I was raised in a pretty conservative religion that listened to right-wing radio and news. However, I recently deconstructed religion entirely and can see it for the sham it is now. Once I did that my political ideology completely changed to the opposite. I’m now pretty progressive and happier than I’ve ever been.

Severe abuse by the church made me firmly anti religion for most of my youth, and then meeting religious people of varied faiths who weren’t monsters softened my feelings as I realized it wasnt all entirely evil. Then studying some of my family’s roots brought me where I am now: vaguely pagan while still acknowledging that I’m always going to be culturally Christian. I like to just tell people I’m a “recovering Catholic” for brevity and a laugh.

As for my social and political views, it was seeing all my friends come out as queer and realizing that I could either keep the far right views my family taught me, or I could learn to get my head out of my ass to keep my found family. Once I started forming my own opinions, I realized I got fed a load of shit my whole life(and also I’d wind up coming out too lmao)

• Raised Catholic - was pretty religious when young.
• In adolescence, started questioning things that didn’t make sense to me (e.g., why would God not want people to use birth control if they couldn’t afford kids? Why would he make people have a strong urge for sex but not want them to have it except for babies, and all the more typical things).
• Struggled more and more with things that didn’t make sense to me as I i got older (if God created everything, knows what’s going to happen, etc., how does it make sense to pray for something? Should he changed his plan because I asked really nicely? Etc.).
• Finally realized that all the myriad things that didn’t make sense to me disappeared if it turns out there is no god.
• Free from that notion, everything has clicked into place for me and the world makes more sense. It’s been 40ish years since then.

I thankfully was raised in the exact region and community with the correct religion and prevailing political views. /s

In reality, humanities courses in university, living in the many different types of communities (urban, suburban, rural), and good parents who taught me not to take claims at face value.

I’ve lived in the Southeast USA, SoCal, Southeast, and SoCal again, each for many years. It amazed me how much the culture is polarized in each area. I think both areas suck hard on the propaganda sauce. I’m hard left now just because I’m for helping people, and hate zealotry

Developing a bullshit detector and having basic empathy. Atheist; friendly to friendly people, hostile to hostile people; believe government should serve the people, never the other way around.

Religious: I grew up in a deeply religious household, my parents are still very religious and they consider that the cornerstone of their lives. No judgement here, they are great people and I’ve never once seen them use their religion to hurt others. For me, I appreciate the moral lessons I learned in that church and I think it made me a more empathetic person. I just have no particular need for a religion to be a good person. Stopped following any religion in my early 20s.

Social and political: See also 1. Being bullied as a kid made me have a deep rooted hatred for people who harm others, which means I tend to champion oppressed people now. Honestly, however, this should be a normal human thing to do. Beyond that, I tend to have a “live and let live” attitude towards most things so long as you’re not bothering anyone else. I guess that makes me one of those snowflake liberals that are destroying America?

Not even going to read the thread before making this comment.

Remember rule 1 in this one.

A great deal of my negative experiences in life have been “for the Glory of Christ”

Fuck your imaginary sky men.

Reading, talking to people, thinking, observations, etc.

Religion: I was raised Christian but my parents weren’t very observant. I started to see cracks when at my primary school we were taught about god creating the world and the big bang.

When I was 13 my girlfriend died. I turned to the bible for support and after reading it realised it was just fairy tales.

Social and political: I was a punk as a teenager. More due to my love for skateboarding and depression/anger about my girlfriend. But in that culture I started to realise how fucked everything was.

Serveral homeless people would wonder by the skatepark and we’d talk to them. Many of them we’re lovely people who had some sort of awful tragedy happen. I realised how heartless society could be. If you can’t work and function then you have no value. This was reinforced by how people talked about like they were the scum of the earth.

This was the early 00s in a rural county so racism and homophobia were rampant as well. There were probably single digit people if colour I saw in my town but again some used to stop by and chat with us / cheer us on when skating.

Again this showed how horrible the majority of people were.

So my politics became pretty simple. Everyone deserves to live a good life. That view is not very well reflected in the right.

I am currently part of a church that loves these types of questions because it means that I can bear testimony of God and bring the holy spirit into the conversation. I don’t like doing so online with a profile that I try to keep somewhat anonymous.

There are two “science only” reasons for my faith:

• outcomes. Everyone lives longer, has more education, has more wealth, has more kids, but stays away from self medication (alcohol, tobacco, caffeine) so a bunch are on prescription antidepressants. Umm “by their fruits you shall know them” and (last I checked) education in this church is the only one that is positively correlated with church activity.
• pascals wager. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_wager

I have struggled with depression myself and have found the best solution is service. Church is a great “batteries included” way to serve. I also have a day of the week where I call up family and ask if I can help with anything. I was able to help my father in law renovate his house by making these calls.

Regarding politics. I hate political party “vendor lock in”. I have no clue how any of the issues get discussed based on how much astroturfing and bought/compromised news outlets. I imagine that my interactions with politicians is like reddit’s “upvote” where it really does nothing unless you sort by new. So I follow the money only.

Grew up in a moderately catholic home, had a strong sense of faith as a kid. Hormones took over as a teenager and resided to not knowing if God existed. Had a spiritual moment in my mid twenties (no, I won’t go into online) became a pentecostal Christian. Put myself through the church wringer for a little over 10 years. Started deconstructing my faith and asking a lot of questions about what I believe and why a few years ago. I still have a strong faith in God but how I live that faith is very different to the last 15 years and is very different to what I consider “mainstream” Christianity. I’m so much happier not being in “church” and I feel free to accept myself and others more than I ever had. Still working on myself though. So yes, I still consider myself a Christian but had to spit out a lot of bullshit taught over the years.

Once I hit my early 20s I had a goal for myself: to find out what the truth is, whatever it may be, even if it shatters my most cherished beliefs. I went through so many different belief systems. I explored every kind of mindset I could regarding everything I could. I would get very involved with some belief system or ideology for a time and absorb what I could from it and then move on to something else.

Over time, I saw a ton of patterns emerge and I saw that ideologies of any kind place a limited filter on how one views reality. I decided that what makes the most sense to me is to simply seek to do the most good while doing the least harm. Whether or not one believes in a god is irrelevant as life does as it will anyway. Adhering to a political party is just team sports. Social norms are basically attempts to not be uncomfortable and only pretend to be about safety and order (neither of which exist regardless of what social norms exist).