EvC has had two effects on me.
The first is that it has broadened my knowledge in some fairly disparate areas (either through doing research to argue a point or just so I can follow what one of the experts is saying, or someone using a concept or piece of information I hadn't previously been aware of). More than anything this is why I keeps me coming here.
The second is that along with what I've seen in the real world it has changed my view of Christian fundamentalists (or Biblical literalists if you prefer). Until a year or two back my only experience of such people was the programs they put out on Public Access Television when I lived in Texas in the early '90s, and to be honest I thought they were a hoot. I could get hours of entertainment watching them talking about the literal flood or how the creation was 6000 years ago (not forgetting the 'play
Stairway To Heaven backwards and hear a message from Satan' chicanery that used to pop up now and again).
Of course the people who put shows out on Public Access Television were small-time operators compared to people like Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggert, Oral Roberts et al - and I always viewed the big guys as nothing more than very professional con-artists who were bilking gullible people out of a lot of money.
However what seems to have happened in the decade+ since I last lived in the States is that the Christian right have come together and joined with the neo-conservatives to form a very powerful and very frightening political force.
The result of this is that I have changed my view of the Christian right from being being a source of amusement to something that worries me enormously. Whatever the desires or intent of the Islamic fundamentalists in terms of destroying our way of life I think the unholy alliance of the Christian right and the neo-cons is
much more likely to succeed in first subverting and ultimately destroying Western-style democracy.
The part EvC has played in this change of view is that I have seen the mindset of the Biblical literalists - they are, to all intents and purposes, immune to any form of argument. They are so convinced of their rightness it astonishes (and disturbs) me. Not only that but the mental contortions they are willing to go through to sustain their beliefs defy belief.
There is nobody as dangerous as the person who isn't willing to admit they may be wrong.
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