>"Pick your enemies wisely, because you will become like them" and old adage
>goes. I do not understand why otherwise intelligent people give any
>attention to this religious bullshit and even debate it. If someone
>desperately wants to be ignorant and stupid - let him. It is actually good
>for those of us who want to pursue careers in science and education - less
>competition. Fortunately, we live in a class society which provides an
>effective mechanism for socio-economic separation between people with
>brains
>from bible-thumping bumpkins. The latter can have their bible bullshit
>which qualifies them to work minimum wage jobs at Wal-Marts and Burger
>Kings, while the educated folk can have their good jobs that require
>knowledge and analytical skills. What is wrong with that?
yeah - except.. evangelicals can be pretty upper-class. My current landlords have to be the wealthiest people I've ever met. I have a ministudio under $600 in expensive Santa Cruz behind their weekend home. They live in los altos hils, which is a top zip code, and both have phds, and the father is CEO of a company- but I think because they're immigrants they were never socialized in being extravagant and new-rich in their personal habits. They keep inviting me to go with their family to their megachurch which has a 'youth' oriented music theme with the idea that the music will bring back all the nonchurchgoers, even though it seems unlikely that nonreligious people other than me wander in there. Anyway, they were advertising a creationism seminar the following week.
Western europeans, such as germans, have really low church attendance because the leadership played a very bad role during recent wars, but it is interesting to note that the whole society institutionally follows the sabbath/weekend rest a lot more than americans. All the stores are open and people shop in the U.S., while everything is closed after 6pm every day, and all Sunday in germany, and instead it is common to take long walks with your family and have an old church or castle as the destination, where you have coffee and cake while you admire the architecture. Half the reason why people who couldn't read trusted the church was because of holidays for saints, and sundays.
It's fun to point out that the american santa emphasis is really odinist. Santa isn't mentioned in the bible. Odin or wodan: a chief god with one 'all seeing eye' who knew good men from bad, was an old man with a beard, and he rode an eight legged horse back and forth to a spirit world, and had a helper who delivered punishment to the bad. People merged him with the image of the 3rd century real st. Nicholas, but the church eventually suppressed the concept in all areas except Holland, until some americans who knew the dutch/danish tradition revived the image, turned the horse into reindeer, and spread it back to the rest of the world. although the whole time, much of N. europe managed to keep paganish practices that were converted into nonbiblical christian such as trees, straw star art, and probably several more things.
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