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One of the most powerful tools for marginalizing non-religious thought in America has been the perception of a "moral supermajority" – the idea that believers outnumber the rest of us by a huge margin. Poll after poll has suggested that, indeed, a huge majority of Americans believe in God, and that many of those who do believe in the literal words of the Bible, including a young Earth and that evolution is a sham. Right or wrong, believers win by being numerous – after all, might, defined by numbers, makes right in a democracy.
I always felt this seemed far removed from my own experience in terms of how people I knew personally viewed religion. Of course, I live in a pretty liberal part of the country, so I kind of explained it away by figuring that there must be a huge enough number of religious people SOMEWHERE ELSE that it would offset my own experience.
While I'm sure geography is a factor here, it turns that it may not be THE major factor. Pew Research recently conducted a study
The line between nerd and sports fan is almost invisible when you get down to it: Is there really that much of a difference between a cosplayer wearing a bathrobe and waving a glow-stick at comic-con, and a fat high school burnout wearing a $200 Walter Payton throwback jersey while referring to the Bears in the first person plural? Whedon groupies and Jim Rome's clone army share the same doomed wish. But at least the jocks pine to matter in sports that actually exist. For the rest of us, we can always dream of sports like…
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Geek and you shall find