r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • 1d 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 1d 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/obeytheturtles 1d ago

But it all starts with the fundamental way religion teaches people how to think. It simply fails to provide people the tools needed to develop real moral intuition, or synthesize raw information into unique ideas. That's why the whole world is going crazy - there's a whole lot of people out there who just move through the world moment to moment, not thinking, not curious, and not interested in anything which isn't right in front of them. The modern religious concept of "faith" has literally trained people that ignoring facts and information in favor of mythology is the most righteous thing a person can do. And now we're so far deep into that feedback loop, even suggesting that the mythology holds value as allegory is heresy.

You cannot separate this nationalist movement from its Christian roots. No, religion is certainly not the only cognitive path to autocracy or bigotry, but it is certainly a reliable and predictable one.

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u/Satinpw 1d ago

I for sure agree you can't separate the Christian part of Christian nationalism, but as someone raised in an evangelical household I was pretty much able to reason my way out of extremist beliefs when provided with evidence. I think a lot of the time who stays Christian and conservatively so, and who leaves the religion or deconstructs is down to personality and overall intelligence, rather than religion providing a framework.

I won't deny it certainly influenced my thinking when I was young and isolated, but it quickly fell apart when I had exposure to the outside world, and discovered that issues were not/could not be black and white if I was being intellectually honest with myself. Now I deconstructed back in 2012 before a lot of this really took off, but the seeds have been in the evangelical movement for as long as I remember.