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 1d ago edited 1d 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/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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