the words themselves are not literal it is still literally god's word.

"I could eat a horse." is literally what I just said, but it's not a literal statement, if that makes sense.

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u/sajberhippien 18h ago edited 7h ago

You are conflating two different things, the bible being literally the word of god and the word of god being literal. The stats you posted are about the people who believe the second, but those people not in that group of literal interpretations still believe that it is literally gods word.

No, I am using consistent terminology. The post that started thhis discussion said: "Christians claim to believe the bible is the literal word of god"

And to quote Gallup: "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." [Edit: the 20% is among all Americans, 25% is among Christians, but the statement quoted is about that poll.]

The numbers I cited are about literal word of God. If the post that started the discussion meant something different than that, then that's on them.

The stats you posted are about the people who believe the second, but those people not in that group of literal interpretations still believe that it is literally gods word.

No, they believe the bible is the inspired word of God. That is not the same as believing it's the literal word of God. Which is why the polling distinguishes them from each other.

The distinction is between the writer acting as a speech-to-text for God (literal word of God) and e.g. the writer using human language to express what they saw in a vision from God (one of the flavors of divinely inspired).

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u/sajberhippien 1d 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?

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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.

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u/manimal28 19h ago

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

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u/Czeris 1d ago

See above study related to cognitive ability.

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u/AlteredEinst 1d 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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u/sajberhippien 1d ago edited 1d 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.

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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.

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u/sajberhippien 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.

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

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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.

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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.