[dsego]

How so? Religion is still central in many countries in Europe, eg Croatia, Poland, etc. It's even getting stronger as the populace is leaning more to the right every day. Plenty of religious people in the media here raving against covid vaccines etc.

[rocgf]

You're definitely right technically.

The problem is that Europe is split up into dozens of countries with very somewhat different values and cultures, so whenever you say "In Europe X happens", then you can always invoke some version of your argument.

Europe is France, Netherlands, Albania, Moldova. All of these are very different in various statistics.

[caymanjim]

You can say the same thing about the US. The cultural values of Massachusetts are radically different from the cultural values of Mississippi.

[ivanhoe]

To some degree yes, but mainstream US is still far more culturally uniform from state to state than Europe's countries are. In Europe most of countries are nation-based and as such encapsulate also all the possible differences in ethnicities, languages, culture, religion and history to a much higher degree. Imagine each race/denomination/ethical group in US having their own independent state with their own laws and ways of life, and you get something like Europe.

[BongoMcCat]

But there is still a common language in the us. And national TV-networks with lots of viewers in both those states.

Neither of those are true for Europe.

I would argue that it is fair to say that the US is more homogeneous than Europe, especially if you are talking about the entire Europe, and not just the EU.

[BongoMcCat]

I have never been to Croatia or Poland, but of course you are right in that there are European countries where religion has a more central role than in other European countries.

But, how common is it really in Croatia or Poland to use christian terms such as "satanist" when you want to say that you are an atheist?

[NoSorryCannot]

There was an important piece left out of the description of the Church of Satan: it is typically used as a device to test civil liberties and separation of church and state.

If, say, a courthouse has a statue of a religious theme, then by the law of the land, the courthouse must be willing to erect a statue for any religion. Like, say, a statue of Baphomet. Or they can remove _all_ of the religious iconography. That demographics are mostly Christian and so such things are overtly offensive makes it more effective.

So, atheists or agnostics or even people of more orthodox religious persuasion are using the Church of Satan as a vehicle of representation for a strong stance on the separation of church and state.

[dsego]

> christian terms such as "satanist"

in Croatia at least, they use the term "communist" or "child of a yugoslav officer" to slander atheists or secularists.