Same with the priest who did the same for my mother and her brother. Great guy. Jovial, tender, really eased them in their final hours.

They never asked when the last time I attended mass (rarely) or had confession (decades).

But like y’all, I despise having religion shoved in my face, or attempting to change the founding principles of this county. Sometime, for fun, compare the basic principles of Sharia Law with the desires of the Christian Nationalists. Create a Ven diagram. It’s one circle.

Here’s a Mother Jones article observing this in real time:

One central question, however, is if the ascendant parents’ rights groups will broadly embrace disinformation about Ukraine. It’s probably too soon to say—but the possibility is certainly not out of the question. Last week, Mother Jones’ Ali Breland wrote about the extremist groups who are trying to convince mainstream Republicans that Putin’s invasion is justified. “To date, the American right has not firmly settled on a unified position on the invasion,” Breland wrote. “Speaking out against Ukraine seems unthinkable in the current moment, but large swaths of the contemporary right do not care about boundaries of acceptability established by the center-left and even conservative moderates.”

Broniatowski echoed those sentiments and noted that if this trend continues, the American right’s drift into conspiracy thinking could become a national security liability. “When you start having such a clear indicator of a susceptible population, that population can then get seeded with other conspiracy theories,” says Broniatowski. “And they become a population that can be relatively easily mobilized for other uses.” As disinformation about Ukraine proliferates in seemingly unrelated parts of the internet, one thing is for certain: Russia is watching.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/03/how-wellness-influencers-became-cheerleaders-for-putins-war/

I often wonder if these influencers are who they say they are? Or is that a CS on my part? Damn the information age can be a challenge.

In another science based community I’m a member of the majority of the moderators have religious beliefs but I think I’m right in saying you’d never know it unless they told you.

I can respect that- and even as an atheist I can recognize the strength that kind of faith can give a person. If that strength and unswerving loyalty to a cause is used to help humanity then it doesn’t matter that I think it is based in stone age superstition- more power to them, I would be happy to help them and consider them a friend.

However, in my experience, such people are the exception. Again, I am speaking only of my experiences here in the USA where faith has been perverted into a political weapon.

Here it is all too often used as a way for believers to set themselves above others, to dictate the behavior of others, to oppress others… in short it becomes an excuse to let the most evil inclinations to surface and run rampant. It becomes a tool used by demagogues to control and manipulate.

I grew up in the Bible Belt- Oklahoma… and while some of the best human beings I met were ministers, or preachers… the only time I have coldly debated pros and cons of killing someone in the next 60 seconds, it was an evangelical preacher and his assistant in rural Oklahoma. I was 17…In the end, I didn’t do it- of course… but I had motive, means and opportunity, and in the heat of the moment I really wanted to… still think it would have been justified, morally- maybe not legally, they were trying to force their way into my house… but it would have been a double homicide.

And you are not only dangerous to heathens, pagans, atheists, agnostics and religious skeptics; you are a danger to every other religious person in the world who does not agree with your toxic superstition in every single detail.

The enemy is not faith, but dogma. Especially dogma used to justify coercion, persecution and violence.

If you’re looking for a fight on this issue, Pebble, you have come to the right place.

So part of it is the need to ‘feel’ superior? I think you’re right. Goes along with giving them a sense of power as we travel around the outer edge of the galaxy.