Thread by @AlexandraErin

I touched on this earlier, but "second coming of God" is another example of Christian cultural hegemony; that is, Christianity so dominates our culture (even among atheists and secular humanists) that Christianity becomes our framework for understanding other religions.

You can see this when people (in fiction writing and elsewhere) refer to things like "the Buddhist devil" or "the Greek hell" or whatever. Lucifer, a tv show about fantastic Christian mythology, had a line that claimed every religion has a rebellious son as a devil figure.

And you can see where this kind of thinking starts. You compare something unfamiliar to something familiar in order to get a starting point. Fine, as far as it goes.

But then you start reasoning by analogy, and lose sight of the analogy.

So you wind up with evangelicals going, "If Buddha is the Buddhist Jesus, but Buddha does not claim to be the son of God, and we know only God made flesh can wipe away sins, how can Buddha claim to lead you to heaven?" and then wonder why Buddhists aren't convinced.

People who are far less fanatically Christian than that wind up making the same kind of cringey errors.

I've run into opposition on here for noting that most US atheists are specifically Christian atheists; the god they don't believe in the most is the Christian one. It's true.

It's how they wind up explaining their atheism by asking why anyone would believe in an all-loving God who condemns people to hell for not worshipping him.

It's the same logical error as Pascal's Wager, in reverse.

I've seen the "Second Coming of [entity not associated with a second coming" formulation for all manner of spiritual and religious figures, by people who grasp that the people they're talking about don't believe in Jesus, but assume they must have a different Jesus.

Because that's what religion is to them: the thing where you have a Jesus.

Evangelism based on fundamental misunderstandings of what other people believe and why is doomed to fail. But of course, the meta-purpose of evangelism includes not just getting recruits but molding a narrative: the elect few against a stubborn, recalcitrant world.

If you read evangelical literature (and I'm including Jack Chick's tracts here, lots of you have seen those), there is a trope where the non-believer is converted because they *already* believe and just don't know it.

A successful Jack Chick conversion goes like this:

"You know Jesus?"

"Jesus? Who's that? A pimp? A playa? A playa pimp? A pimp, who plays?"

"He is the son of God sent to save us."

"NO, you're kidding me. Says who?"

"Oh, no one much... except maybe the BIBLE."

"I'm sold."

I.e., someone who has somehow never heard of Jesus nevertheless immediately accepts that Christ Is Lord when told it says so in the Bible, because they accept the authority of the Bible.

Of course if you try this in real life, you get nowhere. Which teaches the young missionaries that the world really is an awful, fallen place full of liars who are stubbornly denying what they know to be true.

It's them against the world, the few saved vs. the many damned.

Meanwhile... it works sometimes! Because in US Christian culture (which again, encompasses a large number of atheists and secular humanists) we still pick up a cultural reverence for the Bible and people who we assume are speaking authoritatively about it.

By which I mean, even people who don't share evangelical beliefs tend to just sort of defer to what evangelical leaders say is in the Bible. Like Catholics who pick up a belief in the Rapture, or non-Christians who assume all that stuff about Satan is in there for sure.

It's surprisingly easy for someone who isn't an actual avowed atheist but doesn't go to church, but was raised in US Christian culture and kind of mildly believes in God and heaven to get scared or inspired by a sufficiently forceful proclamation built on references to the Bible.

See also: doomsday proclamations make a lot of people nervous, who don't necessarily "believe" them. If you know the Bible is a revered cultural artifact and source of authority, but you don't care enough about it to have deep opinions on what it says or means...

...and here's someone else who speaks with confidence and has spent years studying it, saying this, this, and the other thing...

It can set you to wondering.

Anyway.

My point is that if you grew up in Christian culture, even if you didn't grow up in the Christian religion, you should be aware of how it informs your thinking. It makes it harder for us to understand other cultures, and more vulnerable to manipulation by our own.