Answer 60

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Question 60

Has your being or becoming an atheist affected your political outlook?

Only within the last decade or so, as the religious right began to work to subsume the Republican party. I've always considered myself a moderate (and there used to be moderates in the Republican party).

Wish the Dems would be more willing (or able) to fill in the centrist vaccuum, or that the RR *would* take it's ball and go home (as Dobson threatened). (Pat Kiewicz #1154)

No.

No, but it sure limits my political choices, since *every* fucking politician claims to have god on their side.

I guess that *has* altered my political outlook, as it is just one more factor that separates the politicians and the candidates from having anything in common with me, the citizen.

I doubt I'll ever find a politician that has much in common with my point(s) of view, and their religiosity is just another thing that makes them very different from me. (Joe Zawadowski #249)

My voting patterns have definitely changed since the GOP got so cozy with the religious right. However I don't think I can conclude that that's because I'm an atheist due to the fact that my wife (who is a theist) votes more or less the same way I do. (Jim McCarthy #1337)

Not that I know of. I have always been a liberal which I think has more to do with growing up stone cold poor than with a lack of religious conviction. Although being a liberal fits in very well with being an atheist as we tend to be a tolerant, caring bunch. (Chani #1118)

Hell no. I was an atheist long before I could vote legally. As it stands, I'm a Liberal (which up here in Canada is halfway between the Socialists and the Conservatives) and I came to that only because I couldn't agree with either one of the two extremes. So I took a little of one, a little of the other and found that the Liberals made the most sense to me. (Blackguard #869)

Indirectly. When I was a Christian, I had no choice but to accept the Bible as the final authority. It made perfect sense to expect the government to behave in a way consistent with Biblical teaching. Luckily I came to my senses before I started examining the political landscape.

As an atheist, I have to work much harder at deciding how we should govern ourselves. I've been studying the problem for close to 20 years, but I still haven't been able to get it as precise as I'd like it. (Carl Funk #1229)

I was a Republican by upbringing. After I became an atheist, and I saw how the Republican party was snuggling up to the Religious Right, I turned Democrat.

Not that the Democratic party is perfect or anything, they're just not pawns of religious extremists. (Jeff Dee #366)

In a sense yes. It's actually about the same as most of the time I spent as a theist, but for most of my time as a theist I was holding a religious position about as offensive as the atheist position, so I had the same reason then as I do now to be a liberal. Quite frankly I've always it offensive for the government to give more respect to the christians than anyone else, regardless of whether or not I'm currently beleiving in some deity at the time. Admittidly it is somewhat selfish, and who knows, maybe if I really believed in the church-approved version of the christian god I might think it's a good thing to santify it in law, but I also suspect that a lobotomy would be neccessary for me to worship, let alone believe in, that fucking bastard. As is though, I don't like having the first amendment so blatently trampled. You all know exactly what I'm talking about, and I'm not just talking about the big stuff, like atheists not being allowed to testify in Texas, I'm talking about ALL the little fucking things. I'm talking about our tax dollars paying for nativity scenes. I'm talking about being taught the 10 commandments in school. I'm talking about our last president saying that we shouldn't be considered citizens. I'm talking about having some murderous bastard god shoved down my throat wherever I go in state funded ways. I don't like YHVH. If he existed I'd dedicate my life to erradicating him. I feel this way now, and I felt about the same back when I beleived in a deity. Admittedly though I've gone from being a fiscal conservative to a fiscal liberal, but I'm pretty sure that has nothing to do with my lack of religious beliefs, I'm pretty sure my lack of belief only affects my opinions in such things as abortion, sex laws, and my tax money funding prosletysing. (Rian Jensen #317)

Most definitely, but i'm not sure of the degree to which my atheism affected my political awakening. When I was an undergrad and started voting (in 1982) I voted Republican because I thought they represented me. Turns out I just believed what the Republicans told me in campaign ads. At that time i was still pretty firmly in the Catholic Church and blissfully unaware of any other belief system. I was pretty naive about most everything, thanks to that 12 years of Catholic school education ;-) It wasn't until Pat Robertson ran for president in, what, 1988(?) that I started to question what the Republicans stood for. When it became obvious that the religious right/KKKristian Koalition had the Republicans by the short and curlies (circa 1992 or so) that I realized the Republicans were full of shit and didn't represent me. I read some stuff about the republican party and educated myself about the democrats and realized that the democrats were more to my liking. I became decidedly anti-religion by the 1992 election, seeing the way Pat Robertson and his evil horde power brokered with the gutless republican party. If anything, seeing the efforts of the religious right shoved me further in the direction of loathing republicans and religion in general.

Not that the Democrats are a whole lot better. I can live with the fact that Clinton screwed an intern. At least the dems aren't giving blowjobs to Pat Robertson for his xian voter support. Republicans make me physically ill. Maybe it's just because the entire state of Oklahoma's congressional representation is republican.... ugh ;-) (Dan Chaney #1144)

I think it all happened about the same time in my life. My parents were good Episcopalians and Republicans. I was in high school in the Sixties and "rebelled" in all sorts of ways. I became liberal (civil rights and the War of course) and I dumped the church. During college I solidified my atheism and my liberal politics. I got a degree in philosophy and the most fun class was an ethics class that had a flock of seminary students. The professor (my mentor at the time) was great at teasing these guys with questions about god and morals; he was also very liberal. I can't verbalize any connection between my liberlism and atheism, but the parallel progess of each begs the question. (Lee Locke #893)

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