3 ms·

I have a friend who works with american tourists visiting europe, mostly older folks, mostly to religious sights. They are, for the vast majority, indoctrinated

I have a friend who works with american tourists visiting europe, mostly older folks, mostly to religious sights. They are, for the vast majority, indoctrinated beyond any chance of reasonable change of opinion. Talking with him makes _me_ worry about my own beliefs, because if these people can be so blind, maybe I am too.

dboreham 9mo ago
The Americans visiting Europe are a sample very skewed towards sanity due to their socioeconomic situation and interest in history/culture. So this is either not true or highly troubling.
- multiplegeorges 9mo ago
  > mostly to religious sights [sic] Don't be so sure.
  - wood_spirit 9mo ago
    Sightseers see sights at sites? So perhaps not sic in this case?
- Sharlin 9mo ago
  Agreed, though the "religious sights" part likely does a lot of work here.
jkaplowitz 9mo ago
The kind of older tourist visiting a foreign religious site is definitely going to be relatively indoctrinated regardless of their origin country. But yes, many Americans are indoctrinated. They also tend to be dominant in wide swaths of US geography and highly motivated by their indoctrinators to vote, thus maximizing their electoral impact. Many other Americans are pretty open-minded to new facts, even today. Unfortunately this kind is relatively geographically concentrated in urban or academic communities, and many of them are also discouraged from voting by being fully aware of how desperate and hard-to-fix the US political situation is, thus minimizing their electoral impact.
- aj7 9mo ago
  In Israel, virtually every Christian relic is fake. Some are hundreds of years old, but nevertheless fake. This is not a comment on Christianity as a religion. Religions need relics, and if they can’t find them, they are created. This is operating in modern times. I was working as a contractor for Intel Israel. They took everybody on a day trip. To an LDS temple to “see the organ” (what else?). An American LDS church. Needed a place in Israel to “represent.” Now wait 100 years. You wait. I have things to do.
  - lostlogin 9mo ago
    > In Israel, virtually every Christian relic is fake. The Italian Catholics have got a handle on this with many of their relics. Bits of various saints are in glass boxes all over Italy. Presumably they could be DNA tested?
    - b00ty4breakfast 9mo ago
      DNA tested for what, exactly? I guess things like fragmentary remains may not be human, but a full skull is not so easy to confuse for a donkey. Ethnicity would only be useful if the saint in question had origins that would be out of place in Italy or if they had a specific ethnicity(like St Peter's remains not having a Levantine origin).
      - betty_staples 9mo ago
        Yes well there are other things you could do with a DNA genotype than tag ethnicity or confirm it's human. Specifically related to a similarity metric between genotypes (which is how we go about arriving at an ethnicity estimate) For example if said saint has any known living relatives (and we are certain of that), then this confirms the veracity of the relic. if said saint has multiple relics of various body parts, we DNA test each one and examine concordance. of course a DNA test may QC fail, not enough DNA, too low quality, etc. But if it passes then we potentially have dead to rights a confirmation or refutation of the relic. For this reason I expect the church would be quite recalcitrant to have it tested, because there is a possible outcome that the relic is revealed to be a fake
freetinker 9mo ago
You’re self-questioning and self-reflective. Totally not worried for you or by you. Keep it up.

dboreham 9mo ago

The Americans visiting Europe are a sample very skewed towards sanity due to their socioeconomic situation and interest in history/culture. So this is either not true or highly troubling.

multiplegeorges 9mo ago
> mostly to religious sights [sic] Don't be so sure.
- wood_spirit 9mo ago
  Sightseers see sights at sites? So perhaps not sic in this case?
Sharlin 9mo ago
Agreed, though the "religious sights" part likely does a lot of work here.

jkaplowitz 9mo ago

The kind of older tourist visiting a foreign religious site is definitely going to be relatively indoctrinated regardless of their origin country. But yes, many Americans are indoctrinated. They also tend to be dominant in wide swaths of US geography and highly motivated by their indoctrinators to vote, thus maximizing their electoral impact. Many other Americans are pretty open-minded to new facts, even today. Unfortunately this kind is relatively geographically concentrated in urban or academic communities, and many of them are also discouraged from voting by being fully aware of how desperate and hard-to-fix the US political situation is, thus minimizing their electoral impact.

aj7 9mo ago
In Israel, virtually every Christian relic is fake. Some are hundreds of years old, but nevertheless fake. This is not a comment on Christianity as a religion. Religions need relics, and if they can’t find them, they are created. This is operating in modern times. I was working as a contractor for Intel Israel. They took everybody on a day trip. To an LDS temple to “see the organ” (what else?). An American LDS church. Needed a place in Israel to “represent.” Now wait 100 years. You wait. I have things to do.
- lostlogin 9mo ago
  > In Israel, virtually every Christian relic is fake. The Italian Catholics have got a handle on this with many of their relics. Bits of various saints are in glass boxes all over Italy. Presumably they could be DNA tested?
  - b00ty4breakfast 9mo ago
    DNA tested for what, exactly? I guess things like fragmentary remains may not be human, but a full skull is not so easy to confuse for a donkey. Ethnicity would only be useful if the saint in question had origins that would be out of place in Italy or if they had a specific ethnicity(like St Peter's remains not having a Levantine origin).
    - betty_staples 9mo ago
      Yes well there are other things you could do with a DNA genotype than tag ethnicity or confirm it's human. Specifically related to a similarity metric between genotypes (which is how we go about arriving at an ethnicity estimate) For example if said saint has any known living relatives (and we are certain of that), then this confirms the veracity of the relic. if said saint has multiple relics of various body parts, we DNA test each one and examine concordance. of course a DNA test may QC fail, not enough DNA, too low quality, etc. But if it passes then we potentially have dead to rights a confirmation or refutation of the relic. For this reason I expect the church would be quite recalcitrant to have it tested, because there is a possible outcome that the relic is revealed to be a fake

freetinker 9mo ago

You’re self-questioning and self-reflective. Totally not worried for you or by you. Keep it up.