this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2025
1163 points (97.2% liked)

Science Memes

16062 readers
1183 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
1163
US education (lemmy.ml)
submitted 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) by Zerush@lemmy.ml to c/science_memes@mander.xyz
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

Man, I'm trying to help out here, but you're making it difficult by conflating these things.

They are not the same. You seem to be on the same side as everyone else here in terms of disliking/hating organized religion. With you on that. I have a deep, deep, deep hatred and mistrust of that given my upbringing in the US.

However, it is not a fair comparison that the Vatican or the way religion in Western Europe is in any way similar to what's going on in those evangelical revival tents/places.

I've been to and lived in/through both, and so have a lot of people replying to you. It seems like your first hand experience with religion in Western Europe is perhaps extremely limited and you're looking at extremely superficial similarities (like the opulence of the Vatican or how it's basically its own country, sort of thing).

It's tradition. You're looking at things from the times during the crusades, sort of thing. What's left in Europe is mostly just traditional religion stuff, that's more about ceremony and habit than any actual true fanatical belief in anything.

There are no preachers on street corners in Europe that I've ever seen or heard of. There's no big tent revival things. There's no people shoving their religion down your throat. There's no crazy mega-church speaking in tongues shit.

That's largely contained in the US. Whatever superficial similarities you're seeing between the two regions is just that, superficial.

I encourage you to go over to Europe and visit these sights.

I've been to the Vatican. It's basically just a bunch of money thrown at artists during the Renaissance period because the church had too damn much money. It's an attraction. It's a circus. A sideshow.

Even the devout Catholics over there keep it to themselves. They're science focused (generally), and tend to not let it affect their social discourse too much. Nobody ever asks for your religion over there or assumes you're a Christian.

Europe has an absolute shitton of non-believers, especially depending on the country we're talking about (Norway/Finland/Iceland are some of the highest number of Agnostic/Atheists).

There's not many other ways I can explain this right now other than you are wrong. It's understandable why you think what you think, because on the surface you could make these connections, but I absolutely promise you, if you were to go and live in Western Europe for even a week or more; you'd learn quickly how little religion plays a part in anyone's life over there.