It's not even the active superiority that bothers me. Those people were going to find something to be superior about, they just happened to choose that one. It's the people who are more passive about it -- the ones to whom it might not ever occur that they're being superior. The ones who dismiss things solely because they're different. It isn't an active campaign; it's just intentional disinterest. But it's fomented by the culture that I saw that told these people that they were better solely because they ``believe in Jesus''. All cultures should encourage people to expand -- to understand other things, but the culture I saw was very insular and implicitly encouraged dismissal.

My aunt, a basically good person who considers herself to be quite the Christian refuses to say the Apostle's Creed because it contains the phrase ``I believe in ... the holy catholic church'' because she refuses to acknowledge the Catholic church, despite the fact that catholic and Catholic are two quite different things. The other day she told me that Catholics didn't believe in Jesus. I don't even know where that comes from. I don't know if she's that ignorant or if she was confusing Catholicism with Judaism or what. The point is that she's gone to church basically every Sunday of all her years (she's about 70), claims to be a religious person, but doesn't know simple facts outside the tiny realm of her own denomination.