Here is Pew on how positive religions are towards each other:



While anti-semitism is alive in the US today, I don't think it is fair to ascribe it to white evangelicals as a whole, who view Jews more positively than any other religious group (not saying that you are doing this).

There are a few different connections between the US-right and Israel. One, as mentioned is that nut job Christians think that Jews ruling Israel is a prerequisite of the second coming or something like that. Another bond is between neo-con war hawks and the like minded war hawks in the Israeli government. This bond goes back to the early 70's when the USSR stepped up military aid to Egypt and Syria and Nixon stepped up aid to Israel in response. Another tie is in supporting big donors because the continuous military aid to Israel must largely be spent on equipment from US defense contractors. So, the bonds between the Republicans and Israel are pretty tight.

As I have pointed out repeatedly though, there is no great love between Jews and the Republican party. 78% of Jews voted for Obama in 2008. From 1916 to 2012 90% of Jews have voted for the Dem POTUS 3 times, 80-90% 5 times, 70-80% 7 times. The only time more Jews voted for a Republican than a Democrat was in 1920 when 38% of Jews voted for Eugene Debs.

Not all evangelicals are bigots for sure, so I agree. But, that general positive feeling towards Jews by evangelicals is often very shallow imo. I think there's some kind of feeling among devout Christians that they are supposed to consider Jews to be good people of the book and that "the chosen people" is something real, but Jews can still be greedy, nebbish lizard people who rule the world and should never have been allowed to join the country club.

Maybe so. But it sounds to me like you're not giving them enough credit, just letting them sound weird and untrustworthy (I don't want to presume too much, but I'll point out the low opinion atheists in the graph above have of evangelicals). I'll admit that I'm biased here: I grew up among evangelical Christians in the Pacific Northwest and most of the Christians I knew (and know) were pretty positive and admiring of Jewish culture.

Actually I'm sure I should be more careful with the word "Evangelical". It's unfairly maligned in popular culture and I was stereotyping. I've experienced the Christian admiration for Jewish culture and I don't know exactly how to describe the feeling it gives me, but it's not entirely comfortable.

(also, I'm an atheist, so I guess that's where I get my stereotyping of Evangelicals.)

RE: Jews and the right-wing, I think Josh Marshall more or less captured the important points today.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/...-the-coal-mine

Probably slow ponied, but stuff like this is going to play out great for tourism:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...ouston-airport
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...ed-like-a-baby
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...border-control

Lots more bomb threats against Jewish schools this morning. This is going to be a ongoing thing

Im impressed the atheists got the lowest score. Thought for sure Muslims would have that locked up.

Cowardly dip****s threatening children and dead people. Some master race they got there.

Some terrorists got put away today

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.2fd457c11569

Nope, everybody hates us. We still score lowest on the "What type of person could you see yourself voting for president one day" test.

Its odd that the level of hate that people seem to hold for atheists hasnt translated into as much violence as we see for other groups. I wonder if that has to do with less prominent gatherings, no houses of worship, no atheist specific graveyards, no "standard dress" of an atheist. Things like that. If atheists had more of a generalized visible code, would we see violence rates against us rise?

Its all fun and games until you start yelling ****** at a black child and threatening to kill their family.

Best not to criticize those people though. They might end up voting for Trump.

that **** makes me so mad, i'd gladly kill these complete pieces of **** myself and feel zero remorse

threatening women and children, man that makes my blood boil. the fact that they're only going to serve portions of their sentences is even more infuriating.

I enjoy the photos of them crying at the sentencing.

So much Southern Pride on display there, almost brings a tear to your eye doesn't it?

Were they drunk? How did they think they were going to get away with this?

It's partly because the survey is full of ****. People know what they are supposed to disapprove of. A lot of people aren't that religious, but just go along without thinking about it much. It hardly ever occurred to any of them to disapprove of atheists anyway until they answered that question.

There's a racial/xenophobic component to hating Jews and Muslims that brings out the real visceral, violent impulses in people that just isn't there with atheism. People get deeply offended by Richard Dawkins or whatever but very few people are going to want to go out and firebomb his house.


I wouldn't say the survey is bs but basically this. I think intellectually, if you ask them to think it over, they'll tell you that Muslims believe in God so they must be a little better than Bill Mahr, but the real seething hate is always aimed at gays or brown people. That's where the instinctive violence is going to be directed.

By being white in the South, I presume.

Many people equate atheism with lack of moral compass or outright rejection of morality.

never been to the south? like one generation ago they were still using fire hoses and "literacy tests."

And this goes to why Sam Harris is wrong. Those often cited opinion surveys of attitudes in Muslim countries need to be taken with a grain of salt. And that goes towards Sam Harris' prejudice and/or malice. A neuroscientist should know better than to put too much stock in how people answer surveys.

How long ago do you think some pack of racist rednecks could have gotten away with driving up to a random non-white birthday party, pull out a shotgun and threaten to kill children in front of a bunch of witnesses?

Since it's come up lately, I would add Jews. And the people who hate Jews really ****ing hate Jews.

I'll have to go find the chart but someone did some new polling on "warmness" based on religious identity and split it by age. For the youth atheists did pretty well with Mormons being extremely low. I imagine because they were the poster boy for the anti gay marriage coalition that lost and looked pretty bigoted doing it. Presumably some of the animosity towards atheists seems from olds who remember the godless communists.