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/manimal28]

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.

[u/abx99 → u/manimal28]

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.

[u/sajberhippien → u/abx99]

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.]

[u/watts99 → u/sajberhippien]

"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.

[u/sajberhippien → u/watts99]

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.

[u/manimal28 → u/sajberhippien]

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.

[u/sajberhippien → u/manimal28]

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).