r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • 9h 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 8h 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/Numeno230n 6h ago edited 6h ago

There are a lot of harmless dumb Christians I've met in my life, but Christian Nationalism is a specific form that involves violence, paranoia, and conspiracy thinking. They literally believe there are demonic forces behind left leaning political movements and this fuels both their religious delusions and their political violence.

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u/BitterTyke 5h ago

There are a lot of harmless dumb Christians

but they are already conditioned to believe in ephemeral things like being the chosen ones - basically the low hanging fruit.

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u/open_formation 20m ago

If someone has been in the vicinity of republican propaganda specifically targetting their beliefs for years and has not adopted it they're likely the opposite of low hanging fruit. There was a wave of Trump supporting non-religious independents who were swayed in the last election only to immediately shift back when they saw what he was doing, but nevertheless managed to begin with "I'm smarter than religious people" -> "religious people are dangerous" -> "Trump will protect me from Muslim immigrants" and ended up supporting people lying about Haitian immigrants.

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u/TristanTheRobloxian3 2h ago

... that isnt what bring christian is broski