EDIT: adding my sources for these stats up here. (I posted a comment with them but it seems like a lot of people aren't seeing it.)
40% of American adults believe in young-earth creationism
77% of American adults believe angels are real - kind of an old source (2011) but I don't get the feeling that the number has dropped a whole lot since then
EDIT2: I found a more recent figure for belief in angels: 72% as of 2016. Thanks @T_Doug
Any time you read "the girl reading this" you become a girl. Sorry I don't make the rules
So many Christians are half Hindu like they believe in Karma and reincarnation and shit
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/10/01/new-age-beliefs-common-among-both-religious-and-nonreligious-americans/
if you’re gonna follow some wackjob religion like christianity at least be consistent
Christianity: Dissolves into, like, eight dozen competing sects and regional churches with their own prevailing dogmas and taboos
Me, an Intellectual: "At least be consistent"
I mean, I'm not an expert on Marx, but wouldn't Marx say that these beliefs have come about due to the historical material forces?
Like, Marx was writing in a time when belief in the supernatural was much higher than it is today, and he didnt go around like "How are we gonna get people to accept communism when they go to church?"
Because according to base and super structure theory, ideas people believe in ultimately have their origin in the base, which is the economic structure.
Thinking we need to convince people that materialism is true, seems (ironically) to be idealism.
Am I off base here? I'm willing to walk this back because, like I said, not a marx expert
Thinking we need to convince people that materialism is true, seems (ironically) to be idealism.
this is a fair point, in fact I was kind of getting this feeling as I was writing the post.
For instance, Marx was big on universal suffrage, not because he was in favor of it as an endpoint but he thought it was the kind of demand that developed the consciousness of the working class movement, because it was feasible and achieving it would change political conditions such that new demands could be made...
I think a good modern analog to this would be demanding electoral reform (particularly, proportional representation and ranked choice voting). We probably will not achieve it, but we can still get society to start talking about proportional representation, and we'll eventually get people to realize that their political interests have more to do with their economic situation as a worker (as well as their cultural preferences, if we're being honest) than with which town they happen to live in, and that basing our system of political representation on arbitrarily drawn geographical districts is stupid. We can get people to become more disillusioned with the political representation system, and if we do it right, that will lead to them being more disillusioned with capitalism as well.
"Lo and behold, Gabriel visited me in my dreams and told me that God wants us to read Capital and seize the means of production!"
I'm sorry there is no fucking way 77% of adults believe in angels.
Why wouldn't they? They're a pretty standard feature of Christian religious belief. Frankly, I'm surprised it's not higher.
Huh, I guess I was assuming "belive in angels" meant "believe in angels that go around intervening in human affairs." In that case it's probably not really that much of an obstacle.
Ahhh, yeah that's fair, that'd be bonkers. Given 96% believe in some kind of god, and the vast majority of those are gonna at least nominally subscribe to some kind of Abrahamic faith, probably Christianity, I'm actually kinda shocked by how low just 77% is.
I looked it up, in 2019 65% of Americans identified as Christian, but it's been steeply declining. So, it's about what I'd expect.
Huh, that's lower than I remembered. Interesting. I guess 77% does make more sense in light of that, yeah.
Weird that the number of angel believers would be higher than the percentage of chirstians. I assume Jews and Muslims (Islam has angels yes?) don't make up the difference. Like where do they think the angels come from?
77% is probably an older figure from when America was more religious
edit: wait, it says "A majority of non-Christians think angels exist" so I might be back to thinking the study fucked up or is being presented in a misleading way or something. Like, people took "angels" in a metaphorical sense or something.
I bet a bunch of them are moved by the ideas of justice, hard work paying off, and good RNG more than any critical analysis of the supernatural.
Believing in supernatural bullshit and being anti abortion, creationist, etc is bad yes, but simply having a 'higher power' does not mutually exclude from being a smart and rational commie. I learned this concept through AA. I thought that the higher power stuff was all total bullshit, but then I saw that a higher power could be something simple like mother nature or even a really big tree. It sometimes helps people to rise above challenging times by feeling like there is something bigger than you out there that you can turn to.
Sources, for anyone who's interested:
40% of American adults believe in young-earth creationism
77% of American adults believe angels are real - kind of an old source (2011) but I don't get the feeling that the number has dropped a whole lot since then
Do 77% of people believe in St Michael and let Jesus take the wheel and all that, or if you ask them do they think back to Sunday school and think oh, yeah, I mean whatever - I don’t want this pollster thinking I’m godless.
Also like... is historical materialism the end goal here, or an equitable and just society for all people? Plenty of people throughout history have taken to Marxist and socialist thought without rejecting spirituality.
I don't think you have to directly attack idealism or religion per se. I mean, for people who have even a casual interest in history, in 2020 I feel like a lot of people recognize the flaws in viewing history just as great men conducting wars. There's a huge interest in understanding how people throughout history just lived their lives, as well as understanding what "really" happened and what were the true driving forces of historical events. I think you just have to start there.
And for people who don't care about history, whatever they're not going to be interested anyway.
Oh c'mon. Everyone in this goddamn web wants to fuck a demon, but if you talk about angels everyone says you are insane. Americans are simply horny.
If angels aren't real, sweaty, then who molested all those victims in that documentary series? I think it was called Touched by an Angel.
I believe in ghosts. :specter:
spoiler
Only the specter of communism, ofc.
Is... Is this a pasta that I'm not online enough to understand?
