Can Religion Explain Why Americans Are So Easily Duped by Fake News?

[Voltaire2]

Novelist and journalist Kurt Andersen offers a compelling theory.

...
As Protestant Christians became more extreme, the Republican Party was similarly becoming more extreme.

“So, one thing that has happened, and one thing that has led the Republican Party to fantasy and wishful untruth more and more into its approach to policy…are now in the Republican mainstream,” Andersen argued.

Falsehoods like President Barack Obama is a secret Muslim or climate change is a Chinese hoax are all issues that are easy to believe if “fantasy and wishful untruths” are the norm. That makes it easier to accept conspiracy theories or fake news.

Anderson explained that he doesn’t care if people believe what they want to believe in private. However, when religious belief “bleeds over into how we manage and construct our economy and our society,” there’s a problem that will cause lasting trouble for the country.

...

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/can-religion-explain-why-americans-are-so-easily-duped-fake-news

[Downtown Hound]

1. It's not all of it, but it is a big part

Another problem is just the fact that we have a really crappy education system. Trump's biggest source of support comes from people without college degrees.

[Voltaire2]

3. I think those of us watching the debates in 2008 witnessed the turning point.

Republican presidential candidates had been given their marching orders, every one of them flipped over into climate denial and overt homophobia, and repeal of roe v wade, and it was all a deliberate strategy of pandering to the "religious vote". It marked the point in time where one party decided that grounding itself in reality was not important. And in doing so they let lose a demon of irrationality that had been carefully bottled up since the last time irrational authoritarianism ran rampant in the world.

[pandr32]

27. Yes, it was ugly to witness

The Republican debates were ridiculously simplistic. Nothing of real merit or consisting of facts was even debated...that is, after Rubio declared Clinton qualified. It got to to a hand size argument after that. Ugly!

[walkingman]

32. I agree that religion and an undereducated population is part of the problem but

there are a lot of highly educated people that simply believe that the government is the problem and think that the only place for government is military. Compassion and empathy are natural but they have to be nurtured. When you grow up in a void where only white privilege matters then you get the type of society we now find ourselves.

[SWBTATTReg]

2. And the founders of our country firmly believed in ...

separation of power between the major branches of government, and freedom of religion. To prevent the same kind of religious dogma that plagued Europe (where most of our immigrants came from).

[trotsky]

4. There is a frame of mind when it comes to a lot of religion.

It's not just having faith despite a lack of evidence, it's about having faith IN SPITE OF evidence. That's where the dangerous stuff kicks in.

[Bradshaw3]

28. Great point

And it goes to the level of how our brains function. In for a penny on religion, in for a pound on everything else that fits in with their tribal beliefs.

[msongs]

5. god ripped a rib out of adam and made eve, they both lived some 900 years and

all their sons and daughters interbred (what's the word for that sort of thing)

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

6. It's not religion per se so much as the politicization of the evangelical right wing.

The fact that so many people have been duped by "fake news" probably has more to do with the ability of social media to encourage people to select and rely on information that coincides with what they already believe, and to avoid or ignore any information that does not. If you rely only on the bubble created by your own Facebook feed, Fox News, Breitbart and maybe Alex Jones, all of which reinforce each other in an endless feedback loop, you will believe all manner of crap, regardless of your religious inclinations. That many, though not all, evangelicals get their "news" from right-wing outlets has more to do with the fact that, starting some 35 years ago, right-wing politicians discovered that they could easily influence and recruit evangelical Protestants. They did this by co-opting the Catholics' opposition to abortion, and they moved in with other conservative issues. Once the Internet and social media became a thing, they were ripe for the right wing's fake news and conspiracy theories. However, fake news is eagerly consumed by non-religious right-wingers as well.

[Voltaire2]

7. hard to separate that into two distinct things.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

8. Except for the fact that the enthusiastic consumption of fake news

also occurs among right-wingers who are not religious. And fake news is sometimes foisted off on and believed by those on the left as well (we even see it from time to time on DU). It has more to do with people's confirmation biases than anything else. Some people's confirmation biases are influenced by or arise from their religious beliefs, but this is not by any means true in all cases.

[Voltaire2]

13. Not too sure about that.

Most of the non evangelicals also seem to claim Jesus as their gods.

There are obviously some non religious on the right, but if you look at the pew data, not very many.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

20. The "godless" left isn't immune to fake news, either,

although that sort of foolishness is more likely to involve pseudoscientific fads than politics. There's homeopathy, fad diets, crystals, freaking out over GMO foods, anti-vax claims, etc., and many other things that are believed to be effective despite scientific proof that they are not. There are many reasons why people believe things that are not true; religion is just one of them.

[MineralMan]

9. Hmm...

Well, I suppose if you can believe some of the things in the Bible, you can believe almost anything at all. Maybe literal belief in the Bible, which is common among the Religious Right, helps them believe almost anything that is written down that appeals to them.

I don't know, of course, but it seems that way to me.

People turning into pillars of salt, the Red Sea parting, the Universe spoken into existence and everything created in a week? I don't know. I can't believe that, but then again, I don't believe everything I see in print, either.

Kurt Andersen may be on to something there...

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

10. The problem with this argument is that if religion in general predisposes one to

believe in fake news, Fox News and Breitbart would be the media of choice of the 80% of the population who identify as religious in some way, but this obviously is not true. There are many liberal Christians (I know a whole bunch of them) who, although they claim to believe at least the basic tenets of the Nicene Creed, if not the parting of the Red Sea, are as outraged by the nonsense spewed by Fox and its ilk as you or I. As I said in my other posts, it seems to have more to do with reinforcing one's existing beliefs, which in some cases, but by no means all, might originate with their churches' politicization. As weird as some religious beliefs may be, believing Jesus was the son of God does not automatically predispose one to believe Hillary Clinton was running a child prostitution ring out of the basement of a pizza parlor.

[MineralMan]

12. Yes. I see what you're saying.

However, I was referring to that subset of Christianity that appears to support right-wing causes. They're often also Bible literalists.

[guillaumeb]

14. Excellent arguments.

[trotsky]

15. Do you have actual stats?

I mean you no doubt know a lot of liberal Christians, but do you know enough of them to make a significant statistical data point?

Being conditioned to believe in something without facts, or IN SPITE OF facts, is certainly a factor in Trump worship, no doubt.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

16. No, I don't keep statistics about my friends.

I just know a lot of liberal Christians (mostly Lutheran and Episcopalian), all of whom loathe Trump, don't believe a word coming out of Fox News, and are disgusted by fake news in general. I don't agree that having religious beliefs (i.e., beliefs supported only by faith and not by objective facts) necessarily predisposes one to believe anything, no matter how ridiculous, and here's why:

First, a person's religious beliefs are specific and defined. Christians' statement of faith is found in the Nicene Creed: among other things, there is one omnipotent god who created everything; that Jesus was his son, born of a virgin, who died for our sins and was resurrected after three days and ascended into heaven. Obviously there is no proof of any of this; Christians accept it as a matter of faith. You might think it's absurd to believe any of this stuff, because it can't be proved - and maybe so. But the point is that to accept these things as true is to acknowledge that they are unprovable, and therefore require faith. This defines how a person identifies as Christian. I identify as agnostic, so I am not arguing in favor of Christianity or any religion. However, it seems to me that if a person is willing to accept certain specific unprovable beliefs as defining their faith, they are implicitly rejecting other unprovable beliefs. Believing Jesus rose from the dead doesn't also lead to believing in reincarnation, for example, because reincarnation isn't an element of Christian theology.

Second, and maybe more importantly, those who accept items of "fake news" actually do believe that there are objective facts proving those items. They aren't just accepting any of it as a matter of faith, as with religion. It's all objectively true. We are inclined to believe what we hear on MSNBC or CNN, even though we can't individually and directly prove any of it; likewise, Trumpists believe that what they hear on Fox News or read what's generated by Russian bots on Facebook is provably and demonstrably true. That there is a deep state trying to undermine Trump's presidency isn't magic or supernatural; it's true. That the FBI is controlled by Democrats is true because the reliable people on Fox News say so. Essentially, Trumpists aren't making a leap of faith like the believers in a religion.

[trotsky]

17. "born of a virgin"

This is physiologically impossible for a human being.

If someone believes that, they have faith IN SPITE OF evidence.

I don't think what's a particularly good example for your argument, IMO.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

18. Whether virgin birth is impossible depends on whether

you mean fertilization without intercourse (which actually is possible, though rare, but does involve egg and sperm getting together), or parthenogenesis, which is reproduction without fertilization, which occurs in a number of animal species. Jesus, I assume, would have been the product of the first circumstance and not the second. But I think you are missing my point: Almost all religions are based on faith in spite of evidence. Legends of virgin birth are not unique to Christianity, but those legends exist because the person said to have been created in that way was believed to be divine - because virgin birth is normally not possible. An ordinary person has to be conceived in the usual way, but not a god. That's where the whole concept of faith comes in - it's believing in something that wouldn't be possible in the normal course of things. That's what a lot of religion is.

[trotsky]

19. "Almost all religions are based on faith in spite of evidence."

That's your point? That's also my point. What a happy coincidence!

I'm glad that some believers can compartmentalize and accept when evidence overrules certain beliefs. That's wonderful.

But having a system that depends on believing IN SPITE OF evidence is a bad thing. Very bad.

[TreasonousBastard]

38. You have hit on something that many peple don't get-- "faith" requires the impossible...

or it has almost no point.

And faith is not limited to religion. Just look at most advertising.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

39. Exactly. If it's something that has a scientific explanation,

it's not special; it needs to be something that can't be explained. It doesn't matter whether I believe in gravity because it's there anyhow and if I jump off the roof I'll fall and bust my butt regardless. I can proclaim my faith in acorns turning into oak trees, which is a cool thing but entirely explainable, so, meh. But if you believe, based on faith alone, that some guy rose from the dead after three days even though that can't happen, well, that's the whole point of Christianity. You don't have to believe it (I don't), but the belief in the impossible is more or less what separates religion from philosophy.

[AtheistCrusader]

21. Wrong. 80% of the country doesn't train their children to believe in religion.

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-28537149

Evangelicals do, to a much greater extent than most. There is a STRONG correlation between political identity and religion in the US, that backs this up.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

23. If you are talking about evangelical/fundamentalist Christianity,

there is definitely a correlation. But while about 70% of all Americans identify as some sort of Christian, only about 25% identify as evangelical. http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/ Throw in some anti-abortion Catholics and you have a number that gets closer to the percentage that are hard-core Trumpers (some of those aren't religious but are just hard-core racist). So I'm not suggesting that that there's no relationship between religion and Trumpery; just that it's mainly the evangelicals that tend that way.

[Voltaire2]

26. nope not just evangelicals.

http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/political-ideology/#political-ideology-by-importance-of-religion

The charts on that page are pretty consistent. The more religious a person is, the more conservative they are.

[AtheistCrusader]

29. But the gullibleness issue in the OP for the fake news, is a sliding scale. More prone to, etc.

Which makes sense through the lens of which media outlets said political/religious divides view the world through.

It's not perfect, it's not absolute, but it does speak to that unshakeable core base support he has.

[Voltaire2]

22. what is the preferred news source of people who identify as very religious?

I have no idea, do you?

The claim is not everyone who is religious watches fox news, nor is the claim that everyone who is at all religious also consumes and believes fake new, nor is the claim that only highly religious people are fake news deluded, so you are making a straw man argument.

His point is that we have a political party that is pandering to its highly religious voter base, and in doing so they have reinforced the delusional beliefs of that base and dragged a large group of regular republican voters along with them, detaching somewhere around 35% of the population from reality.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

24. I don't disagree that Trump is pandering to a certain faction of religious people,

specifically evangelical Christians. But there are a lot of other people who are sincerely religious in some way but who are not Trumpsters and are not part of his targeted base.

[Voltaire2]

25. this started long before Trump.

yes of course there are exceptions. Anderson is not making categorical claims: "all 'sincere' believers are X". He is discussing what has happened over the last dozen years or so that has resulted in this large cohort of people who are clearly divorced from reality.

[ollie10]

31. Not all very religious people are the same

The Pope is radically different from Falwell, for example.

Very easy to over-generalize.

[Voltaire2]

35. Who said they were?

And actually Bergoglio and Falwell agree on many issues, like for example LGBT rights, abortion, and the inferior status of women.

[ollie10]

40. Predictable response

You had seemed to make the point that it was the intensity of the religious beliefs that was the big deal....when that is not the issue at all. The issue is what they believe, not how strong.

Yawn....

[Voltaire2]

43. It is simply a fact that high religiosity

Correlates with right wing political views. But the posted article was not specifically using that fact, it was discussing how we got to the point where a third of the population is so divorced from reality.

My response to you regarding Bergoglio and Falwell is accurate no matter how much you sneer at it.

[gibraltar72]

11. As a recovering eveangelical

I would say they want to be told what to do. They don't like to think about real things. Imaginary fairy tales soothe them. If someone tells them something that sorta sounds like it could be sorta true if you don't do any critical thinking they're all in.

[ollie10]

30. Trump is not religious.

Just sayin'.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

33. He clearly couldn't care less about religion and knows nothing about it,

but he's managed to dupe a lot of the fundies into believing he's a God-fearing man who loves Jesus. This is an orchestrated fraud, of course; but almost everything about Trump is a fraud.

[ollie10]

34. Yes

A fraudulent bastard

[Voltaire2]

36. He claims he is.

As “religious” is entirely a self reported state he is just as entitled to the label as anyone else making that claim.

[ollie10]

41. Oh please.

He doesn't attend church. He breaks all the commandments with reckless abandon. He never asks for forgiveness. He put money in the holy communion plate. When he dies his words to god will be you can leave now, I am here.....go shine my shoes......

Plus which he is a racist, which is antithetical to a creator, not to mention a follower of god would logically be an environmentalist

He is religious and I am Mr Universe

[Voltaire2]

42. So he isnt your sort of religious person.

But my point remains valid.

[ollie10]

44. your point is he is religious?

[Voltaire2]

48. My point is that there is no good way to

determine “religiousity” other than self reporting.

[ollie10]

52. So if trump says he is religious...

...you buy into that?

[Voltaire2]

57. again - there is no objective measure of "religiosity".

If somebody claims there are religious, you can of course decide that they don't meet your definition of how a religious person should behave, but that is just your subjective belief of what is proper.

[Pope George Ringo II]

45. I would point out that religion emphatically does not logically lead to environmentalism

There's a school of thought that man has divine right to do as he pleases with the environment, and that man's actions can't possibly screw up what their god has set in motion. In the Colonial and early national period, there was a name for the belief that their god had given them this new world with limitless resources for them to exploit which eludes me at the moment, something "Bounty." Watch the global warming deniers go on about how man's actions are too insignificant to cause temperature change in their god's plans for a more modern example.

And I'd also point out that "God's Chosen People" is a concept embedded into at least one religion, which is basically a racial hierarchy of divine favor on its face. That's a pretty solid example suggesting that belief in a creator is quite compatible with racism. The "Mark of Cain" and the "Curse of Ham" have a spectacularly poor track record on the subject, too.

I do tend to believe Trump is about as religious as Christopher Hitchens and is just playing believers for fools, but that's another question.

[ollie10]

53. I said logic

If you believe god created world and god said it is good, the how could you destroy god's creation?

[Pope George Ringo II]

55. I'll be the first to admit that logic has nothing to do with religion.

But the plain fact of the matter is that millions of people have believed and continue to believe that their god put this planet here for them to exploit. It's how they have chosen to interpret Genesis 1:26: Everything is here for man's use. Their interpretation is different than yours, but it's certainly no less religious.

[ollie10]

54. If god created us in his image....

And he created us with different races. And his son was not white...and he taught us to love...then racisn is not only a sin, it is blasphemy

[Pope George Ringo II]

56. That whole "different race" thing gets a little fuzzy in some situations.

For example, if you go with the whole "god populated the world from one incestuous family--twice" thing. Why, then it's obvious the brown people didn't start out that way and bear the aforementioned marks and curses precisely because they're worse and deserve the reproach of their fellow man.

I may be mocking them, but I'm not substantially mis-stating what millions of theists have done.

[Voltaire2]

58. The god of racists created WHITE people in his image.

Your interpretation of the fairy tales in the bible are valid for you, you do not get to impose them on others, nor are your interpretations somehow more valid than others.

[ollie10]

59. Oh please. Fairy tale? Just shows your lack

Of respect. When you regain respect we can continue. But until you stop acting like a evangelical I won't respond to you. Why bother?your mind is judgemental and closed like a stwel trap

[Mariana]

60. I have the same question as Voltaire2.

Racist Christians interpret the Bible differently than you do. Homophobic Christians interpret the Bible differently than you do. Misogynist Christians interpret the Bible differently than you do. And so on. It is undeniable that the Bible contains passages that support their interpretations. How can we objectively determine that you're right and they're wrong?

[ollie10]

63. Lots of interpretations of religion

Some arrogant people call it a fairy tale. Others have respect and are not condescending

[Mariana]

65. I didn't call it a fairy tale.

How can we objectively determine that you're right and they're wrong?

[ollie10]

67. And I didn't say you did.

Some people. ..such as evangelicals and others think that those who do not share their views are sinners or followers of fairy tales. Opposite sides of the very same coin. I wish people could discuss religion without the need to feel superior ir arrogant.

[Pope George Ringo II]

66. You'll have to forgive us

Not to point fingers at any particular posters, but we're used to some of the site's self-identified christians screaming quite vociferously at every opportunity that nothing in their mythology is to be taken as meaning anything even remotely resembling what it actually says. Literalism is something of a running joke at this point, frankly. To be fair, one of these purported christians does the same thing with the dictionary, but I digress. It's something of a novelty to find a christian who actually wants his bible taken seriously, and we're a little rusty on how to handle it.

[ollie10]

68. Thanks and peace

[Voltaire2]

61. Oh Lordy, you think the stories in the bible

are literally true?

[ollie10]

62. Didn't say that. Bye

[Voltaire2]

64. Ok so stories about fantastic and magical

creatures and events are generally myths fairytales and legends. Just not the ones in your holy book?

[Pope George Ringo II]

46. Almost universally true

But Trump lies so compulsively I've just started assuming he's lying about everything. He's kind of the exception which proves the rule.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

49. Not exactly. Of course you can "self-report" as a believer in some religion,

and nobody is going to be able to read your mind as to whether that belief is sincere. However, many religions also mandate certain actions or behaviors, and the sincerity, at least, of a person's claims of belief can often be derived from their behavior. If, for example, someone claims to be a devout orthodox Jew but is often observed wolfing down meals consisting of cheeseburgers and milkshakes and partying hearty after sundown on Friday nights, you'd be justified in questioning that person's claim. In Trump's case, he has self-reported as Christian since he got into politics (but not before), but he never attends Sunday church services, doesn't seem to know the first thing about even the most basic Sunday School material, has committed adultery openly and often, and generally behaves in a way that's inconsistent with many Christian teachings about personal behavior. He can call himself whatever he wants, but observers are certainly free to doubt his sincerity.

Of course, a lot of other self-identified Christians behave in a manner that their own religion would mandate that they should take the express elevator to Hell. I get to doubt their sincerity too.

[Pope George Ringo II]

50. True, but only to a point

At some point, regularly eating at Red Lobster while wearing blended fabric underwear is not a disqualifier.

[TreasonousBastard]

37. I have a better one-- evolution is not complete...

We have in our brains the amygdala, which does a lot of things, not the least of which is to control the "fight or flight" response and give us good, and not so good, reasons for fear.

Every living thing, when it sees a form or shadow, has milliseconds to decide if that thing is food, a possible reproduction partner, or sees itself as food. That it may be none of the above is irrelevant to the current needs or dangers. The amygdala evolved to help with this decision.

The default would tend to be fear, since mistaking danger for food or sex has dire consequences. Curiously, the amygdala also has a lot to do with pleasure reactions for those times the more logical parts of the brain decide that food or sex is the way to go.

Religion feeds both sides of the amygdala-- fear of God and pleasure in being one of his chosen. Politics does the same thing on a gut level, and feeds even more on the fear. We love a good meal, a pleasant day on the beach, good sex, cuddling with our lovers, kitten videos and all sorts of other fun things. We also love the feeling of accomplishment.

But, nobody ever based a religion or political campaign on the love of puppies. They base it on fear-- fear of going to hell, fear of the people on the other side of the border, fear of being attacked by the "bad people".

Reducing the amygdala to a lesser function seems to be a goal of evolution, but we are not there yet.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

47. This recent DU thread is a fine example of faith vs. evidence.

However, it's not faith in a religious belief but in a medical conspiracy theory. https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=10211558 Point is, you don't necessarily have to be religious to get sucked in by unprovable nonsense.

[cilla4progress]

51. Fundamentalist religion sets us up for

brainwashing.

Is brainwashing evolutionarily functional? If the loudest strongest voice in the tribe convinces the community that their survival is at peril if they don’t follow him/her (pending danger), does it serve them to suspend critical thinking and submit?

Perhaps this is the function.

OTOH there are dead branches on the human evolutionary tree..some of which rightfully deserve to be pruned!

[Iggo]

69. No.

But to be fair, religion can't really explain anything.