# You let WHO back into your life? (Religion, not relationships)

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-let-who-back-into-your-life-religion-not-relationships/691349>\
**Category:** The BBQ Pit\
**Created:** [June 22, 2014, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-let-who-back-into-your-life-religion-not-relationships/691349 "2014-06-22T04:17:55Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 4

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**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\
**Post date:** [June 24, 2014, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-let-who-back-into-your-life-religion-not-relationships/691349/61 "2014-06-24T20:11:36Z")

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> [@Poysyn](#):
>
> How about this? Don’t judge _this Christian_ by the actions of _that Christian_? . . .

I’d modify that by statistical trends. If 99% of all Christians were bad, and you said, “I’m a Christian too,” I’d probably leap to an unfortunate conclusion about you. (And, sure, if 99% of Christians were wonderful, I’d leap to a complimentary conclusion.)

This works, though, because of the incredibly vast diversity and variety among the faithful, from raving assholes to really nice people, in a pretty standard “bell curve” distribution. The Fred Phelps wing is balanced by nice Mrs. Winter up the street with her Catholic Church bake sales. (Yum!)

There are enough good Christians that a bad opinion of them isn’t compelled on me by statistical sampling.

(One particularly sad thing is that this is not true of Christian radio. If anyone can point me to a moderate, polite, gentle, kind, and respectful Christian radio broadcast, I’d love to learn of it. All I ever have been able to find are…the other kind.)

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**Author:** ![Saintly\_Loser](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saintly_loser/32/4045_2.png) [@Saintly\_Loser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saintly_Loser)\
**Post date:** [June 24, 2014, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-let-who-back-into-your-life-religion-not-relationships/691349/62 "2014-06-24T20:34:58Z")

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> [@LC\_Strawhouse](#):
>
> My pet theory is that only about 10% of religious people truly believe in it (these people would also be known as “Republican primary voters” in the U.S.) The other 90% do it for social reasons - they just want to fit into their community or otherwise portray a certain image to the world, and cherry-pick a religion if they have to. When I was in school, most of the Middle Eastern and Indian kids seemed to identify themselves as “Catholic”.

> [@JKellyMap](#):
>
> You may be right about all of this…but let me point out that Catholicism has a long and entrenched history in parts of India (especially the coastal south, where Portuguese traders were an influence for centuries), so some of those Indian kids might have been as multi-generationally Catholic as, say, someone from Ireland or France.

There are also plenty of Catholics in the Middle East – they’re (for the most part) known as Maronites, and are an Eastern Rite church in communion with the Latin church.

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