Sadly, no. Rather, dann seems to be completely unfamiliar with any theist/believer of any stripe. Believers believe what their holy books and holy priests tell them to believe.
Err... your experience with theists seems quite... limited, if you're going to say that. To some extent, this is true. Some extent. It's also true that, even within a religion, different "holy priests" generally have teachings that differ from each other. It's also true that it's fairly common for people to change gathering places and groups for all kinds of reasons, frequently changing the teaching that they're exposed to in the process. More could easily be said, but, in short, you pretty clearly don't know what you're talking about very well if you're willing to try to refute what dann said with... that.
dann has a point, regardless, in practice. Members of pretty much any religion rarely have a deep and full understanding of the theology associated with their religion and largely then fill in the gaps with whatever they feel like when they reach one of those gaps. Or they find some principle to be something that they just don't like and just choose to ignore it or rationalize a directly contradictory view, for better or worse. Moral of the story? Treating any major religion as monolithic is something of a doomed endeavor.
Is it unique to America? Or is Western Europe unique in the world by having believers (of any stripe) who think for themselves?
America's situation is somewhat unique among the more developed countries, when it comes to religion. With that said, though, there are plenty of believers who think for themselves. That many of them don't employ much serious or impartial skepticism when it comes to religions, though, is a different matter.
To be honest, I rather doubt that many Western European believers really do ignore their priests and their bibles, either. Lots of people fancy themselves as independent free thinkers, while they toddle along doing what they are told to do by those they have convinced themselves are their betters.
Hmm. Well, some do, some don't. Have any statistical data on hand that you would find relevant in backing up your opinion? As it is, depending on what groups you meant, this could be trivially true or unlikely to be true. I've heard much about how a number of people who identify with one religion or other in Europe largely do so in name only and might attend some holiday service once or twice a year, at most. In such cases, it's frequently a matter of upholding tradition and culture rather than meaningfully being a believer. On the other hand, if you're effectively narrowing the field down to the devout, somewhat sheep-like believers from the start, of course their religious leaders will generally hold more sway regarding how they think, but that doesn't tell us much about a more general picture.
The lack of atheistic hierarchy, scripture, dogma, or priests really do put a damper on the whole false equivalence that the likes of dann and Squeegee and TBD really want everyone else to fall for.
Hmm? TBD, I can see trying to employ false equivalence, like usual. From your reaction to what dann said in the line of conversation that I first addressed and what he had said there, I somewhat suspect that you're jumping to conclusions with him and missing what's actually being said. From what I've seen of Squeegee elsewhere, I find myself doubting your claim about him here further.
