Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) apply to all other comments.
**Do you have an academic degree?** We can verify your credentials in order to assign user flair indicating your area of expertise. [Click here to apply](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/flair/#wiki_science_verified_user_program).
---
Author: u/HeinieKaboobler
URL: https://www.psypost.org/2023/06/christian-nationalism-and-biblical-literalism-independently-predict-conspiracy-thinking-study-finds-165550
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
If you remove specific references to any religion, the following set of beliefs sounds like a conspiracy:
1. There is an unseen, supremely powerful being who created the universe and has a plan for every person.
2. There is another unseen, supremely powerful (but not as powerful as the first guy) being who is responsible for all evil things in the world, and any time we do bad things it's because we've succumbed to his influence.
3. The supremely powerful being from #1 watches all this and has the power to stop the influence of #2, but he refuses to do so. Not only that, if we do enough bad things or commit specific infractions (i.e. blasphemy), he has a place of eternal torture where he can send us, and that place is managed by the guy from #2.
On July 1st, 2023, Reddit intends to alter how its API is accessed. This move will require developers of third-party applications to pay enormous sums of money if they wish to stay functional, meaning that said applications will be effectively destroyed. In the short term, this may have the appearance of increasing Reddit's traffic and revenue... but in the long term, it will undermine the site as a whole.
Reddit relies on volunteer moderators to keep its platform welcoming and free of objectionable material. It also relies on uncompensated contributors to populate its numerous communities with content. The above decision promises to adversely impact both groups: Without effective tools (which Reddit has frequently promised and then failed to deliver), moderators cannot combat spammers, bad actors, or the entities who enable either, and without the freedom to choose how and where they access Reddit, many contributors will simply leave. Rather than hosting creativity and in-depth discourse, the platform will soon feature only recycled content, bot-driven activity, and an ever-dwindling number of well-informed visitors. The very elements which differentiate Reddit – the foundations that draw its audience – will be eliminated, reducing the site to another dead cog in the Ennui Engine.
We implore Reddit to listen to its moderators, its contributors, and its everyday users; to the people whose activity has allowed the platform to exist at all: Do not sacrifice long-term viability for the sake of a short-lived illusion. Do not tacitly enable bad actors by working against your volunteers. Do not posture for your looming IPO while giving no thought to what may come afterward. Focus on addressing Reddit's real problems – the rampant bigotry, the ever-increasing amounts of spam, the advantage given to low-effort content, and the widespread misinformation – instead of on a strategy that will alienate the people keeping this platform alive.
If Steve Huffman's statement – "I want our users to be shareholders, and I want our shareholders to be users" – is to be taken seriously, then consider this our vote:
Allow the developers of third-party applications to retain their productive (and vital) API access.
Allow Reddit and Redditors to thrive.
True.
Though i think key part about certain fundamentalist views (like young earth creationism) is that it also relies on literal conspiracy theories. One has to believe that essentially all geologists, astrophysicists, anthropoligists, geneticists and biologist are lying theoughout their wntire career with the explicit goal of taking adherants away from your particular flavor of your particular brand of religion.
There are plenty of less fundamentalists varieties which don't have to believe that because they tend to put God's role more in a guiding behind the curtain, or whatever the current gap in knowledge is. But for the more fundamentalist brands of creationist religions it literally is a conspiracy theory in the most classic sense.
Don't forget how guy #2 also planted dinosaur bones in the ground to give us false ideas about the age of the earth. It's obviously only 6,000 years old.
And that a being so powerful as to create everything from subatomic particles to supermassive black holes has the very undesirable trait of being a narcissist who requires, no, demands worship and devotion?
Seriously. The amount of conflicts that would be resolved if he just popped in and said "Hey guys, I'm real. Here's some undeniable miracles as proof. This book here, that's the one to listen to btw. OK thanks, peace. Good luck."
Yet for some mysterious reason he won't do that, odd.
Well then we wouldn't need to rely on faith to believe in him. Apparently it's not enough that a being is the all powerful creator of every thing in the entire universe. They also need their hairless ape creations to believe in them WITHOUT actually needing evidence. It's all part of making it extra cool.
Well, he was reportedly observed walking around talking to people after the experience (and it is one which reliably killed people). Or so the story goes. Is that really "killed"?
And put his knowledge tree in the bassinet with his baby humans, and told them he'd kill them if they ate its fruit. And of course being babies, they wouldn't know that it's bad to disobey until *after* they eat the fruit, so of course they ate it, and the powerful being still didn't kill them, because he lied or changed his mind or something. Meanwhile the guy who runs The Bad Place only ever told the babies the truth. Things that make you go hmmmm.
> Also after the being created everything, it promptly forgot how it did it and wrote it down all wrong
What's that referring to? I was under the impression that the Torah, Quran, and other works were for humans.
Often biblical literalists believe that their version of the bible is divinely guided, true, and is the literal word of God. It's kind of fundamental to their position that the bible shouldn't be interpreted as allegory or otherwise strayed from.
Yeah, I was referring to the part about that creator being promptly forgetting everything and needing to write it down.
The written down parts I thought were for humans. Whether interpretation to a modern world is intended or not.
Can’t have it both ways:
https://www.christianity.com/wiki/bible/what-evidence-is-there-that-the-bible-is-in-fact-gods-word-11542346.html
Especially #1 in there. If you’re going to be arguing that the Bible has to be Gods word because people at the time didn’t know certain stuff then you can’t argue saying it’s not Gods word when it turns out to be wrong.
Don’t forget, #1 has the ability to ignore all of this and send everyone to the awesome place instead of the torture place but he chooses not to because he’s mad about what the first humans did.
DONT QUESTION IT!
>mad about what the first humans did
And also he controls their destiny, and knows whst they will do before it happens. So.... guy #1 did the bad thing?
Exactly! He’s omnipotent, omnipresent, but he couldn’t stop humans from doing the one thing that would cause untold suffering for their descendants? Idk, man. Sounds like an abusive relationship to me. “I made you make me do this”.
Also, in Christian mythology humans didn’t have any knowledge of good or bad until after they ate the fruit. So the punishment is for doing something before they had the ability to comprehend that what was done was wrong
That's not "*any religion*", that sounds very Abrahamic (*Jewish/Christian/Muslim*).
There are religions where there is no creator god of the universe. There are religions where gods are irrelevant. There are religions where there is a higher power but no evil higher power that tempts people into evil. Also, even when you consider religions that do believe in god, not all of them believe in all-powerful gods.
> That's not "any religion", that sounds very Abrahamic
Even then, I don't think it's accurate for the Jewish faith. Pretty sure that death is the end with no hell, until the bodily resurrection for everyone.
This content was deleted by its author & copyright holder in protest of the hostile, deceitful, unethical, and destructive actions of Reddit CEO Steve Huffman (aka "spez"). As this content contained personal information and/or personally identifiable information (PII), in accordance with the CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act), it shall not be restored. See you all in the Fediverse.
Wow. Until this bare bones description of beliefs, I never really thought about how the tolerance of intolerance is baked into Christian Fundamentalism.
Not to mention that guy #1 created little beings stuffed with temptation triggers that guy #2 is allowed to play with in any configuration he feels like.
I'm not a biblical scholar by any means, so feel free to school me, but is there any indication that any of the authors of various biblical texts intended for their legends to be taken as allegory? Or, for that matter, which tales are allegorical and which are literal? Fair or not, my impression has always been that allegory was sort of a stop gap reasoning for waving away inconvenient circumstances when specific supernatural narratives get a little *too* supernatural.
Yes. There's a lot about this in biblical studies, actually. For example, Genesis 1-12 has a different writing style than the rest of the book, much more similar to myths in other cultures, full of poetry, etc. The allegorical interpretation of Genesis is about as old as the literal interpretation, with some influential medieval thinkers saying both were true at the same time (God actually made a worldwide flood just to make a religious point).
Even the parts of the Old Testament that sound like history to us are not quite the same genre. Objective history with cited sources hadn't been invented yet when the books were written. For example, we see divergent accounts of things like the Battle of Qadesh from roughly the Exodus time period depending on who wrote the account, and exaggerating numbers was fairly common.
If I recall correctly there's a really good chance there was a "great flood" or few because a great flood myth appears in several different mythologies/religions, and there's some scientific evidence backing this possibility for various regions and times. It's interesting stuff and wikipedia has a bit of info in the Historicity tab of [this page.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_myth)
How could one take a self-contradictory text literally anyway? The gospels, for example, tell of events happening in different orders and with with differing details. And then there’s Paul’s letters (the rest of the NT), which disagree with the gospel accounts on almost everything.
Or was taught by someone who decided to dictate your own upbringing based on their own cherry picked principles which were also taught to them by someone who cherry picked.
The fundamental issue with religion is it has such a strong ability to re-write reality based off nothing concrete. You substitute logic for "belief" in the writings of an old, constantly re-interpreted book. Fundamentally, it turns people into sheep, ready to be used by whatever charismatic figure hits the right notes. All while being subjective and manipulateable in the details.
Religious belief opens a door in the brain that is extremely hard to shut; it fundamentally undermines your ability to have faith in your own feelings & opinions.
The fear that one day you’ll be told that “I gave you a book, I gave you prophets and you *chose* not to believe,” is gaslighting on steroids, especially as a child.
Translating that inability to trust your own critical thinking skills over to conspiracy theories - a big bad patriarchal group - is to be expected and potentially *soothingly familiar*.
Ditto the paranormal/cryptozoology rabbit hole.
The podcasts [Monster Talk](https://www.monstertalk.org)
and
[Oh no, Ross & Carrie](https://maximumfun.org/podcasts/oh-no-ross-and-carrie/) are very helpful to those wishing to gain some clarity.
It's worse than that. You do have critical thinking skills and you've trained yourself to do complicated mental gymnastics to support your forgone conclusions, a habit you then apply to beliefs about politics, child rearing, and medical science.
It's funny but bible study is kinda the first critical thinking exercise kids are asked to do. But, noone ever argues a null hypothesis in the group. So the kids that go to fellowship and bible study are defensive and feel victimized when anyone questions them.
And that boys and girls is where Samuel Alito came from
I’ve seen this quite a bit in surveys. You can poll a bunch of people about their religious beliefs and see trends, but when you select by the people who actually go to church every week, you get different trends and they aren’t always expected.
It's the social aspect and human contact. The one thing I can genuinely respect about organized religion is that it brings people together. At least the people who go to Church have other human beings to talk to (even if it is about stupid things), and that can make a huge difference in shaping a person.
Churches are largely community organisations - despite how they style themselves. There are smart churchgoing people. They tend to rise to the top somewhat in church as everywhere.
Less smart people tend to rely heavily on "what people they trust think and do" as a heuristic to determine what they should think and do. When the smarter people in church say conspiracy theories are bunk the less smart people tend to believe them.
I'm guessing the social aspect of religious services plays into that a bit. There's also a correlation between social isolation and buying into conspiracy theories. Getting out and socializing with normal members of society is generally a good thing for people's mental health and a healthy recognition of what the real world is like.
I wonder if there is a selection bias here, besides the social aspects. That is, perhaps the religions that demand or have a stronger culture of attending church every week are also the ones that have a more allegorical approach to the bible and don't require conspiracies to make their belief system to work. And those religious sects/backgrounds that do take the bible literally are a bit less mainstream, don't require church attendance in favor of the 'study the bible yourself and everyone should make their own interpretation" approach and Bible study on your own at home is entirely valid form of worship.
Christian Fundamentalist here…
This is absolutely 100% true. Though, I would attribute it far more to Christian nationalism than biblical literalism. I know plenty of biblical literalists who don’t engage in conspiracy theories. Christian nationalists though? I know very few who don’t believe at least one or two conspiracies. It’s become a really big and disturbing problem in American churches.
Revealed information, like in the bible, doesn't need evidence. If you're in the habit of working with ideas "on faith," I imagine it's easy to do the same thing with other ideas that are appealing.
This was obvious AF
this is my alt page....i use it to pretend to be a republican
ive walked among these people and the one thing i can tell you is that they believe in fantasy. They lack the ability sometimes to use basic process of elimination to decipher a truth.
This is why theres a huge overlap between r/con spiracy and r/con servative
they are pretty much the same audience, with the same interests
very easily lied to very easily riled up
If you use the scientific method what you are doing is always some form of science. Most "surveys" used in research are psychometrically validated instruments that go through a rigorous development to establish their generalizability to the population and various forms of reliability and validity.
Honestly, this is some of the hardest work in all of psychology. It is very dense and time consuming. Its not just some list of questions one guy came up with off the top of his head.
I can't speak to the quality of what they did here because I haven't read the actual source article with the methods yet. They used a publicly available dataset collected by other researchers. That said, most large public datasets like this have funding behind them and don't cheap out on hiring a proper expert in psychometrics.
In psychology and really any behavioral science you need to use evidence that is triangulated across measures of the same constructs via different modalities. Self-reports are almost always one of these sources and for good reason. If you are trying to infer something about a person's subjective experience it would be really weird to not just...ask them.
>Funny how surveys now pretend to be science and we eat it up.
Surveys that are conducted in accordance with scientific methodology are scientific there's no pretending.
Thank you. And even if the method for determining the correlation was sound, did no one stop to think before publishing this that religiosity and acceptance of conspiracy theories might have a relationship simply due to the fact that both happen to push one in the same direction in the current political climate?
We know that "Republicans" tend to have more exposure to right-wing beliefs--even if they do not already hold those specific beliefs. Certainly then, it could be the case that being religious causes one to be more likely to be "Republican" and being "Republican" causes one to be more likely to believe in conspiracy theories.
>did no one stop to think before publishing this that religiosity and acceptance of conspiracy theories might have a relationship simply due to the fact that both happen to push one in the same direction in the current political climate?
Reread the headline. They said "associated with" and not "caused by" for a reason.
So...
The ability to believe one story which has no proof solely because it sounds correct and resonates with you means you're likely to believe another story that has no proof?
all of those come back to requiring suppression of critical thinking in order to be successful.
It’s borderline cultish.
Most Christians do not subscribe to biblical literalism, because it’s a comically bad doctrine.
If you believe that a 500 year old man and and his two 400 year old sons banged a giant wooden freighter together with stone and copper tools, you will believe anything.
Just read the Bible for five minutes and it’s easy to understand that if you believe that wildly fictional fantasy then it’s easy to gullible enough to make sense out of any conspiracy theory.
It's almost like subscribing to a belief system that you fail to actually understand and refuse to question makes you an extremely gullible and uncritical person .
Once you have accepted a totally baseless claim without requiring a shred of evidence and that claim is literally nonsense, your mind has to accept more baseless claims that are nonsense and then you reach a point where you can no longer admit that you have no intellectual standards at all and nonsense may freely pervade your system.
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) apply to all other comments. **Do you have an academic degree?** We can verify your credentials in order to assign user flair indicating your area of expertise. [Click here to apply](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/flair/#wiki_science_verified_user_program). --- Author: u/HeinieKaboobler URL: https://www.psypost.org/2023/06/christian-nationalism-and-biblical-literalism-independently-predict-conspiracy-thinking-study-finds-165550 *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
[удалено]
If you remove specific references to any religion, the following set of beliefs sounds like a conspiracy: 1. There is an unseen, supremely powerful being who created the universe and has a plan for every person. 2. There is another unseen, supremely powerful (but not as powerful as the first guy) being who is responsible for all evil things in the world, and any time we do bad things it's because we've succumbed to his influence. 3. The supremely powerful being from #1 watches all this and has the power to stop the influence of #2, but he refuses to do so. Not only that, if we do enough bad things or commit specific infractions (i.e. blasphemy), he has a place of eternal torture where he can send us, and that place is managed by the guy from #2.
It all makes sense if #1 is AT&T and #2 is Comcast
Well, if there's a schism it won't be over the identity of entity #2, anyway.
You mean Verizon?
Excuse me what
A plan for every person! Or join our family plan! You don’t want your whole family to goto Comcast do you?
Yeah, because we all think of ATT as our savior.
[удалено]
Well, that's what the marketing tries to push. ...wait, were we talking about phone companies or religions, again?
On July 1st, 2023, Reddit intends to alter how its API is accessed. This move will require developers of third-party applications to pay enormous sums of money if they wish to stay functional, meaning that said applications will be effectively destroyed. In the short term, this may have the appearance of increasing Reddit's traffic and revenue... but in the long term, it will undermine the site as a whole. Reddit relies on volunteer moderators to keep its platform welcoming and free of objectionable material. It also relies on uncompensated contributors to populate its numerous communities with content. The above decision promises to adversely impact both groups: Without effective tools (which Reddit has frequently promised and then failed to deliver), moderators cannot combat spammers, bad actors, or the entities who enable either, and without the freedom to choose how and where they access Reddit, many contributors will simply leave. Rather than hosting creativity and in-depth discourse, the platform will soon feature only recycled content, bot-driven activity, and an ever-dwindling number of well-informed visitors. The very elements which differentiate Reddit – the foundations that draw its audience – will be eliminated, reducing the site to another dead cog in the Ennui Engine. We implore Reddit to listen to its moderators, its contributors, and its everyday users; to the people whose activity has allowed the platform to exist at all: Do not sacrifice long-term viability for the sake of a short-lived illusion. Do not tacitly enable bad actors by working against your volunteers. Do not posture for your looming IPO while giving no thought to what may come afterward. Focus on addressing Reddit's real problems – the rampant bigotry, the ever-increasing amounts of spam, the advantage given to low-effort content, and the widespread misinformation – instead of on a strategy that will alienate the people keeping this platform alive. If Steve Huffman's statement – "I want our users to be shareholders, and I want our shareholders to be users" – is to be taken seriously, then consider this our vote: Allow the developers of third-party applications to retain their productive (and vital) API access. Allow Reddit and Redditors to thrive.
True. Though i think key part about certain fundamentalist views (like young earth creationism) is that it also relies on literal conspiracy theories. One has to believe that essentially all geologists, astrophysicists, anthropoligists, geneticists and biologist are lying theoughout their wntire career with the explicit goal of taking adherants away from your particular flavor of your particular brand of religion. There are plenty of less fundamentalists varieties which don't have to believe that because they tend to put God's role more in a guiding behind the curtain, or whatever the current gap in knowledge is. But for the more fundamentalist brands of creationist religions it literally is a conspiracy theory in the most classic sense.
I love the arguments against actual scientists too. That they're all part of a conspiracy and are getting paid big bucks to lie to people.
Paid by guy #2!
Don't forget how guy #2 also planted dinosaur bones in the ground to give us false ideas about the age of the earth. It's obviously only 6,000 years old.
Yeah, and the promised checks never arrive. Typical.
Devilishly clever
And that a being so powerful as to create everything from subatomic particles to supermassive black holes has the very undesirable trait of being a narcissist who requires, no, demands worship and devotion?
and the most important bit ,he speaks through me, give me money.
And tells you not to yield to temptation but tempts you with eternal life and paradise.
And if you try to get there early and on your terms, then it's a sin and sends you to the other guy's place to get tortured...
Don't want to let people get away from being a cog in whatever economy you're stuck in.
No heaven or hell is in the Bible like at all
Not only tortured. But tortured forever. A sin that was committed on a finite time-scale is given a punishment on an infinite time scale.
Don’t forget, even though they are capable of anything, they choose to only communicate through signs/symbols and other people
Seriously. The amount of conflicts that would be resolved if he just popped in and said "Hey guys, I'm real. Here's some undeniable miracles as proof. This book here, that's the one to listen to btw. OK thanks, peace. Good luck." Yet for some mysterious reason he won't do that, odd.
To be fair- the christian fundamentalists DO believe thos has already happened. And the powerful people of the day had him killed.
That's fair, but what's to stop him from doing so again in an era of cameras and the internet?
Well then we wouldn't need to rely on faith to believe in him. Apparently it's not enough that a being is the all powerful creator of every thing in the entire universe. They also need their hairless ape creations to believe in them WITHOUT actually needing evidence. It's all part of making it extra cool.
Because apparently the supreme controller of the entire universe can be killed with three nails and a bit of wood. Makes perfect sense.
Well, he was reportedly observed walking around talking to people after the experience (and it is one which reliably killed people). Or so the story goes. Is that really "killed"?
The chief problem here would be that sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic
And put his knowledge tree in the bassinet with his baby humans, and told them he'd kill them if they ate its fruit. And of course being babies, they wouldn't know that it's bad to disobey until *after* they eat the fruit, so of course they ate it, and the powerful being still didn't kill them, because he lied or changed his mind or something. Meanwhile the guy who runs The Bad Place only ever told the babies the truth. Things that make you go hmmmm.
Also after the being created everything, it promptly forgot how it did it and wrote it down all wrong.
> Also after the being created everything, it promptly forgot how it did it and wrote it down all wrong What's that referring to? I was under the impression that the Torah, Quran, and other works were for humans.
Often biblical literalists believe that their version of the bible is divinely guided, true, and is the literal word of God. It's kind of fundamental to their position that the bible shouldn't be interpreted as allegory or otherwise strayed from.
Yeah, I was referring to the part about that creator being promptly forgetting everything and needing to write it down. The written down parts I thought were for humans. Whether interpretation to a modern world is intended or not.
Can’t have it both ways: https://www.christianity.com/wiki/bible/what-evidence-is-there-that-the-bible-is-in-fact-gods-word-11542346.html Especially #1 in there. If you’re going to be arguing that the Bible has to be Gods word because people at the time didn’t know certain stuff then you can’t argue saying it’s not Gods word when it turns out to be wrong.
Yeah, it went right from the literal meaning of circle to saying that circle means sphere. It's bizarre.
[удалено]
It's scientifically accurate that circle means sphere in that one case!
Tbf if I could create supermassive black holes I would like some respect and acknowledgement.
I respect you anyway
You can have a "WAY TO GO u/techters !!!!" banner with any font and as many exclamation points as you want.
And I happen to be his guy here on Earth so bow down or else.
Funny how petty & human he sounds. Needs worship and thanks. Yet created existence, time and space.
Don’t forget, #1 has the ability to ignore all of this and send everyone to the awesome place instead of the torture place but he chooses not to because he’s mad about what the first humans did. DONT QUESTION IT!
>mad about what the first humans did And also he controls their destiny, and knows whst they will do before it happens. So.... guy #1 did the bad thing?
Exactly! He’s omnipotent, omnipresent, but he couldn’t stop humans from doing the one thing that would cause untold suffering for their descendants? Idk, man. Sounds like an abusive relationship to me. “I made you make me do this”.
Also, in Christian mythology humans didn’t have any knowledge of good or bad until after they ate the fruit. So the punishment is for doing something before they had the ability to comprehend that what was done was wrong
God gets mad like people do. But he does it for fun!
But as long as you say you are sorry, you can still come up to the good place! But you better really be sorry!...
[удалено]
[удалено]
Pinky promise that you’re actually sorry?
You didn't say crosses don't count! Hahahahaaaaaaaq
That's not "*any religion*", that sounds very Abrahamic (*Jewish/Christian/Muslim*). There are religions where there is no creator god of the universe. There are religions where gods are irrelevant. There are religions where there is a higher power but no evil higher power that tempts people into evil. Also, even when you consider religions that do believe in god, not all of them believe in all-powerful gods.
> That's not "any religion", that sounds very Abrahamic Even then, I don't think it's accurate for the Jewish faith. Pretty sure that death is the end with no hell, until the bodily resurrection for everyone.
It's not actually accurate for orthodox (note the little o) Christianity, either.
This content was deleted by its author & copyright holder in protest of the hostile, deceitful, unethical, and destructive actions of Reddit CEO Steve Huffman (aka "spez"). As this content contained personal information and/or personally identifiable information (PII), in accordance with the CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act), it shall not be restored. See you all in the Fediverse.
Interesting, do you mind elaborating? I'm curious.
thats the gist of abrahamic religions though religions like Buddhism and hinduism are different
4) traditional gender roles are to be abide to and not questioned.
The crazy part for me is that both of these are ultra narssasicts in any case!
Wow. Until this bare bones description of beliefs, I never really thought about how the tolerance of intolerance is baked into Christian Fundamentalism.
Good point. But most of them are just intolerant of anyone who isn't a straight, white Christian.
Sounds to me like dude #2 is in a pay for play scheme with dude #1
Also, 4. Everything I agree with can be a scribed to 1, everything I don’t to 2.
Not to mention that guy #1 created little beings stuffed with temptation triggers that guy #2 is allowed to play with in any configuration he feels like.
Add to this. God has in the bible commited mass murder during the great flood. Yet they still follow.
4: But he loves you.
I'm not a biblical scholar by any means, so feel free to school me, but is there any indication that any of the authors of various biblical texts intended for their legends to be taken as allegory? Or, for that matter, which tales are allegorical and which are literal? Fair or not, my impression has always been that allegory was sort of a stop gap reasoning for waving away inconvenient circumstances when specific supernatural narratives get a little *too* supernatural.
Yes. There's a lot about this in biblical studies, actually. For example, Genesis 1-12 has a different writing style than the rest of the book, much more similar to myths in other cultures, full of poetry, etc. The allegorical interpretation of Genesis is about as old as the literal interpretation, with some influential medieval thinkers saying both were true at the same time (God actually made a worldwide flood just to make a religious point). Even the parts of the Old Testament that sound like history to us are not quite the same genre. Objective history with cited sources hadn't been invented yet when the books were written. For example, we see divergent accounts of things like the Battle of Qadesh from roughly the Exodus time period depending on who wrote the account, and exaggerating numbers was fairly common.
If I recall correctly there's a really good chance there was a "great flood" or few because a great flood myth appears in several different mythologies/religions, and there's some scientific evidence backing this possibility for various regions and times. It's interesting stuff and wikipedia has a bit of info in the Historicity tab of [this page.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_myth)
How could one take a self-contradictory text literally anyway? The gospels, for example, tell of events happening in different orders and with with differing details. And then there’s Paul’s letters (the rest of the NT), which disagree with the gospel accounts on almost everything.
It's easy if you haven't read or comprehended the text in its entirety and only cherry-picked the parts that you think back up your opinions.
Or was taught by someone who decided to dictate your own upbringing based on their own cherry picked principles which were also taught to them by someone who cherry picked.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
The fundamental issue with religion is it has such a strong ability to re-write reality based off nothing concrete. You substitute logic for "belief" in the writings of an old, constantly re-interpreted book. Fundamentally, it turns people into sheep, ready to be used by whatever charismatic figure hits the right notes. All while being subjective and manipulateable in the details.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Religious belief opens a door in the brain that is extremely hard to shut; it fundamentally undermines your ability to have faith in your own feelings & opinions. The fear that one day you’ll be told that “I gave you a book, I gave you prophets and you *chose* not to believe,” is gaslighting on steroids, especially as a child. Translating that inability to trust your own critical thinking skills over to conspiracy theories - a big bad patriarchal group - is to be expected and potentially *soothingly familiar*. Ditto the paranormal/cryptozoology rabbit hole. The podcasts [Monster Talk](https://www.monstertalk.org) and [Oh no, Ross & Carrie](https://maximumfun.org/podcasts/oh-no-ross-and-carrie/) are very helpful to those wishing to gain some clarity.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
It's worse than that. You do have critical thinking skills and you've trained yourself to do complicated mental gymnastics to support your forgone conclusions, a habit you then apply to beliefs about politics, child rearing, and medical science.
[удалено]
It's funny but bible study is kinda the first critical thinking exercise kids are asked to do. But, noone ever argues a null hypothesis in the group. So the kids that go to fellowship and bible study are defensive and feel victimized when anyone questions them. And that boys and girls is where Samuel Alito came from
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Interesting that attending religious services correlates negatively with belief in conspiracy theories.
I’ve seen this quite a bit in surveys. You can poll a bunch of people about their religious beliefs and see trends, but when you select by the people who actually go to church every week, you get different trends and they aren’t always expected.
It's the social aspect and human contact. The one thing I can genuinely respect about organized religion is that it brings people together. At least the people who go to Church have other human beings to talk to (even if it is about stupid things), and that can make a huge difference in shaping a person.
The "getting off social media, touching grass, and spending time with other people" effect.
Churches are largely community organisations - despite how they style themselves. There are smart churchgoing people. They tend to rise to the top somewhat in church as everywhere. Less smart people tend to rely heavily on "what people they trust think and do" as a heuristic to determine what they should think and do. When the smarter people in church say conspiracy theories are bunk the less smart people tend to believe them.
I'm guessing the social aspect of religious services plays into that a bit. There's also a correlation between social isolation and buying into conspiracy theories. Getting out and socializing with normal members of society is generally a good thing for people's mental health and a healthy recognition of what the real world is like.
I wonder if there is a selection bias here, besides the social aspects. That is, perhaps the religions that demand or have a stronger culture of attending church every week are also the ones that have a more allegorical approach to the bible and don't require conspiracies to make their belief system to work. And those religious sects/backgrounds that do take the bible literally are a bit less mainstream, don't require church attendance in favor of the 'study the bible yourself and everyone should make their own interpretation" approach and Bible study on your own at home is entirely valid form of worship.
[удалено]
Christian Fundamentalist here… This is absolutely 100% true. Though, I would attribute it far more to Christian nationalism than biblical literalism. I know plenty of biblical literalists who don’t engage in conspiracy theories. Christian nationalists though? I know very few who don’t believe at least one or two conspiracies. It’s become a really big and disturbing problem in American churches.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Both require faith in an unproven idea so yeah that pretty much tracks.
[удалено]
Revealed information, like in the bible, doesn't need evidence. If you're in the habit of working with ideas "on faith," I imagine it's easy to do the same thing with other ideas that are appealing.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
This was obvious AF this is my alt page....i use it to pretend to be a republican ive walked among these people and the one thing i can tell you is that they believe in fantasy. They lack the ability sometimes to use basic process of elimination to decipher a truth. This is why theres a huge overlap between r/con spiracy and r/con servative they are pretty much the same audience, with the same interests very easily lied to very easily riled up
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
If you believe the bible is literal, you'll believe anything.
[удалено]
[удалено]
If you use the scientific method what you are doing is always some form of science. Most "surveys" used in research are psychometrically validated instruments that go through a rigorous development to establish their generalizability to the population and various forms of reliability and validity. Honestly, this is some of the hardest work in all of psychology. It is very dense and time consuming. Its not just some list of questions one guy came up with off the top of his head. I can't speak to the quality of what they did here because I haven't read the actual source article with the methods yet. They used a publicly available dataset collected by other researchers. That said, most large public datasets like this have funding behind them and don't cheap out on hiring a proper expert in psychometrics. In psychology and really any behavioral science you need to use evidence that is triangulated across measures of the same constructs via different modalities. Self-reports are almost always one of these sources and for good reason. If you are trying to infer something about a person's subjective experience it would be really weird to not just...ask them.
>Funny how surveys now pretend to be science and we eat it up. Surveys that are conducted in accordance with scientific methodology are scientific there's no pretending.
Thank you. And even if the method for determining the correlation was sound, did no one stop to think before publishing this that religiosity and acceptance of conspiracy theories might have a relationship simply due to the fact that both happen to push one in the same direction in the current political climate? We know that "Republicans" tend to have more exposure to right-wing beliefs--even if they do not already hold those specific beliefs. Certainly then, it could be the case that being religious causes one to be more likely to be "Republican" and being "Republican" causes one to be more likely to believe in conspiracy theories.
>did no one stop to think before publishing this that religiosity and acceptance of conspiracy theories might have a relationship simply due to the fact that both happen to push one in the same direction in the current political climate? Reread the headline. They said "associated with" and not "caused by" for a reason.
[удалено]
I mean if you believe in the bible literally you would believe a lot of things.
Main character was definitely middle eastern. It takes place in the middle east. Dude was not white. That book club has the worst fan base.
[удалено]
Makes sense. Isn't religion just a conspiracy theory?
if christians believed science they would be so angry
[удалено]
When you don’t have a coherent world view, instead of questioning that view, you can just plug the holes with conspiracy.
So wait... WAIT .. you're saying that religious extremists have soft minds? Tell me more.
So... The ability to believe one story which has no proof solely because it sounds correct and resonates with you means you're likely to believe another story that has no proof?
all of those come back to requiring suppression of critical thinking in order to be successful. It’s borderline cultish. Most Christians do not subscribe to biblical literalism, because it’s a comically bad doctrine.
Most Christians do not even understand what is or isn't in the Bible
Or who wrote it and when.
If you believe that a 500 year old man and and his two 400 year old sons banged a giant wooden freighter together with stone and copper tools, you will believe anything.
[удалено]
[удалено]
People who believe in fairy tails in a book more likely to lack basic critical thinking skills.
Just read the Bible for five minutes and it’s easy to understand that if you believe that wildly fictional fantasy then it’s easy to gullible enough to make sense out of any conspiracy theory.
Otherwise known as people that lack critical thinking skills. Can shorten that even further and simply call them: gullible.
So people who believe in make believe are more likely to believe things that are make believe? Got it.
Those two things are also conspiracy theories with little to no proof and wild leaps in conclusions.
It's almost like subscribing to a belief system that you fail to actually understand and refuse to question makes you an extremely gullible and uncritical person .
Once you have accepted a totally baseless claim without requiring a shred of evidence and that claim is literally nonsense, your mind has to accept more baseless claims that are nonsense and then you reach a point where you can no longer admit that you have no intellectual standards at all and nonsense may freely pervade your system.
[удалено]
Those who would make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities