Quote:It would have been pretty interesting if they had thrown satanism into the mix. I'm very curious how it would be received compared to atheism. From my experience in the Bible belt, there isn't much distinction between atheism and "satanism". Both are seen as distant out-groups characterized by immorality.
Funnily though, Satanism generally has very little to do with "Satan". If anything, Satan is nothing but a somewhat esoteric mascott for Satanism. There are, of course, people who believe in and/or worship satan. However, the Church of Satan (for example) does not believe in an entity called Satan.
I hung out with some weird people in high school.
Reminds me of the "Proximity to God report." Though I can't get to the host to post the link at the moment. Skit is by these guys, but is hosted on ampcast which is not responding at the moment. Will try later. Punchline is "... and finaly, the scientologists are holding just slightly further from God than the satanists."
/OT
I imagine you'd end up with very similar results for "satanists" if you replaced atheists with them, but if you included both, I'm guessing slightly more distatse for them, but the benchmark would shift depending on order of the questions. Rating by adjustment is also a common response pattern: if you ask atheists first people would take their response to that item and then adjust to satanists, vs. if you ask satanist first, they would adjust to get atheist, but I'm betting that the first one asked would come out about the same as atheists are rated in the current research. They simply represent the most dissimilar group from the respondent on the survey, so they get rated the worst.
edit: to improve clarity, and gave away the joke because ampcast seems to have died.
but often it happens you know / that the things you don't trust are the ones you need most....
Opening lines of "Psalm" by Hey Rosetta!
Opening lines of "Psalm" by Hey Rosetta!