No Stupid Questions

What is the percentage of the Western world that believes in profit motive and private ownership of property, 90%? I don't think it's BECAUSE they are religious conservatives.

I don't think religions are inherently socialistic. There's a socialist reading of the text, but in terms of like the historical role of the Catholic church it was more like a government than a commune. Governments aren't inherently socialistic (unless you're using a pretty broad view of the word). They help the poor and set rules to follow but they're only directly managing their portion (10%-30%) of the economy, the rest can be anything.

I'd start by narrowing the scope of this question to conservative Christians in the US and Europe. India has a larger population that the US and the EU combined, is quite religiously conservative and leans socialist. Even though the Catholic Church issued a "Decree Against Communism" in 1949, that has since been amended and many Catholics around the world embrace socialism. While modern Muslims do participate in market economies, Islam has some fairly strict laws against capitalism; Sukuk is the complex workaround they use in order to get against their prohibition against charging interest.

For Christians in the US and Europe I think there are a few major components.

Christianity has had strong capitalist elements for a long time. In particular, John Calvin argued, among other things, that God rewards good Christians in this life as well as the next. These rewards can take the form of material wealth and therefore material wealth is evidence of God's favor. This philosophy was obviously extremely popular among the wealthy.

After WWII the US government wanted a way to convince people that our erstwhile allies, the USSR and China should now be considered enemies. One obvious element to emphasize was that they were both Communists. An element of Communism was godlessness, "Religion is the opiate of the masses." So the US took the contrary stance and presented itself as a Christian nation. Two of the more obvious results were that "under God" was added to the pledge of allegiance and Congress replaced the unofficial "E Pluribus unum" (out of many, one) with, "In God we trust." Since it was primarily intended to be anti-communist it was, effectively, pro-capitalist.

In the US there was also a deliberate shift when George HW Bush realized that evangelical Christians made up a large part of the Republican base. At the time churches had a fairly strong aversion to politics. They generally considered politics and economics to be part of the profane world and thought it was beneath them. He managed to convince them that the profane wasn't just irrelevant to spiritual health, it was an active threat. By this view, good Christians couldn't ignore politics they had to take an active role to help fight Satan. Since the Republicans were the ones actively recruiting Evangelicals into politics they made sure the message stayed supportive of their policies (including economic policies).

@jungekatz all the other answers are far more nuanced, and explain a lot more detail, but the most simple answers to your question are 1. Propaganda and 2. Herd mentality/echo chamber thinking.

Could they be more credulous and hence more susceptible to the lies corporations tell us?

Basically… because of slavery.

If you take a look at an indigenous population and decide that both:

1. They are lazy, because their labor only produces subsistence and isn’t captured as surplus value stored in currency
2. Their laziness is a moral failing which will doom them to eternal suffering

…then you have now put yourself in a mental model where you have a moral duty to force that person to work for (your) profit instead of subsistence, in order to save their soul.

If you have a whole country that thinks this way, they will try to enslave the whole world and feel good about doing so.

So in a Darwinian way, that mentality is the most “fit”. It’s very uhhh “successful”. And so it propagates.

Two reasons:

In the 70's and 80's in the US, the economic right wing formed an alliance of convenience with religious social conservatives (notably not Roman Catholics, Episcopalians, and other non-Protestant sects) to seek polit8cal power.

Second, Christianity holds that humans tend to be sinful and selfish, and thus utopian schemes that rely on participants to be unselfish and egalitarian are doomed at scale, becoming instead forces of oppression.

Throw in Communism's historical opposition to religion as icing on the cake.

Because most religious conservatives don't think beyond "what is acceptable to my group" and do that. Or appear to do that. And not rocking the boat is highly valued in those communities, so people who want to abuse others financially find ripe ground for it.

When people say they don't support capitalism then what is the system you see as a more viable alternative?

Edit: Imagine being downvoted for asking a question

Actual conservative here.

Not all progress is good. Its best made in measured doses.

Life is good. Sure there are problems, but they can be solved without completely changing the system. Better laws and regulations, going after those abusing the system, that sort if thing.

Also the only alternative presented is communism. And historcally, whats been advertised as communism has lead to a 100 million deaths, the oppression of everyone else involved, and generally bad shit. (No, Im not arguing about what is true communism)