... and while religiosity in most sane countries has been declining for decades, in the US it's become a mindless infestation growing like an out of control tumor.
It's gotten so pervasive that the numbers are starting to correlate with some of the most primitive societies on the planet. Not that "primitive" is necessarily bad, given that we're allegedly "advanced," but in this context primitive means religiosity in the 80 to 90 percent range. We're not quite there yet, but give it time, give pop culture a bit longer to rot the next generation's brains, and we'll hit that 80 percent mark, I'm sure.
Current studies say about 30 percent of Americans self-identify as evangelicals (code for "fundie loon"). That means next time you go to the store, roughly three in 10 of your fellow shoppers will be religiously insane. That's also right around Bush's baseline approval rating, give or take a couple of points. Coincidence?
A
2003 University of Michigan study concludes that:
About 46 percent of American adults attend church at least once a week, not counting weddings, funerals and christenings, compared with 14 percent of adults in Great Britain, 8 percent in France, 7 percent in Sweden and 4 percent in Japan.
“While traditional religious belief and participation in organized religion have steadily declined in most advanced industrial nations, especially in Western Europe, this is not the case in the United States,” said Ronald F. Inglehart, a researcher at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR), and director of the ISR World Values Surveys, which were conducted in more than 80 nations between 1981 and 2001.
Some possible reasons cited for the results: Religious refugees set the tone long ago in America; religious people tend to have more children than non-religious groups; and the U.S. has a less comprehensive social welfare system, prompting people to look to religion for help.
In other words, if you live in America v2.0, gawd help you because nobody else will.
And why does this expansion of religiosity in the US make me crazy? Glad you asked...
It's because I hate irrational belief systems being pushed as science. I hate smarmy, self-satisfied little shits who consign me to hell because I'm not into their gawd game. I hate pests who come to my house to push fairy tales. I hate idiots who think that gawd gave humans the earth to rape, trash, exploit and ultimately destroy because the bible tells them it's OK. I hate simpletons who consign all the vagaries of life to "gawd's will" and therefore exempt themselves from the consequences of their own actions.
I hate morons who believe the fossil record was put here by gawd to test their faith. I hate mean bastards who subscribe to the systematized oppression and demonization of any group that doesn't look, behave and believe exactly as they do. I hate rubes who venerate a dull-witted fool such as George W. Bush. I hate loud, obnoxious, rude, intrusive, superior dimwits who intone biblical passages as if they were five-year-olds reciting nursery rhymes.
I hate binary imbeciles who see everything in black and white, good and evil, heaven and hell, us and them. I hate vengeful misogynists who believe life begins at conception and ends at birth. I hate pro-life murderers. These people are no more christian than I am a sheet of plywood.
My biases aren't limited to fundies, btw. I'm an equal opportunity tormentor of frauds, phonies, hucksters, pimps for the lord, hypocrites and other such revolting excuses for humanity. It's just that the wacky world of fundie land seems to attract an inordinate number of these creeps, and so for once the generalization fits the movement like a pair of custom-made shoes.
wp
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