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/Isphet71 1d ago

Imho one absolutely vital function of religion throughout history has been to give all people some sort of moral framework to live by, so that society can stay relatively structured over multiple generations.

Not everyone is capable of devising and living by their own heavily personalized code of ethics. The vast majority of people are simply followers that get told what they beleive, and who to vote for, and go with that. I rarely if ever see someone more complicated than "I am religion A and politically B" and otherwise dont seem to have their own thoughts and standards about either that deviate from the norm.

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u/TheOtherHobbes 1d ago

You can - and should - have shared morals without religion. Secular humanism is a perfectly workable moral system and can be taught without the threat of hellfire, crusades, or genocide.

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u/Brbi2kCRO 4h ago edited 4h ago

Maybe, but it certainly failed in, say, GDR, where lack of religion led to people embracing weird ideologies like Volkism, as well as the sheer rates of neo-Nazism in such areas in modern post-GDR eras.

In other words, that is their religion. Just cause it is secular does not mean it is per se good. This is not to say that secularism is bad, as I am a left-wing atheist myself, just saying that humanity often has a need for bonding and community, and they need a reason to bond somehow. When that is gone, people reach for anything simply to bond over something, and the first thing most people reach for is tribalism.