How religious is the USA? I'm not sure how the population would react to that

How about those creatures instead start appearing n Finland, and they decide to go to U.S.A after spending some time in Finland ?

Presuming that it were in a particularly religious region of the US, they would probably declare the creatures to be demons. The most feasible reaction anyone would have in a western country is skepticism. If one of these creatures could prove beyond a doubt that they had magical powers, I would still have to know what I would be getting out of the deal and what sort of doctrines I would have to follow for the creature's blessings.

It depends on what you mean by "religious."

The people you usually see going on about religion are mostly just worshipers of a perverse reactionary individualist capitalism with christian window dressing on it, but they certainly are fervent about it.

If the weird god-creatures let these people treat other people like shit they'd be all for worshiping them.

>These creatures are demons who work for Satan. It is our Christian duty to oppose and defeat them.
Quite right. Time for smiting!

Most Americans would be terrified and have no qualms having the military JDAM them until they go away. The most religous aren't going to abandon their religion for monster things amd the most atheist will see them as monsters but not gods. Only the weird middleground creepy people and edgy teenagers looking for mystical powers would worship them. And for what it's worth this thread is going to wind up in squabbling because of politics and nothing of value will have been gained.

>Loyal followers are blessed with powers.
>Loyal followers are blessed with powers.
>Loyal followers are blessed with POWERS.

Holy shit, are you not aware of the implications? No religion in the history of mankind has granted powers. If you have a religion that BLESSES FOLLOWERS WITH POWERS, people would rush to sign up.

This is because YOUR RELIGION GRANTS PEOPLE SUPERPOWERS. If someone goes "How do we know if God is real?" and your answer is "BECAUSE BY HIS MIGHT, YOUR CANCER HAS BEEN CURED", you've won another convert.

Yeah, that seems good on a surface level, but it depends on what the entity demands in return for its powers. Sure, it could grant you telekinesis, but the price for it is walking three circles clockwise around a hundred year old oak tree, then counter clockwise, then counter clockwise again while sprinkling fetus meat behind you.

Obscure deities can have bizarre doctrines.

That isn't unreasonable. Hell, it's not like pagan rituals didn't involve animal sacrifice. And we have religious rites in Christian and Catholic tradition that are heavily based on symbolism anyway. Unless the entity's rites are unspeakably hideous, we'll probably find a way to rationalize it.

> How religious is the USA?

As someone who does a lot of traveling, less than you think. The CULTURE of America pretends to be very religious, but outside of a few specific regions that's not actually the case.

The whole thing really comes down to electoral math. The evangelical christians vote Red and are easy to please. They form enough of a consistent voting base that the Republicans can't afford to slight them. Even though they are only, say, 20-30% of the republican party at most (I mean the PRAISE JESUS, EVOLUTION IS A LIE CONSTRUCTED BY SATAN TO TURN YOUR CHILDREN GAY guys, not just anyone who partakes in some Christian worship), that's a big enough slice of the pie that if the Republicans ever did push them away, the Republicans would lose every single major election to the democrats and would cease to be a relevant figure in American politics.

So its in the interests of the Republican party to pay as much lip service as possible to said Christians to maintain their political footing.

So even if you say that the Country is divided 50/50 between the two major parties with no independents in the middle, you are really only looking at 10-15% of the country that is super religious. But you have to act like it is much more than that to win elections.

Except its actually even LESS than that, because the more conservative and and the more religious factions are both situated primarily in rural areas away from major population centers. The Electoral College gives them extra weight for elections, but in terms of actual population those districts are not where the people are.

Its kind of amazing how much damage on the political scene a relatively small number of rabid voters can do. Like, you always hear about how the National Rifle Association can cockblock any kind of gun legislation, but the NRA only has ~5 million members in the entire country. That's not even 3/4ths the population of New York City, spread out across the USA. But they VOTE.

People will rationalize it and a deity which outright offers superpowers would be ideal to people who have nothing to lose. Pic related is a story about how three penniless Englishmen discover how to contact an ancient Atlantean deity which grants black magic in exchange for performing a number of rites across several months. Sure, it grants them superpowers and all kinds of unnatural abilities, but things go really fucking wrong if they break any of the terms of the pact they made with it.

Well, I'm really off my game tonight. I replied to the wrong post AND didn't upload the picture.

Check out "That Insidious Beast". Doesn't deal with that sort of thing specifically,but it does portray a world where they didn't managed to stop them

americans would react like they do with everything weird.
They'll try to shoot them, then burn them, then shoot them again.
Since you say these things grant powers, they themselves probably have godlike powers who will bring to a pretty one-sided massacre, until the USA government decides it's better to leave these things alone and formally accept their worship since by american law every man is free to profess and practice their religion without any limitations

It’s a weird hodgepodge.

The country is of course secular, and most people with their heads on right believe this is a good thing.

I think most people are irreligious, and just don’t want to commit to the label Athiest because of how much ignorance there is about what being an Athiest entails.

However then there are evangilicals who are adamant about bible literalism and other things. A lot of Christians are convinced that we need to enact Christian sharia law, and that either satanist, atheists, or Muslims are all out to wipe them out, and that Christians are a persecuted minority despite being the majority. Most of them live in the south, and the Midwest. Also a lot of them are convinced the second coming is within their lifetimes.

Then you got Mormons who are weird in other ways. They believe in other crazy stuff, but far as I see actually mean the good stuff too, like don’t cheat on your wife. It’s a uniquely American religion, most concentrated in Utah, with Salt Lake City being the religious capital. They collect religious taxes, but keep it off the books, so we don’t know how much money they have and what they do with it. They also consider themselves underdogs, but since historically they have been, they tend to identify with other minority groups and try to help them, unlike most evengilists.

Then you got the scam religions, Scientology, and the televangelists. Jews are largely irreligious, and American Muslims are overwhelmingly moderate, usually more liberal and secular than most Christians.

Granting powers doesn't make something a god. A god can grant powers, but so can a dickass space wizard.

If raw power is your metric for worship then you'll just end up worshiping the first dickass space wizard who presents itself.

No duh, because you opened up with shit flinging.

You say that as if that isn’t exactly how it’s going to play out.

There is a segment of the population out there who are chomping at the bit to get into a cult.

If you're in the Midwest or south, there is a strong expectation that you are Christian and you go to church. What kind doesn't matter so much as you go to church period. Not doing so can get you ostracized from your community and even your family in some areas, generally small towns and rural areas. As you go into larger towns and cities this becomes less of an issue but still pops up. It's enough that I'm not religious yet I would never mention it to my family, the potential fallout should it go south is too great and overall it's far more hassle than it's worth. Many people fall in this category. They're not really religious but it's worth going to church on Easter and Christmas just to keep grandma off your case and so she keeps making those delicious cookies. It's hard to explain unless you grew up in an area like it, I know I'm not the only one who is in that kind of spot. It's essentially just not worth the hassle. If anyone asks you just say you haven't been in a while and dance around the question until you get an opportunity to ask how the local sports team is doing or something.

If you go elsewhere, it can be all over the place. Most people say they are religious on some level but don't go to church, either because they're all but agnostic but refuse to admit it, or because they're just lazy and don't like to go. If I had to guess how many Americans are truly religious, as in serious about their faith and truly follow their chosen religion's teachings, I'd put it at 20-30% max. If we just go by whether someone says they're religious as the only requirement, that number jumps to probably around 85-90%. A major chunk of those would absolutely jump ship if something like what you described showed up. Hell I'm atheist/agnostic and if something like that showed up I'd be the first to admit I was wrong about the whole religion thing and at least hear our new alien overlords out.

Depends where you are. Even though I live in the bible belt, most of the people I know aren't super religious.

As a capital A Athiest I agree, that most irreligious people would at least want to hear the new overlords case. Also as an addendum, I think there are a lot of religious people out there who just don’t think about it much. It’s not so much they are hiding it, as it is they don’t much care about theological concepts, and just go with what everyone else says.

My understanding of it is that the USA has a relatively large number of people who claim to be religious, relative to other wealthy nations, but doesn’t have a commensurate level of religious devotion; i.e., most believers aren’t as fervent as you’d expect. There is a constituency like the one you describe, though.

I’d bet on an outcome like this. Monsters aren’t going to win too many converts. Perversely, the most viable model would be something like Scientology: a cultish religion that maintains an outwardly benign appearance and attempts to avoid incurring the wrath of the government via gun-running, child-molesting, etc.

Are those things nuke- resistant?

If your powers are good enough to compensate lack of modern agriculture, medicine, roads and plumbing then you are at demigod level yourself.

Still better than worshipping some dead nomad's hallucinations.

FDF leases conscripts to municipalities to hunt down monsters, after leaving conscription many become professional monster hunters abroad and bring their deadly battle-memes with them.