Civil Commotion

White evangelicals are not merely ignoramuses — they’re dangerous ignoramuses.

There are about 41 million white evangelical adults in the U.S. About 45 percent said in late February that they would not get vaccinated against Covid-19, making them among the least likely demographic groups to do so, according to the Pew Research Center.

“If we can’t get a significant number of white evangelicals to come around on this, the pandemic is going to last much longer than it needs to,” said Jamie Aten, founder and executive director of the Humanitarian Disaster Institute at Wheaton College, an evangelical institution in Illinois.

You can’t reason with these morons, because they didn’t get reasoned into their screwed-up ideas; all you can do is protect yourself by keeping them at a distance.

Businesses and schools can help by demanding employees get vaccinated, and by refusing to admit the unvaccinated onto their premises — and they should. The pandemic is an existential threat to the country writ large, and those who refuse to join the fight against it deserve to be outcasts.

For the first time ever, fewer than half of all Americans claim church membership.

The proportion of Americans who consider themselves members of a church, synagogue or mosque has dropped below 50 percent, according to a poll from Gallup released Monday. It is the first time that has happened since Gallup first asked the question in 1937, when church membership was 73 percent.

In recent years, research data has shown a seismic shift in the U.S. population away from religious institutions and toward general disaffiliation, a trend that analysts say could have major implications for politics, business and how Americans group themselves.

I don’t doubt there are people who will cluck and scowl and mourn the news, but I think it’s wonderful news. The Abrahamic narratives are false, one and all, and have caused slipshod thinking and human grief everywhere they’ve gone. Good riddance.

One of the most common, and sometimes grievously costly, logic errors goes by the latin name post hoc ergo propter hoc — after this, therefore because of this.

The famous, humorous example is the farmer who supposes that his rooster’s crowing causes the sun to rise.

A prominent recent, real-life example concerns the development of blood clots in some people soon after they received the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine. Millions of people have received the vaccine without consequence — but it’s use was briefly discontinued throughout Europe when a handful of recent vaccine recipients experienced blood clots. There’s nothing wrong with prudence, and I’m not here to disrespect the medical officials who decided to hit the pause button. BUT! … that was promptly investigated and it was determined that the vaccination was not the cause of the clots; they were merely the statistical expectation.

And so much for that — right?

No. The anti-vaxxers and far-right “hoax” nutjobs are exploiting it to promote anxiety and discourage vaccination — prolonging the pandemic, prolonging the economic disruption, increasing the deaths.

Professional people occasionally err, just like everybody else, but the generality of engineers, lawyers, doctors, on and on, really do know more about their specialty than Ma and Pa Kettle, and genuinely care about their clients’ well-being. Trust the people who have added years of experience to years of study and built a career of it — not some noisy anonymity on Facebook.

Churches concentrate some of the most messed-up people in society, and we should all get over the marketing lie that they are somehow ‘better’ people.

I marvel, sometimes, at the obliviousness of the devout.

This year has been an insane year for many but out in Utah, arguably one of the most unregenerate states in our union, a new program has emerged with the goal of reaching children with the Gospel directly in public and charter schools.

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Religiously, Utah is primarily LDS and their “gospel” reaches around the world. Next Generation of Utah’s desire is to change the course for kids by giving them access to the truth about who Jesus actually is and what that means for humanity.

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The enemy has done a fantastic job of sprinkling lies and deceit through a religion that claims to be Christianity but is in fact far from it. Because of this, Utah is, honestly, an exhausting place to do ministry and it can leave the church feeling worn down and discouraged.

Haughtiness, too, probably makes missionary work difficult.