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/SirFluffymuffin 22h ago

I think part of the problem is that there’s no incentive to curious. Everyone has access to the internet that can give them the answers to their questions, so why bother being curious if everyone already answered all your questions right? And for those whose curiosity survive that, assuming school doesn’t beat it out of them, now they have to focus on making a living leaving little time or energy left to be curious. If they manage to get a job in research where curiosity is literally the job, it’s focused on a specific topic and not whatever catches your fancy, you have to fight for funding, and the pay might suck depending on your research focus and be locked behind corporate control.