yeah
all the Pure Land stuff is experienced as "but hell is real too and if you don't obey God, you'll go there." all states are experienced as being contingent on an external authority figure that will command and menace. the guru is seen through that lens/karma seen as sin etc
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you'd have to sand off the entire fabric right down to early childhood - way way way deeper than stuff like sexual imprinting - to get good, bad, fear of hell, punishing god, virgin/whore and fear of being nailed to a cross if you get enlightened out as well.
nightmare level.
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I don't know how universal that is today.
I had very little explicitly Christian conditioning, and though some cultural rebrandings slipped in, only the diluted versions of sin and saintliness really had teeth.
I am hardly alone in this. "Damnation" just sounds like a bad joke.
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Now granted, this is Norway, and my parents were fairly materialist lefties during my early childhood, but I see it everywhere w/younger people.
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Norwegian Black Metal shows you how deep the imprinting goes.
The money lets most Norwegians pretend they are angels...
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In the time since Norwegian Black Metal, the Christians were broken politically and pushed into village enclaves.
They lost preferential treatment in education.
Attendance dropped precipitously.
Everyone started leaving the church census.
All of this was already long overdue.
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Give it two hundred years to wash out. Think of how slowly cursive handwriting is dying out.
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Yes. The last smudges will take generations at minimum. Stains from old carpet.
Still, I am glad I could grow up to find that entire cosmology ludicrous. Even a generation or two ago, that would've been a lot less probable.
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The cosmology is ludicrous but the underlying structures for navigating the world tend to be remarkably persistent even in the absence of specific beliefs.
I have a blog-post-to-write about how most atheists I know relate to feedback as if they're afraid of hell.
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Looking at what Westerners consider moral and, particularly, immoral behaviour, and the way they relate to it, I can see where you're coming from. Sin!
My point was that it seems easier to uproot now, as people stop capital-B believing many, if not all, of the supporting myths.
I think it's both easier and in a different way harder, because it can't be challenged as directly.
Something similarly subtle:
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Replying to @reasonisfun and @ernsterlanson
The French word for "thank you" is literally "merci", which I assume is essentially short for "I'm at your mercy." The power dynamics behind gratitude are hidden in plain sight; this probably used to be taken for granted.
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To be clear, on net "easier" is much more predominant. Challenging directly didn't necessarily work in the first place. A couple centuries ago this conversation wasn't possible.
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