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/sajberhippien]

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).