re: Lets Talk Politics

Even growing up in Central Texas (Temple) I would say less than half of my friends were deeply religious. shite just doesn't do anything for me or many of my peers anymore. I don't see how evangelical candidates will ever grab enough votes to matter once the boomers start dying off.

What I also find interesting is how little religion affects the voting habits of minorities. The black population is heavily religious, yet votes almost exclusively liberal. Middle-aged white men pushing jesus on religious BLM activists doesn't work, apparently.

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My wife and I are active churchgoers and have faith in God and Christ, but since she was raised Catholic, she struggles with the concept of proselytizing. (evangelism)

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Stop trying to poison her with your heathen ways of public display.

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The decline of religiosity probably has as much to do with Trump's rise as anything. For a lot of people it's a form of cultural signaling rather than a true faith.

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There's a lot of truth to this. I'd venture the argument that people who culturally identify with Christianity but do NOT actually go to church more than a couple of times a year at most are much more likely to be Trump supporters than any other group. The identification with traditional America and traditional American values that has been placed in an affirmation of Christian faith by someone who never goes to church as sort of proxy now has a new home in Trump. Supporting Trump is the new way to say "let's be aggressive, nuclear-family-having, red-meat-eating, work-ethic-having, law-abiding, building great things, AMERICANS" for people who aren't really religious. TRUMP is the proxy for all of that instead of saying "I'm Christian, but it's a personal faith... I don't like churches".

I'm definitely running in to similar issues myself. Most of my friend base growing up came from church or school. I stopped believing pretty early in life (I always thought going to church was just a bunch of people making meaningless sound waves for an hour), but it was important socially. Now that I'm a 20-something, I don't have an easy place to fall back on to meet people outside of work. The best I can do is sport clubs and profession-specific meetups. Unfortunately, the sports leagues don't foster much friendship, and nothing is more asocial and uninteresting than a bunch of software developers discussing why React and ES6 are awesome for modern single-page applications. It's anecdotal, but I agree, I think the church is no longer the fundamental part for a majority of our society, and it never will be ever again. Appealing to that segment as your main focus is probably a terrible political strategy from now on.

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Bro, that's just a San Antonio thing. Tejanos hate Mexicans, just like Mexicans hate Tejanos. It's a widely known secret among us brown people

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Yup, the animosity is very real Not a lot of folks outside the state know that. A brown person is not a brown person, just like a black person isn't a black person.

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Tejanos: (Yes, that's a real brother who sings in Spanish)

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Case in point. Mi gente!

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But I just can't fake like I believe it when I don't. It's too dishonest for me to do.

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Yeah I would never do that. I could get away with being edgy at youth group in high school because most of my friends didn't believe in it either, but not anymore. Whatever makes people happy is their business, they don't need me spreading my heathen vibes among them. Plus I live in the atheist capital of America, out of the ~30 people I deal with directly every day at the office, I can think of only 2 people whom I know for a fact are Christian. I honestly couldn't show you to a church near me, because they don't exist . I'm pretty sure all the Jesus types live in the burbs near Nike and Intel.

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I've always found the core principles of liberal economics and social welfare incompatible philosophically with atheism/non belief.

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I've always thought it was motivated by something like "there's no heaven, so let's make a heaven on earth"-type utopianism.

I'm with you on why I identify more with the right, minus their religious trappings, despite not being religious. I lost my religion because I'm just too scientific-minded to sustain it, even though I tried, so I also can't indulge fantasies that socialism, an economics/sociological prescription/outlook that defies logic, will work.

I think religious belief goes a long toward making someone believe abortion is equivalent to the murder of a baby. I think the idea that it is an ugly, distasteful practice that civilized society shouldn't partake in can go beyond religious boundaries.

But, sadly, most Nonbelievers align themselves with the logically inconsistent beliefs of the far left.

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But, sadly, most Nonbelievers align themselves with the logically inconsistent beliefs of the far left.

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It's about creating narratives away from what the actual issue is. The left considers Pro-Life an attack on the female body, while the right considers Pro-Choice an attack on the God-given miracle of child birth (both generalizations, but you get the idea: my team vs. your team). It definitely goes beyond religious boundaries, at least for me anyway: I'm pro-contraceptive (like any sane human should be IMO), but unless you were raped, you should deal with the consequence of consensual sex, which in many cases, is a child.

I really hate abortion debates though, it always ends up in shite-slinging. Can we not? This thread is pretty damn civil and I'd like to keep it that way.

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As a Christian who is pro-life, I really wish the pro-life cause were disassociated from religious convictions. I mean, I oppose abortions because I think the idea itself is fricked up, not because I'm a Christian. Much the same way one doesn't have to be a believer or even religious to believe that murder or some other heinous crime is fricked up.

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I don't think you are hoping for too much. A lot of people think this way. This is basically the way my wife, who is a non-believer, explains her viewpoint; almost verbatim. The left is basically a vehicle to escape from responsibility. Get pregnant? Kill it. Don't want to pay down your student loans? Get Bernie to forgive them. Get tossed in jail for robbing people? Blame your childhood. Can't ever get ahead in any way because you are lazy or like drugs too much? It's the evil rich holding you down.