Hi friend, I propose you try an experiment: post a small handful of anonymous comments on the Internet, try to make them benign as possible but casually slip in an acknowledgement that you are vegan. Something along the lines of “God that recipe looks amazing, but I think I might swap out the beef broth for veggie broth as I am vegan” like I said the point of this experiment is to say something completely as benign and inoffensive as possible.
Once you post sit back and wait for the responses to roll in. You will likely find that while not every time, it is incredibly common for people to send you pictures of bacon, and an abundant of angry responses to the mere offhand mention of the word.
I sincerely wish it was a straw man fallacy, but it unfortunately is a exceedingly common response to the word.
Out of curiosity do you have any evidence to back that claim for those raised in an environment where you have a high degree of science education? Like I know without science to explain the natural world, religion makes “sense”. But as long as you have a strong knowledge base in science I’m not convinced people would be easily swayed by religion.
For example, I was raised without religion, and I’ve never seen much of a reason to learn about it. That being said whenever I hear someone talk about religion it sounds particularly absurd to my ears. “Sky Daddy will fix all your ills, you just need to trust in sky Daddy. Sky Daddy doesn’t like it when you X.” I’m sorry, what? Uh no.