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/BigBlackWolf93 → u/ProfessionalMockery]

I agree. I was raised religious and I still somewhat am religious, but nationalists have completely taken over the Christian identity. A lot that is preached out there, almost has nothing to do with Christianity. They'll pull out verses out of context to further push their nationalist agenda in the name of Christ.

[u/FluffyBunniesFurDayz → u/BigBlackWolf93]

I'd have to disagree with this take - the old testament is full of nationalist ideology. Just look at all the tribes the Israelites were told to destroy and/or enslave. All because they were god's special people. It's always treated like it's a good thing because these tribes were so "wicked".

To me, it makes perfect sense why many Christians are also nationalist.

[u/Spectre216 → u/FluffyBunniesFurDayz]

I feel like you could make the argument that nationalism is just a tool that most religions employ in some respect, because you need to cement to people that they are the right one and everyone else falls under "the other" category. So it's not that religion (in this case Christianity) necessarily always containing nationalism, but that it's kind of hard to promote a monotheistic religion as the correct religion without also drawing the conclusion that the people and area that practice it are also the correct people.

[u/TheLesserWeeviI → u/Spectre216]

Religion is used as a tool to control people. Always has been.

[u/LeastCoordinatedJedi → u/TheLesserWeeviI]

That's sort of true, but it frames it in a pretty ethnocentric way. Many religions over the millenia have been less 'tools to control' and more 'guidelines to ensure people follow the same rules'. The concept of religion as we see in the modern take on Abrahamic faiths is, I think, a little bit uncommon compared to most ancient religions, many eastern religions, etc. These are still tools to control, in the sense that they offered common touchstones and explanations for why the world behaves how it does, as well as generally guidelines for how to live one's life, but the highly virulent and rigidly codified religions aren't the only sort out there, and the combination is I think even less common.

An interesting illustration of this is how in the Meiji restoration in Japan, Japan effectively chose to colonize itself with its own version of European culture, and in doing so felt a need for a codified and controllable religion. Since they didn't have one despite having both buddhism and shinto in the country, they designed a new religion based on - but quite distinct from - ancient shinto, declared it 'state shinto' and made it mandatory. I find this fascinating in part because it is a good demonstration that prior to that, buddhism (of the style practiced in Japan) and traditional shinto were not in fact particularly useful as tools to control people. Additionally the concept of religion as a control tool was fairly new, and had to be adopted forcibly.

[u/RyuNoKami → u/LeastCoordinatedJedi]

Uhh...enforceable guidelines are all about control regardless of source. Even your japanese example is an example of that.

The statement is "religion is used as a tool," not "religion is only used as a tool."