popeye1945 wrote: ↑February 7th, 2021, 10:23 am
Pattern Chaser, You don't feel you can reasonably comment that's fine with me. Doesn't seem to hold you back from judging my point of view. They are still fighting to establish creationism into the science classes in the states. Something like forty eight percent of the population believes the world is six thousand years old. Sit on the fence if you like, you won't have much flak coming your way there.
If I have unreasonably judged your point of view, I'm sorry. An understanding of human culture, motivations, beliefs, and the like, is a Very Big Thing. It's a Big Thing I don't have to any extent, beyond the everyday understanding that most of us have. So I hesitate to make any definite assertions about it; I could easily and unknowingly be wrong. And yet, even with my own imperfect understanding, I can see that simply blaming Christianity is not a complete picture. So that's what I posted. I wish I knew and understood more, so that I could post useful and correct words about all kinds of things; I suppose we'd all like that. But this is the real world.
As for what you say above, I think Americans are unusual in this respect. And they are only 331,002,651 (i.e. about 4%) of the 7,844,318,507 people in the world (and only 73.7% of them are Christian, and not
all of them are as extreme as you describe). Even the most extreme religious zealots would not normally go as far as the Americans you describe, and I refer to all religions, not just the Roman Catholic part of American Christianity. I was born and raised a Roman Catholic in the UK, a Western 'democracy' like the US. And the attitudes they taught me, although hidebound and antiquated, are very different from those you (correctly) ascribe to US Christians.
I remain a religious believer, but my beliefs and values differ hugely from those I was raised with. I wholeheartedly agree with your doubts about the beliefs of US Christians, but I don't think it's fair to blame them for attitudes that have a lot to do with politics, US culture, and maybe many other things too. Is that fair, and not too judgemental? I hope so.