[fallingfrog]

For anyone who thinks I’m exaggerating- I grew up Baptist, and I can tell you that what they believe is that God created the earth and all the animals on it recently, that there is no such thing as continental drift or evolution, that Jesus is going to return soon to bring forth the end days, and that Noah really did fit every kind of animal on the ark.

More than that, they believe in maintaining the social order. That’s what they value. The reason they are so upset about trans people, for instance, is that they threaten the male/female gender based social order. They believe in a universe built on simple rules that apply all the time. Don’t kid yourselves, that’s exactly how they think.

And, they believe that having power is its own evidence that you deserve that power, because otherwise why did God give it to you? Therefore powerful people are virtuous and obedience makes you also a good person. And in a certain sense violence is virtue since it cleanses the earth of wickedness.

Again, I grew up among these people and this is absolutely what they believe.

And as a corollary, scientists or activists (largely the same, in their view) are by definition evil because they are in opposition to the social order, or in the case of science they are agnostic to the social order, which is even worse because science treats the social order as irrelevant.