But where's the evidence? Ex Dee. This is why I'm happy to live in one of the least religious countries in the world. I personally have nothing against people who has one faith or another, but as soon as you outright deny scientific facts, common sense, and what goes towards building a future based on knowledge, I just cringe. The way Christian faith came around to me, was in the form of morals, ethics etc., which I highly value, and believe to be a good thing when it comes to coexisting in a society.
In my country, we still do a lot of things that has roots in religion, but is more so a tradition than it is a religious act. Christmas is one example of that. There are more, but Christmas is probably the most common one.
In elementary school, we even had a subject that could be directly translated into "Christianity". We studied the belief, but not to preach, or become religious in any matter. It was more a "historical" lesson that could be used to explain social structure, culture etc.
Later, in college, the subject would expand and be called "Religion", which didn't just have Christianity, but also Islam, Buddhism, Judaism etc. This also gave us an insight in how basically every one of the major religions are related in many ways, and further expanded our cultural knowledge.
I've met a few religious people IRL, most of them immigrants. But because most of them are well integrated, they don't necessarily deny science or facts. Or at least, they don't show it in school (maybe because they want good grades). Those very, very few I have come across that started talking about religion, mostly their own, turned out to have no, if not very little, or skewed knowledge/perception of their own religion. And once you firmly believe something, but you aren't even sure what you actually believe, I become somewhat worrisome. Add this and negative social aspects, and you could get radicalized extremists.
With that said, kudos to those who have faith, keeps it to themselves, or modernize it to fit society. I have also met people that believe in a greater force, not necessarily a god so to speak, but because of how incredible it is that the advanced life we know today actually exist, with all the factors that has to come into play etc. It just seemed too "random" for them. They do not deny science, and are happy to embrace logical explanation and theories, more so facts. To them, there's just a gap until the question about life, the universe and everything has been answered. (I know, it's 42, I mean jeez).
But surely, the younger generation in America is going towards the same progress?
