@mibwright
Yeah, that's fair. I don't know what I think is the main effect of its being in the world. Certainly its most obvious effect is the more intolerant / bigoted / ignorant one, at least in the US lately. I don't know to what extent there is a quieter benign effect, and how large that is.

I think you're right that the fundamentalist position (including the odious consequences of it) are supported implicitly by the probably larger population of mysterians who don't explicitly reject them.