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[Serious] When you left theism, did you go Left?
#31
RE: When you left theism, did you go Left?
My path was winding. I was raised Pentecostal but when I was 15 I read the Bible cover-to-cover twice and some Ayn Rand. That cured me of being a Pentecostal, but I was still an agnostic theist and still believed a lot of superstitious shit. I didn't have any skepticism at all until I was around 20 and heard some teenagers totally spoofed the Duke University ESP experiments, which I had regarded as having statistically proven psychic abilities.

I probably always leaned centrist, but out of the USAF I first registered and voted Republican, largely on the basis of the Republicans not being likely to accomplish the things in their platform I didn't like. I was bad about voting regularly, but leaned Republican. In the eartly nineties I became a registered Libertarian, due largely to the influence of Ayn Rand and the Republicans becoming more able to enact things I didn't like. The last time I voted Republican for president was for Bob Dole when he ran against Bill Clinton. I identified as a classic liberal, fiscally responsible and socially liberal. I was becoming more and more skeptical in general and of government in particular and had jettisoned pretty much all superstition except a vague deism.

I finished college in my mid-thirties in the mid-nineties. Between science classes, logic classes, religion classes, and reading George Smith's 'The Case Against God' (in response to a religion professor's comments on the illogic of atheism), my lingering doubts of the universe requiring someone to get it started evaporated and I realized that at some point I had become an atheist. I remained a capital L Libertarian for a long time. I was till one when I joined this forum 10 years ago.

But I had issues with the LP, especially as it exists in SC. I was right in the political middle regarding left and right, but most SC Libertarians leaned hard right despite not thinking that their personal morality should be enforced by the police. I was becoming more skeptical of LP positions, partly because I noticed other Libertarians usually didn't show much skepticism. By 2014 I was voting Democrat for any office that didn't have a libertarian running for it. Leading up to the 2016 election there were far-fetched stories circulating about H. Clinton that prompted me to research them, and I realized that the vast majority of those stories were just hostile propaganda. I still voted for Gary Johnson for president, but voted Democrat down-ballot. I knew SC woudl carry Trump no matter who I voted for, so I might as well vote for the Libertarian candidate for president. I didn't think Donald Trump had a chance.

After Trump became president, I regretted my vote for Johnson even though it couldn't have made a difference in the outcome. Trump becoming president shook my trust in the collective wisdom of the people and I hadn't done my part to keep it from happening. I looked hard at my positions and what was going on around me. I was still a moderate centrist but I realized that currently the proper home for moderate centrists was the Democratic Party. The Republicans were off the rails and the Libertarians were too trusting that everything would go well if the government just stopped interfering. I haven't voted Republican or Libertarian since 2016.

So my arc towards being a moderate democrat started before my atheism, but if I had stayed a Pentecostal I don't see how I ever could have reached my current political position. And the moderation is more about not sacrificing better on the altar of best and being smart about achievable goals than not being for BLM, universal healthcare, a Scandinavian-style social safety net, prison reform, police reform, trans rights, etc. For example, I think loose talk about packing the court and adding states that will predictably vote for Democrats once we got enough power was a factor in keeping Democrats from making gains in the US House and more significant gains in the US Senate. I think 'reform the police' is a slogan that would have gotten a lot less resistance than 'defund or abolish the police'. But I'm now a solid democratic voter, so long as they continue to be the best available option with a chance of accomplishing their goals.
I'm not anti-Christian. I'm anti-stupid.
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#32
RE: When you left theism, did you go Left?
@Mister Agenda That is quite the journey. Definitely winding as you say. I agree with your assessment though. I too likely would have never started thinking skeptically if I had kept my faith. The concept of an all-powerful God obscures and takes over everything.

There was something Jimmy Snow stated in one of his videos regarding his own faith discoveries and it really popped everything into place for me as I was processing things. He said that he tried to think of how the world might be/what it would look like if the church wasn't true....and it looked exactly as it does now. That thought experiment never would have made sense to me or even occurred to me before I started losing my faith.

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#33
RE: When you left theism, did you go Left?
I was raised in a small town in southern California. I didn't know it when I was young, but it was pretty segregated until the late '60s. As an example of my level of "exposure", I never saw a PoC in a classroom until I was 12, though we did have Mexicans living on our street. I only saw the black people in shop classes, but none in the academic classes, all the way to graduation. The blacks had their own little pocket to live in. So, I was pretty sheltered and had an absolute redneck for a father (interestingly enough, he also let slip as atheist when he had been drinking). Real mixed bag. I started leaning left in the '90s and realized that I was truly a "filthy atheist" in '01.  Panic Went through all the stages of shaking off the programming. Did a lot of reading and realized just how deeply the lies go.
If you get to thinking you’re a person of some influence, try ordering somebody else’s dog around.
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#34
RE: When you left theism, did you go Left?
I kind of started on the left. Far left = freedom loving pacifists, far right = fascist, tight-fisted warmongering assholes.
You know the cliches.

It took a while after leaving religion behind to understand that religion wasn't the only dogma I bought into. Oh don't get me wrong, the right are still assholes but it turned out the left were too. And I saw it all for what it was and understood it under the same framework a religion worked under; a tribal power game. "Your group believes this, therefore you shall believe this."

And then I understood. Its not god we worship. Not money. Not ideology. Not prince or pauper, king or country. Its power.
We worship power and as human beings we possess a primal drive to use any simple or elaborate tool either real or imagined in the vain hope that we will at some point be its vessel. That it will flow through us making our will tangible for even the briefest of moments before we self-destruct.
A spent object previously at the height of motion, discarded having reached its full potential in service of... whatever. The details don't matter.
Only that you existed and were known to exist before you didn't. Set alight like an effigy in tribute to fuck knows what.
That is the purpose of life, to burn so bright that when you turn to ash you go from your very best to oblivion in a single instant.
That drive, that terrible nonsensical drive to transcend it all. That is what its all about...

So yeah, I'm pretty a-political.
"That is not dead which can eternal lie and with strange aeons even death may die." 
- Abdul Alhazred.
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#35
RE: When you left theism, did you go Left?
I also voted for Johnson in 2012 and 16.  We need a legitimate 3rd party, and I live in a red state.  I don't consider myself libertarian because of the obvious flaws in the ideology.  (They all have flaws.  They're just ideas.)  I've had discussions with many claiming to be Libertarian that are actually closet right-wingers.
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