[Serious] When you left theism, did you go Left?

[Sal]

I did a dip into the political right-of-center pipeline, and drank the Kool-Aid, it wasn't until I watched Vaush, PhilosophyTube & Natalie Wynn
(Contrapoint) pick apart Sargon of Akkad, Tim Pool, Jordan Peterson, etc. little band of politically right bullshit. I especially remember Vaush probing through the Count-"It's just a joke"-Dankula, who hides his hate for immigrants and right-leaning idiocy behind a veneer & fall-back to "It's just a joke" bs.

I remember buying and reading Jordan Peterson's "12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos" and thinking that it was a good self-help book, with his view of meta-narratives; I had a blind-spot for all the religious language and style he employs.

I have mainly Vaush to thank for, for making me realize what kind of, almost mentally ill, emotionally appeals they make. I was atheist well before that, but I had lukewarm feelings for all things religious - I've now gone further left than even before my dip into the right-political pipeline, to the point of reading stuff by Marx & Engels Selected Works. I would consider myself even anti-Capitalist at this point, where capitalism is an evil we have to combat, from within and outside looking in, if you understand me.

[zwanzig]

From the time I was a child going to Sunday School to the time I was a teenager playing trumpet with the choir, I was looking for reasons to believe.  The more I studied and learned, the more skeptical I became.  One of the things that puzzles me more now than ever is how followers of a guy who tells them to get back to nature, eschew material gain, and love all people could vote Republican.

That's kind of what I'm talking about too. It's not just confirmation bias but cognitive dissonance mixed in.

The doctrine says be obedient.

The Repub/conservative platform says it's about individual liberty and justice, yet cushions the rich and the decadent.

The doctrine says submit to the will of God.

The Repub/conservative platform says it's supporting independence, freedom, and civil rights. God given rights.

The doctrine preaches love, acceptance, and picking up the downtrodden. Putting everyone on an even playing field under God.

The Repub/conservative platform is vehemently against gay rights, trans rights, anyone other than Christian rights, and in any situation they can, they cast doubt upon the legitimacy of brown people having rights.

(By the by, for each of these doctrines I've listed, I can also think of opposing doctrines Christianity also preaches simultaneously; submit to God but Christ sets you free; free agency is important but obey or you'll go to hell, etc.)

It's not something I was aware of while I was faithful. Any time I had any liberal leanings, I did so while accepting that I was likely making God unhappy. I thought my political views and my religious views made intuitive sense at the time. Yet, it was an intellectually lazy way of approaching the issues to the point it didn't even occur to me that God didn't exist. So I never examined it or entertained any doubts.

[Sal]

Pretty much all conservative talking points use emotive language, not reason and argument.

[zwanzig]

I did a dip into the political right-of-center pipeline, and drank the Kool-Aid, it wasn't until I watched Vaush, PhilosophyTube & Natalie Wynn
(Contrapoint) pick apart Sargon of Akkad, Tim Pool, Jordan Peterson, etc. little band of politically right bullshit. I especially remember Vaush probing through the Count-"It's just a joke"-Dankula, who hides his hate for immigrants and right-leaning idiocy behind a veneer & fall-back to "It's just a joke" bs.

I remember buying and reading Jordan Peterson's "12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos" and thinking that it was a good self-help book, with his view of meta-narratives; I had a blind-spot for all the religious language and style he employs.

I have mainly Vaush to thank for, for making me realize what kind of, almost mentally ill, emotionally appeals they make. I was atheist well before that, but I had lukewarm feelings for all things religious - I've now gone further left than even before my dip into the right-political pipeline, to the point of reading stuff by Marx & Engels Selected Works. I would consider myself even anti-Capitalist at this point, where capitalism is an evil we have to combat, from within and outside looking in, if you understand me.

Jimmy Snow was my key to everything. Not to get too much into my deconversion story, but I was happy to be inactive from church but still a deep believer at heart. Then I watched one of Mr. Atheist's videos like, 10 things Mormons don't want you to know, or something like that. I was confident in my testimony, arrogantly snorting over what his bad faith interpretation might be. So, I watched it, to boost my ego and how much truth I knew and how stupid and lost he was. I didn't get far into the video before the hinges began to squeak. It sent me down the rabbit hole for leaving Mormnism. Then, as I started leaving all religion behind, I started watching more of Jimmy Snow's videos. He's a big LGBT advocate. Once or twice I saw Genetically Modified Skeptic and Matt Dillahunty on his channel and I started watching their content too. I also like a few analyses of conservative content creators that I have seen Big Joel do.

This was a great analysis that started me thinking about this shift I've gone through and trying to figure out the exact nature of how I've changed.

[FlatAssembler]

When I became an atheist, I soon became an anarchist as well. I found believing that prisons were a good thing to be about as ridiculous as believing hell is a good thing. And, by extension, that the belief that police protects us is ridiculous as well. The police almost always comes after an insane person has already murdered someone, and then they put that insane person in prison. And prison is a place from which that insane person will return with even more psychological problems.
Now, whether anarchism is left-wing, well, I think it depends on whether the anarchist believes a violent revolution to overthrow the current government would do more good than harm. Because that is what left-wing and right-wing originally meant, left-wing meant one who supports the Frech Revolution. I do not think that a revolution would do more good than harm, as revolutions do not have a stellar track record of achieving what they promise. Maybe it would work in North Korea, but it is very unlikely to work here. So, no, I did not become more left-wing.

[vulcanlogician]

I think people leave religion because they begin to think critically about things. Once this process begins, it continues on, well after deconversion. Critical thinking is then applied to political ideas. Without the dogma of "the left is bad" being a constraint on freethought, many atheists consider the merits of leftist positions.

Some still end up being conservative (usually more liberartian). But many perceive the left more clearly, and see that the left is actually more morally sound than they were previously led to believe.

In the end, where people go is up to them. If new atheists drift toward the left, it's possibly because they were duped into being conservative before.

[Anomalocaris]

Always an atheist.

Politically my own position didn;t drift much. But my revulsion have. I changed from regarding the left wing with the greater disapprobation, to regarding the right wing with the very utmost of loathing, disgust and contempt.

[Belacqua]

There's a wall there which makes connection and ideas incapable of jumping through.

I've always been an atheist and always about as far left as it's possible to be. So no change there. 

What has changed for me is pretty typical I think -- when you're 18 you think you know everything and then when you grow up you realize you don't. The main thing is not to close down. What you say here about a wall is what's scary.

It just shouldn't be team sports. It's too simple to say that the left is always correct or religious people have nothing to add that's helpful. 

One trouble is that "liberal" and "conservative" have lost their real meanings. Conservatives on TV are radicals. Liberals on TV are corporate shills. Actual left-wing people have zero presence in corporate media. 

But in recent times there have been genuine conservative critics who are seriously intelligent and deserve a hearing. Like Philip Rieff or Augusto del Noce. They are wildly unlike Ben Shapiro and that type of media idiot. There have also been Christian thinkers in recent times who enrich our thinking in challenging ways, like Simone Weil or Michel Henry. You will never ever see people like this in the mainstream media, but we do ourselves an injustice by ruling them out because they're on the opposing "team," or supposing that they somehow resemble goons like Jordan Peterson.

I guess I have become conservative in certain fields. I think traditional art and architecture are far more worthwhile than anything at the Tate Modern or the Whitney. I see no reason why this is incompatible with left-wing political values, and could probably put together an argument as to why the art of the traditional "greats," like Titian or Hokusai, is in fact more compatible with leftist goals than the academic stuff that's famous today.

[The Grand Nudger]

It's probably not so much that people are leaving religions because they're beginning to think critically as it is that the religions no longer provide the services for which they were envisioned and upon which their cultural authority was premised.

[Brian37]

The only thing atheist's have in common is lack of belief in God/gods. Not all former theist move to the left after leaving any religion. And some people never get raised in any religion. There are GOP and Libertarian voting atheists too. For the life of me, I can't understand why. There are other atheists who value the likes of Che, who lead to Castro's Cuba too. 

But sure, it is possible for someone who is formally a fundementalist, to ditch such a position, and realize they were sold a bill of goods. But ultimately atheists are just as diverse in their politcs, encomics, and class and education level. I myself was a liberal Catholic growing up before I left it in my early 20s.