When discussing the environment, liberals are both overly dogmatic and use “low effort thinking” in a manner comparable to the effects of strong religious belief according to a new psychology study.
The study, led by University of Montana researchers and published in the peer-reviewed journal Political Psychology, asked 475 college students who identified as liberal to complete a traditional survey or an amended survey that repeatedly referenced religion and the environment.
Researchers determined liberals have a pronounced tendency to use extremely simplistic arguments and refuse to grant legitimacy to any opposing viewpoints when discussing the environment. The study found liberals “think less” about the environment and act emotionally, not logically, on such issues.
Previous studies progressives love to cite have long claimed that “low effort thinking promotes political conservatism,” but these studies did not attempt to distinguish between different topics and were mostly based around religious questions like gay marriage or abortion. This new study, however, found that liberal thinking is”not more complex in general, but rather only more complex on certain topic domains (while conservatives are more complex in other domains.)”
Many conservatives have long claimed that environmentalism “remaps” existing religious beliefs for liberals. The late global warming skeptic Michael Crichton wrote back in 2003 that environmentalism has “an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there’s a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability.”
Now, there’s scientific evidence to support that belief.
Even environmentalists are admitting that their movement has”become a religion, and religions don’t worry too much about facts” said Doctor James Lovelock, a formerly prominent environmentalist who created the Gaia hypothesis, to The Guardian.
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