Interesting things I found poking around at a 'Religion in America' website

[C2H5OH]

Someone at the Durp linked to this site to show how few Orthodox there are in the US, but they're pretty evenly distributed across the US. I started poking around at it. This thread is for what I or you discover...

Here's the website: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-study/

I first started looking at Catholics, since I was raised as one (hint... It didn't take). Rhode Island is the number 1 state for Catholics at 42%. Mass., NJ, and NM are tied for second at 34%, Conn. comes in third at 33%, and NY is a solid 4th at 31%. California and IL tie for fifth at 28%. The rest go down from there.

[major rounding errors follow, so the numbers won't add up to 100%]

Then I went looking at Evangelical Protestant, at 25.4%. I figured (even though I know better) that would be a good approximation of 'Fundy'. Then I clicked on the expansion link. Baptist, almost certainly fundy, at only 9.2%. Non-denominational (mostly fundy, but who the hell knows? Maybe... SATAN? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN7o6w-ST_w)) 4.9%. Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, lumping them all together (since some are fundy, some not) 2.5 %. Pentacostal, mostly fundy, but not all, 3.6%. Restorationist (virtually all fundy) 1.6%. Everything from there on down is less than 1. i.e. below our ability to put a decent number on it.

Turns out that fundies are about 20% of the US population, and are about at the same numbers as Catholics. Nice job of branding they've managed, when you can't take an opinion poll on Young Earth Creationist ideas, without getting a majority of CATHOLICS agreeing with your stupidity, despite the fact that the Catholic church specifically teaches AGAINST that idea.

Fundies have succeeded in portraying their beliefs as 'Christianity', and so opinion polls that don't weed out 'I don't give enough of a shit to have given it any thought at all' gets you a lot of 'well, I'm going to give the answer I think I should. Christianity [as the fundies tell me] requires YEC, so I'm gonna say 'yes' on that question'. And thus you get polls that show a majority of Catholics answering 'yes' to the YEC questions.

ETA: Any time you get polls that say the majority agree we should teach YEC in schools, it's not a majority in favor of it, it's a majority voting for 'yeah, whatever. I don't give a shit.'

[Jaglavak]

Alkie my friend, you have maxed out my interest in organized religion. According to me the whole thing is basically a cross between a social club and a meme gone bad.

[Dr. Winston O'Boogie]

Then I went looking at Evangelical Protestant, at 25.4%. I figured (even though I know better) that would be a good approximation of 'Fundy'. Then I clicked on the expansion link. Baptist, almost certainly fundy, at only 9.2%. Non-denominational (mostly fundy, but who the hell knows? Maybe... SATAN? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN7o6w-ST_w)) 4.9%. Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, lumping them all together (since some are fundy, some not) 2.5 %. Pentacostal, mostly fundy, but not all, 3.6%. Restorationist (virtually all fundy) 1.6%. Everything from there on down is less than 1. i.e. below our ability to put a decent number on it.

Turns out that fundies are about 20% of the US population,


Notice that there's two sections for Protestant - Evangelical Protestant and Mainline Protestant. Expanding under Evangelical, you see "Lutheran Family (Evangelical Tradition)"; expand that, you see "Missouri Synod" and "Wisconsin Synod". Yeah, I know that both of them are pretty out there. "Lutheran Family (Evangelical Tradition)" makes up 1.5% of the population

Under "Mainline Protestant", there is "Lutheran Family (Mainline Trad)" at 2.1%; within that is "Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA)" at 1.4%. I believe this is the "traditional" Lutheran - the one closest to Catholicisim; the one that there have actually been talks about them joining / recognized by the Catholic Church.

All of this is a long-winded way of saying that EVERYTHING in the first Protestant grouping is the nut-job contingent. You said you figured 20% of America is Fundy; I'm saying you can use that entire block and say over 25% is bat-shit crazy, outpacing Catholics and traditional Protestant.

[Dr. Winston O'Boogie]

By the way, if I have insulted anyone here, I apologize.

I am a good Catholic boy. I sing in the choir; cantor; 4th degree in Knights of Columbus (more because there's a lot of good guys in our council; a lot less about actions by National leadership). I have a very short fuse when people put words from a 5,000 year old text ahead of what modern educated people have discovered. I don't think Science and Religion have to be opposites.

Let's use an analogy here. Let's say you buy an old house. It was initially built as a summer cottage; it's been added on 3-4 times. There's no blueprints; no telling what's behind those walls. You've got to do repairs; you may want to improve. As you remove that ugly 70's paneling, you discover things; tear out that closet, you learn more. That's science. Everything in the universe has to have a consistent set of rules, just like there was a blueprint when your house was built. The act of scientific discovery is like re-creating the blueprints to your house. Re-creating the blueprints does not mean that there wasn't someone who built the house. Someone had to create the blueprints; someone had to build the structure. Determining what the rules of the universe are does not disprove God, it only shows where our understanding was wrong.

[Solfy]

All of this is a long-winded way of saying that EVERYTHING in the first Protestant grouping is the nut-job contingent. You said you figured 20% of America is Fundy; I'm saying you can use that entire block and say over 25% is bat-shit crazy, outpacing Catholics and traditional Protestant.

Throw in the percentage of Catholics who I'd categorize as "more Catholic than Catholic*" who are more like fundamentalists than the average Catholic. I could see them being YECs despite the church's official stance, not merely out of indifference. They're probably (hopefully?) a small % of Catholics though.

25% seems high to me, but that's because I live in a godless liberal bubble.


*E.g. the current pope is too loving permissive, mass should still be in Latin, Biden is the antichrist, women should still wear chapel cloths to mass and then spend the rest of their time at home barefoot and pregnant

[C2H5OH]

Then I went looking at Evangelical Protestant, at 25.4%. I figured (even though I know better) that would be a good approximation of 'Fundy'. Then I clicked on the expansion link. Baptist, almost certainly fundy, at only 9.2%. Non-denominational (mostly fundy, but who the hell knows? Maybe... SATAN? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN7o6w-ST_w)) 4.9%. Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, lumping them all together (since some are fundy, some not) 2.5 %. Pentacostal, mostly fundy, but not all, 3.6%. Restorationist (virtually all fundy) 1.6%. Everything from there on down is less than 1. i.e. below our ability to put a decent number on it.

Turns out that fundies are about 20% of the US population,


Notice that there's two sections for Protestant - Evangelical Protestant and Mainline Protestant. Expanding under Evangelical, you see "Lutheran Family (Evangelical Tradition)"; expand that, you see "Missouri Synod" and "Wisconsin Synod". Yeah, I know that both of them are pretty out there. "Lutheran Family (Evangelical Tradition)" makes up 1.5% of the population

Under "Mainline Protestant", there is "Lutheran Family (Mainline Trad)" at 2.1%; within that is "Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA)" at 1.4%. I believe this is the "traditional" Lutheran - the one closest to Catholicisim; the one that there have actually been talks about them joining / recognized by the Catholic Church.

All of this is a long-winded way of saying that EVERYTHING in the first Protestant grouping is the nut-job contingent. You said you figured 20% of America is Fundy; I'm saying you can use that entire block and say over 25% is bat-shit crazy, outpacing Catholics and traditional Protestant.

Quoting the whole thing, because I 'can't be arsed' (to use a britishism) to edit it down to the relevant parts:

You may well be right. I'm going to dig around further, and see if I can refine my estimate. I hope it comes out to only my 20%, but the guesstimate I had previously been using of 'somewhere between 20 and 30' is less optimistic, and I don't want to go back to it if I don't have to.

I have a very short fuse when people put words from a 5,000 year old text ...

Actually, the oldest parts of it were written down, from oral traditions probably not much older, but of indeterminate age, about 3000 years ago. The youngest are only coming up on 2000 in this century. The youngest parts hit 2000 years old sometime at or after 2070.

Just a nitpick from my EXTREMELY traditional Catholic college theology course requirements.

Let's use an analogy here. Let's say you buy an old house. It was initially built as a summer cottage...
...Someone had to create the blueprints; someone had to build the structure....

I LIVE in that house, only it was originally an 1870 or so farm house. There were never any blueprints. They built it from the plans in their heads. The Bible was built the same way.

[kayaker]

25% seems high to me, but that's because I live in a godless liberal bubble

That 25% includes people like my MIL. She goes to church every Sunday. She spends one day a week cleaning the church (Imagine an 85 year old woman who has had both knees replaced, down on her hands and knees scrubbing the church floor). There is a plaque on the wall at her church thanking her and her late husband for their donations to various building funds.

Pretty good catholic, right? She has admitted to me that she does not believe in god. She grew up going to church and it is an important part of her social life. But she is sickened by much of what the church is responsible for and she most certainly does not believe in god.

[Dr. Winston O'Boogie]

Actually, the oldest parts of it were written down, from oral traditions probably not much older, but of indeterminate age, about 3000 years ago. The youngest are only coming up on 2000 in this century. The youngest parts hit 2000 years old sometime at or after 2070.

Just a nitpick from my EXTREMELY traditional Catholic college theology course requirements.

Yeah, I'm a typical American where those little things don't matter enough to actually investigate. My brain was using the "young earth" age of the earth (i.e. working backwards to when the earliest events in the bible would have occurred); I know it was all oral traditions written well after the fact. Was thinking it was a larger difference between when the earliest books were actually written (the Pentateuch? As the basis for Judaism, I would expect those to be the oldest) and the events in the New Testament.

And, I thought the same thing happened with the Gospels - that they were handed down by oral traditions; I thought some of the books wouldn't hit 2000 years until NEXT century (2135 or so)