The Dark Rigidity of Fundamentalist Rural America

I assume you believe you are educated, yet you failed to actually read and address my post. I did not equate farmer and baker to rural Americans, I asked "What does "educated" mean?" and listed various disparate skills as examples. But you did reveal your incredible prejudice and ignorance of rural America.

 

The French have a good word for people like Random: "catégorique."

"Totally", "completely," "of any kind," "every aspect ..."

Maybe he be trollin' ....

 

How many discussions have you had with southern black Americans about the "white Christian god"? I am going to go out on a limb and say "none".

 

If anything, multiple creation myths telling a similar story indicates that something of the like actually happened. It's detective work 101. If you interview 20 people who said somewhere along the lines of the red car ran the light and hit the blue car, then it's reasonable to conclude that indeed, the red car ran into the blue car. Especially if physical evidence indicates such.

 

Are you really saying that ancient idiots' ideas about how things came to be are more accurate than modern man's?

 

Yes. I was bothered by the prevalence of flood myths in different societies until it occurred to me that they may have all been referring to the same flood. The forefathers of 10 different peoples had possibly just migrated over thousands of years to different points on the globe, all of them having started from the same place.

Virgin births (commonly confused with the Immaculate Conception) are harder to explain.

 

we know the earth is much older than 6,000 years.

Obviously, there have been people named adam and eve throughout the ages. But, we know "THE" adam and eve did not exist, because we know humans were not fully formed creatures. We have evolved over hundreds of thousands of years.

 

There was no Noah flood as described in the Bible. It's simply a war story, probably about the Egyptian invasion that extended to the Euphrates River.

 

If you were 'educated', you'd know that they resist your efforts because they've never known anything else but their faith. For them, Jesus is literally their parents and their childhood. So you're effectively trying to destroy family and life as they know it.

You'd also understand that they mean well, but don't have the courage to 'try harder'.

 

Stereotyping, are we?

An open minded and experienced person would know that Christians do not go strictly from the barn to the church and then back home.

I wonder if you actually know very many.

 

I have hundreds of conversations with these nutters but, it is not really required when one can youtube conferences like this ... "God hates gays so we should kill them" conference.

 

You're obviously seeking out the nutters, then, which aren't representative of the Christian community. And we must wonder why you would have "hundreds" of conversations with ignoramuses. Or whether you have had hundreds at all. Don't you have a job?

When I oversaw a center at my former (evangelical) institution, Gordon College in Wenham, Mass., our lecture series included the well-known atheist Bart Ehrman as well as Cornel West, John Kerry and Susannah Heschel — hardly icons of the right. We also regularly hosted Catholic, Orthodox, Jewish and Muslim speakers. Charity begins by hearing what another is actually saying, not encountering it secondhand in caricature.

https://thewayofimprovement.com/2017/02/15/political-diversity-at-christian-colleges/

 

Yes. Because I understand the mechanics of religious belief. It's a simple machine, and does indeed colour entire lives when indoctrinated in childhood.

 

That's a very shallow understanding, ignoring both: 1) the many who abandon religion when they leave their religious homes; and 2) the many who are raised atheist and then come to embrace religion.

Check out Justin Martyr, one of the more famous if this second group.

Your education is unfinished.

 

I'm referring to people 'raised in the faith', who retain the faith. That is, after all, who the OP was referring to, was it not?

 

Justin Martyr was born at Flavia Neapolis (today Nablus) in Samaria into a pagan family, and defined himself as a Gentile. His grandfather, Bacchius, had a Greek name, while his father, Priscus, bore a Latin name, which has led to speculations that his ancestors may have settled in Neapolis soon after its establishment or that they were descended from a Roman "diplomatic" community that had been sent there.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Martyr

 

I know you're referring to them and you're either ignoring or understating the fact that half of American Catholics, just for example, "raised in the faith", have lapsed (and only 11% return).

Lost the source for the above, sorry, but it's from the Smithsonian. Catholic indoctrination is as intense as any, more than most.

On edit, here it is:

I'll look for stats on lapsed Protestants. This "fundamentalist" label is useless, as there a whole spectrum of faith in every church

 

That is a true statement about humanity, and is not restricted to any religion. The biggest murderers in the 20th century were not religious but atheist - Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot. And all of those were highly educated.

Yes, you will say "But the crusades.....". Setting aside the actual motivation for all the Crusades, the Crusades lasted for almost 200 years and the total related death toll (all causes, civilian and military) was 1-3 million. Not even a close comparison to the 4 atheist educated 20th century murderers I listed.

 

Isn't this thread about religious people?

 

You misrepresented my post as being characteristic of all Christians. I did not say this. The topic is discussion of a certain segment of Christianity. While you seek to minimize .. this segment represents a significant number of Christians on the far religious right.

Three Presidential nominees actually spoke at this conference - or did you miss that part ?

This is messed up and should be called out for what it is as these people make a mockery out of Christianity.

 

LOL, sure, you don't say that with malice, you just love rural Americans just like you love a little puppy dog - as long as it obeys you and doesn't cause any trouble for you, as soon as it pees on your rug you throw the filthy beast outside with a curse and slam the door. Just like that puppy, as soon as "rural America" doesn't agree with you, you throw them out like the uneducated and ignorant red necks they are. Sound about right?

 

Read post #1 - in the first sentence it equates religion, conservatism, and white racism. In the same paragraph it adds rural America. By the end of post #1, it has shifted to "rural white Americans" are essentially ignorant, closed minded, and stupid.

Its a blunt but classic example of trying to polarize people and dehumanizing the political opposition. You identify your target demographic, accuse them of being the cause of various real and made up problems, personalize the problems so that people will tend to blame the target demographic, and dehumanize the target demographic so people will feel justified in harming the target. Its been done many times. The best example is Hitler and the Jews - how do you think in 20 years Hitler was able to convince a well educated and religious people like the Germans of 1920 that exterminating the Jews was a proper course of action?.

 

I'll take a "stab" at that.
I'd apply "wordly" as opposed to educated.
City folk get exposed to more "characters" - panhandlers, con-men, rip-off artists - than rural folks.
To me, that explains why urban people rejected the con-man by a huge margin, while trusting, unwordly folks fell for the con.

 

That would only explain a single incident. A person gets fooled once, then they learn and don't get fooled again. And word spreads, so others don't get fooled even the first time. Even well planned, government supported rip-offs like the "carpet baggers" which moved into the post-Civil War Southern states don't last very long before word spreads and the rip-off is exposed.

And the "city folk" have their share of rip-off artists who prey upon them - Bernie Madoff for example.

For your argument, you also have to assume that in this age of the internet, cable tv, easy communication, easy travel, that rural Americans are woefully ignorant and out of touch. Rural Americans all have smart phones and internet and cable or satellite tv. They go on vacations, they also tend to join the military, so they travel and meet people.

The days of the Beverly Hillbillies are long over.

 

Okay. Sorry.