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Religious Indoctrination Gave us Trump [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-01-18

61% of Americans believe the bible is either the exact word of God or inspired by God. 38% of Americans believe Trump won the 2018 election. What do these things have in common? In both cases all evidence points to the contrary, yet people ignore all evidence and logic and believe it anyway.

Religion teaches us from childhood to disregard evidence that does not fit its narrative and accept erroneous data that does. With the age up social media upon us, we are experiencing an unforeseen effect of religious indoctrination on our political system.

Prior to the internet we were all working from the same source material when it came to politics; Newpapers, network TV debates. And now, most people get their political information from Facebook or TikTok. Now, more than ever, critical thinking is required to sort out what is true and what is fiction. This is where religion has and continues to harm our society. Religion abhors logic. Simply put, the two cannot coexist. So, from our youngest age we are taught that there is a sky god who create the universe and keeps watch over all of us. Our parents and elders tell us this as children and of course we believe them. Why wouldn’t we? We are programmed to obey our elders for the sake of survival. The result of this is that from our earliest ages we are programed to disregard logic and accept as truth things for which there is no evidence.

Now, add in social media, fox news, newsmax with its continuous stream of disinformation and the populace simply does not have the tools to judge fact from fiction, on the contrary their religion teaches them it is a virtue to not question that which they don’t understand.

Most Christians believe that the gospels are firsthand accounts of the life of Jesus despite the historical fact that they are not. Point out glaring discrepancies in the gospels and the good Christian will dismiss it as all part of Gods plan. Tell a republican that Trump lost the election in 2018, or that he was responsible for Jan 6, present them the evidence, and they will simply choose to ignore critical thinking and not believe you.

33% of democrats say they have no religious affiliation compared to 12% of republicans (https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/510464/politics-religion.aspx). Evangelical voters went 82% for Trump. Seeing as Trump is the antithesis of Jesus, how does one explain evangelical support? There is a proven negative correlation between religiosity and intelligence. I would argue it not that ignorant people are more likely to be religious, but that being religious leads to ignorance.

So here is my question: In a world without religion, a world where science is respected and where there are no “alternative facts”, where critical thinking is a virtue, does a man like Trump get elected?

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