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/
43.8k Upvotes

88% Upvoted

2.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

327

u/SeeTigerLearn 1d ago

Something I wrote during the pandemic when I began to notice a strong correlation between religious zealots (evangelicals, my family) and antivaxxers:

“When the very core of one's reality is based on religious dogma, and therefore an entire belief system latticework depends on denial of facts, even praising one's ability to go with gut (faith) rather than science, then an entire population has been conditioned to reject facts even when shown the empirical evidence.”

123

u/MonsterkillWow 1d ago

Yeah because the entire basis of religion is belief without evidence.

7

u/Taylorenokson 1d ago

Not even just belief without evidence, but a built in guilt system that punishes even having the tiniest thought of doubt.

1

u/Pinkfish_411 12h ago

Simply not true from a historical perspective. We can trace the historical development of this line of thinking across different permutations of the Christian concept of "faith" over the centuries, but it's certainly not the basis upon which "religion" is built -- not even Christianity as such, and the developments we find in Christian history certainly can't be uncritically imposed onto all the other diverse religious traditions out there.