Your faith timeline.

[afleitch]

I've seen this on Twitter so thought it might be fun.

0: Born and baptized Catholic.
4: Annoyed at missing 'Pob' on TV for Mass.
5: Starts Catholic school.
6: Starts singing at Mass.
7: First Confession and First Communion. Doesn't 'get it'. Response; 'Just get it.' Communion money spent on replacing ruined borrowed suit trousers.
8: Precocious reader so now also reads at Mass.
9: Frequent head bobber after Communion. Wins Knights of St Columba nativity scene art prize. Legit only trophy ever won.
10: Anatomically correct crucifixion scene not as popular.
11: Finds 'Centurion no. 2' on station of cross kinda hot.
12: Starts Jesuit college.
13: Sings in Latin.
14: Starts pushing back in theology class. Still gets A.
15: Attends confession for last time in life. rip sweet anglexxx
16: Walks out of mass during bishops statement on homosexuality during Section 28 debate. Comes out.
17: Attends immersive abbey retreat. Realises that the faithless can act faithful to preach to the faithless presenting as faithful.
18: x-rated
19: Begins eight year internship as Atlas resident progressive Christian apologist.
21: Attends Quaker Meeting House periodically.
24: Attends mass for last time.
26: Cathartic loss of faith in front of street pastor.
27: Begins internship as resident Atlas atheist apologist.
28: Therapy. Recovering Catholic. Gets married.
30: Studies the Stoics.
32: Studies Humanism.
34: Studies Islam.
35: Understands the emotional trauma of being born into a faith that he couldn't tangibly engage with, so relied on aestheticism to maintain the community and family ritual despite that also being jarring to his information desiring aspergic brain. Yet it was also helpful in facilitating self expression. Realised he was ironically 'queerer' as a Catholic aesthete but the crumbling self defense of his actual non belief to himself and others could not be sustained and ultimately lead to it's stuttering and cathartic rejection. This led to him accidentally 'gatekeeping' his own sexuality and sanitising it as a Buttigiegesque public banality. With brain locking down the experience/knowledge of age 0-26 as 'complete' then vaccuuming up other opposing or contrary theological view points leading to the self realisation that this is all so f-cking boring and western and saccharine and I just want some colour and what did I do to that lispy queered fabulous f-cking socialist first out the closet singing opinionated teenager. Welcome back.

End scene.

Trans rights.

[afleitch]

Gets dragged over it on Atlas Forum, including by OP of this thread.

I am profusely sorry for the way I treated you. It was truly less the gender identity and more of the adoption of distinct hetero sexual terminology that I thought you were making that made me actually fear the worst. I was not kind and I reacted rather than asked you about it or talked to you. It's a low moment for me, as I genuinely don't like making people upset or uncomfortable.

Realizes own bisexuality

(bisexflag.gif)

[afleitch]

Thank you.

[afleitch]

I began to view Islam (and religion in general) as the direct threat to Western liberal values that it is.

I tend to think the opposite; I think Islam could become extremely complimentary to western liberalism if it is allowed to engage better with the society that it functions in. There is internal and cultural pressures within in the faith and the community but also reactionary 'othering' from other western religious and secular communities. To an extent, Islam in America is becoming it's own movement (and is offering hope to British communities) and it's extremely welcoming.

[afleitch]

I do find it interesting at how many Americans just change religious denomination and 'church shop'. Culturally, that's very alien to me where you either pretty much stay as you are, stay but drop off or just don't care.

[afleitch]

I did wonder when I first posted this if lockdown would have any affect on my spiritual well being or outlook. Like trying to remaster French it gave way to YouTube queer Disney videos and needless eBay browsing.

[afleitch]

0: Born into a fairly New Atheist-leaning family
4-5: Attended preschool at a Baptist church, briefly considered myself part of their faith cause it felt like the customary thing to do in that environment but never really bought into it wholesale or investigated any part of it.
6-15: Garden-variety smug suburban New Atheist with a condescending view at best of most religious folk. Developed an interest in Buddhist and Taoist thought and incorporated some of it into my personal philosophy but never felt it proper to commit to either system in full.
16-19: Became interested in various pagan traditions through my dilettante studies of ancient history, prehistory, anthropology, and the 20th-century counterculture, as well as the strange spiritual associations that I encountered in my slow and arduous journey to discover my gender identity. Briefly attempted to commit to believing in a deity or deities a few times before quitting due to lack of conviction or a suspicion that they were more like tulpas manifested from my insecurities than genuine celestial beings. Shopped around for a tradition that might suit me but was turned off by the dominance of TERFs, Neo-Nazis, and feel-good revisionist hippies in all the circles I became aware of.
20: In response to a period of extended interpersonal turmoil and an inability to crack many philosophical questions I had been wrestling with since my early teenage years, committed to my current personalized eclectic pagan path. My beliefs have evolved since then, but the core tenets remain.
21-present: Tried practicing magic for the first time with fairly ugly results. Started looking for groups of like-minded people again, still looking...

How have you been practicing your paganism? What grounds you: is it earth and nature based, spiritually based?

[afleitch]

It would be interesting to see people comment on how their religion views impact their political views. In my case I see a lot of overlap. I gave up the beliefs that I was spoon fed as a child before I realized how liberal I was politically.

So far I wouldn't say that rejoining Catholicism has significantly altered my political views, but rather articulated some opinions I had 'felt' for some time. I realized how conservative I am politically?
But really it's been only three months or so. Things are happening so fast these days. A lot of this might look silly in a few years' time. Funnily today marks also exactly half a year since I joined Talk Elections.

Do you think you are more conservative than your age group? You seem really young. Like not supporting SSM (?), just seems really weird for someone so grounded. Or is it just an Italian thing?

[afleitch]

It would be interesting to see people comment on how their religion views impact their political views. In my case I see a lot of overlap. I gave up the beliefs that I was spoon fed as a child before I realized how liberal I was politically.

So far I wouldn't say that rejoining Catholicism has significantly altered my political views, but rather articulated some opinions I had 'felt' for some time. I realized how conservative I am politically?
But really it's been only three months or so. Things are happening so fast these days. A lot of this might look silly in a few years' time. Funnily today marks also exactly half a year since I joined Talk Elections.

Do you think you are more conservative than your age group? You seem really young. Like not supporting SSM (?), just seems really weird for someone so grounded. Or is it just an Italian thing?

I definitely think I am more conservative than my age group (although not more right-wing); I am 19 years old. My discomfort with civil marriagein general is admittedly extremely weird and not really an Italian thing. But if you want to go about it, I've just checked and according to a 2020 Eurispes poll 77% of Italians aged 18-24 support SSM. Thanks for saying I am "so grounded", anyways.

Which ones? Anyone you know in particular?

[afleitch]

I definitely think I am more conservative than my age group (although not more right-wing); I am 19 years old. My discomfort with civil marriage in general is admittedly extremely weird and not really an Italian thing. But if you want to go about it, I've just checked and according to a 2020 Eurispes poll 77% of Italians aged 18-24 support SSM. Thanks for saying I am "so grounded", anyways.

Which ones? Anyone you know in particular?

I'm talking about the concept in general - both opposite-sex and same-sex to be clear.

My inner musings about the meaning of 'marriage' and about the point of having state-sanctioned unions of this kind at all are very complicated and to be honest don't make too much sense.

Whst would the alternative be? I've been married 8 years and if a state sanctioned union isn't appropriate whst would be (besring in mind most nations ALL marriages are by statute, state sanctioned, including religious ones.)

[afleitch]

I definitely think I am more conservative than my age group (although not more right-wing); I am 19 years old. My discomfort with civil marriage in general is admittedly extremely weird and not really an Italian thing. But if you want to go about it, I've just checked and according to a 2020 Eurispes poll 77% of Italians aged 18-24 support SSM. Thanks for saying I am "so grounded", anyways.

Which ones? Anyone you know in particular?

I'm talking about the concept in general - both opposite-sex and same-sex to be clear.

My inner musings about the meaning of 'marriage' and about the point of having state-sanctioned unions of this kind at all are very complicated and to be honest don't make too much sense.

Whst would the alternative be? I've been married 8 years and if a state sanctioned union isn't appropriate whst would be (besring in mind most nations ALL marriages are by statute, state sanctioned, including religious ones.)

I am not sure. As I said I don't make much sense on this. I realize there are good reasons to have this kind of legal framework for 'family law' matters. But sometimes the idea of the register office having to do with love/family doesn't click to me. And to be honest sometimes I just surrender to reality. I guess I like 'common-law marriages'?

So no marriage registration at all which means no enforceable marriage law?

[afleitch]

I definitely think I am more conservative than my age group (although not more right-wing); I am 19 years old. My discomfort with civil marriage in general is admittedly extremely weird and not really an Italian thing. But if you want to go about it, I've just checked and according to a 2020 Eurispes poll 77% of Italians aged 18-24 support SSM. Thanks for saying I am "so grounded", anyways.

Which ones? Anyone you know in particular?

I'm talking about the concept in general - both opposite-sex and same-sex to be clear.

My inner musings about the meaning of 'marriage' and about the point of having state-sanctioned unions of this kind at all are very complicated and to be honest don't make too much sense.

Whst would the alternative be? I've been married 8 years and if a state sanctioned union isn't appropriate whst would be (besring in mind most nations ALL marriages are by statute, state sanctioned, including religious ones.)

I am not sure. As I said I don't make much sense on this. I realize there are good reasons to have this kind of legal framework for 'family law' matters. But sometimes the idea of the register office having to do with love/family doesn't click to me. And to be honest sometimes I just surrender to reality. I guess I like 'common-law marriages'?

So no marriage registration at all which means no enforceable marriage law?

I think that may be the logical conclusion, but I'm very shaky.

This conversation is feeling a lot like an application of the Socratic method...
To be honest we are kind of derailing the thread, as none of these musings of mine have necessarily to do with my faith.

Yeah, I don't want to derail. I just thought it seemed a remarkably 'free love' sort of position on human relationships which I don't necessarily disagree with in principle.