“I don’t have a problem with Jews, I just was raised Christian and hate the Abrahamic god.”

Ok, A) mainstream Jewish and Christian views of divinity are pretty radically different, so nah, you hate the Christian concept of God you were raised with.

(1/x)

B) maybe take 5 minutes to think it through instead of abusing people who have nothing to do with your trauma.

“I have no negative feelings about these people, I just hate the god they worship” is utter, illogical nonsense.

Because if you believe the deity a people worship is evil, then at BEST you believe those people, en masse, are stupid.

They’d HAVE to be, to worship a deity that’s openly evil.

At worst, you believe those people, en masse, are evil.

So nah, either you’re lying to Jews & Muslims when you say “I have no negative feelings about YOU, I just hate the Abrahamic God,” or you’re lying to yourself.

(The logical outcome of “the concept of God as I’m familiar with it is evil to me but here’s an entire culture that (predominantly) worships God” isn’t that that culture is nearly 100% stupid or evil people—it’s that their concept is different.)

And I actually think that’s true of Christians as well, with an important distinction: power and normalization.

Like, it takes effort to be a member of a minority tradition in the US. The culture is set up to encourage you to assimilate, not to support you. So unless you’re in an isolated enclave, you’re pretty much forced to consider the option of NOT continuing to adhere.

Whereas you can go through life doing little to know questioning of your beliefs when your beliefs are the cultural norm. The world you operate in is set up to make that easy.

It’s also set up to allow extreme versions of those beliefs—like, for example, the evangelical concept of God, which I *do* see as pretty toxic—to get cover from the norm.

Like, if someone in the US references going to church, getting married in a church, celebrating Christmas or Easter, most people are not going to react as if that’s strange, since it’s normalized in the US.

And most people are also not going to assume that just because you got married in a church or went there on Christmas that you’re an evangelical or adherent of some other extreme version of Christianity.

The normalization of Christianity gives you cover from having to specify your beliefs. So you can have a fairly extreme belief system and rarely to never have it questioned unless you volunteer specific information about it, which means you may not learn that it’s fringe.

Part of the privilege of adhering to the normalized belief system in a culture is that you don’t get a ton of insistence that you question it because it’s *what’s considered normal.*

Which I think lets you live your life being at least nominally Christian and saying that yeah, you believe at least the outlines of that stuff, vaguely, and going to church on the big holidays without sitting down and working through WHY you believe it.

And look, this is not to say that every Jew or Muslim in America has done it either, but when you—and your children—have to celebrate your holidays with armed guards because there’s a significant-enough chance that you might get shot for being there...

...that’s a pretty significant pressure to consider why it’s important enough to you to adhere to this tradition to take that risk. *Especially* if you have kids who are also taking that risk. Not to mention the much less dramatic but more frequent Othering.

All of which is to say, I think normalization lets toxic conceptions grow, because they get that cover. Minority traditions don’t get to avoid that scrutiny (either internal or external), because being a deviation from the norm subjects them to constant questioning.

So I don’t think you’re making the same sort of commentary (in the US) about who the average Christian is when you say you think the Christian god is evil, because you can be Christian on autopilot here.

Whereas when you’re saying that about minority religions in the US—who are constantly Othered, questioned, pressured to assimilate, etc.—you’re talking about people who’ve fought to continue that adherence.

Which, if you believe that our beliefs are evil, makes us *outstandingly* stupid or evil to continue in a way members of the majority, who can be just going along to get along, are not.

So, back to the original point, most people don’t wake up in the morning saying “I’m going to be evil!!!” and also, most people are not so stupid that they’re unaware of the grade school level insight of “a God who sends people to hell for minor shit might be evil.”

So either there’s some reason that rejecting that concept is hard for them, like strong pressure from an external source not to, OR you’re actually dealing with a different concept.

For Christianity, again, it’s thoroughly normalized in the US, which is pretty strong pressure. For non-Christian belief systems, the opposite is true.