So, in light of my previous castigation of fundamentalist Christianity, I felt I should actually describe the right way to approach this.
Yes, I became an atheist, a nonbeliever, after leaving Christianity. But, let me just say that I believe "God" revealed themselves to me in a sense in a personal way, and that I have to believe again. I can't prove it, and don't even like to discuss my experience as I know I sound straight up crazy, but yeah, let's just say I have personal reasons to believe in stuff.
My belief system is NOT Christianity. If anything, my views lean closer to a more new agey perspective of spirituality. I would say I generally believe there's some sort of reincarnation loop, and that what we consider "god" is actually a collection of well...all of us. And that we end up reincarnating and living multiple lives over time. And when we talk to "god", we're not talking to a singular eternal spirit (which exists, again, it's a collection of all of it, think "the egg" or something like that), but more individualized versions of this that are all of us. All of us have spirit guides. They could be relatives or other lived ones who passed on, sometimes people who are still alive, or even alternative versions of ourselves. It's complicated and I'm not here to explain it in detail. You can probably figure this stuff out just by reading more new agey sources on these topics.
But...the fact is, despite this, I don't think that this god "yahweh" exists in a real way. He's more a conception of what was considered a god of war by humans at the time. I also don't think "God" expects us to live a certain way. Rather, we all come here and are left to live our own way. Some aspects of our lives might be planned, but some might not be and free will exists.
I would say my experiences with Christianity and atheism were intended by my "higher self" (the part of me that remains in what humans would call "heaven" or the "afterlife") to turn me into the person I'm supposed to be. That my faith was torn down, so that I could experience a so called "dark night of the soul" in which I rebuilt my worldview from scratch. And now I'm the person I'm supposed to be in this life and that's that.
I don't have all the answers, apparently those beyond often don't give us tons of information on anything. Unlike Yahweh's conception of the world in christianity, this world is actually a lot more sandboxy and we're largely here to live in whatever way we see fit, with the divine largely trying not to overstep or override peoples' free will. In some ways that means that they might make their very existence ambiguous. As "God" once said to Bender in futurama, sometimes the key to being god is to use such a light touch people don't even know if you did anything at all. Because let's face it, if this stuff were public, provable knowledge, it would massively alter human existence as we know it and potentially ruin whatever this experience is supposed to be.
So how does this square with my political views? Well, secularism is a strong basis of my political worldview. And that was part of my "dark night of the soul" learning experience. I'm not here to be some crazy culture warrior trying to force a specific way to live on people. If anything, I'm the opposite. What my soul desires most is to be left alone and for us all to be left alone. Let people live as they want rather than in some weirdo authoritarian social project of someone else's doing.
Honestly, my values now, politically, are basically the same as they were in 2012 as an atheist. I'm the "anti culture warrior". And on economics, I'm progressive and seek a world without poverty and forced labor. It used to be "we only have one life, why waste it on work?" and more it's "well we have more than one life, but why waste it on work any way?"
If you go around in spiritual circles, you might have heard of Dolores Cannon's "volunteers" or terms like "indigo children". I'm basically something like that. Crafted by my own soul and life's plan to help raise the consciousness of this human species. To teach it to do better than crappy systems like fundamentalist christianity.
But...in order for it to work, I need a strong set of secular values. Because at the end of the day, what has been the big lesson from our societal trial and error with religion? That religion destroys everything it touches in politics, and it's best to keep the two separate.. Secularism is good, and if you can't justify your views in secularism, then they don't belong in government. What better than a system designed around secularism and a rejection of the divine as most humans know it?
As such, my secular views are perfectly compatible with my spirituality. if anything, my spirituality makes me double down on them. In secularism, I had no purpose. In spirituality, my purpose is to teach humans that there is no singular divine purpose, that these social systems are created by humans, not the divine, and that we should live in ways that serve our interests.
Oh, and on that climate change thing. Yeah. You might wanna get on that. Turns out God can create a world humans can destroy after all (screw you, Rush Limbaugh), and if you keep abusing the planet, that may happen to this species. Ya know, free will and all. Anyway, as I said the divine doesn't interfere with free will so what happens instead is they end up sending people like me to warn you guys to stop screwing around or you're gonna find out. Probably why they made me the anti work guy. How better to stop climate change than to stop the human activity that leads to it in the first place?
But yeah. As such, there isn't really an inherent conflict between my secularism and my spirituality. If anything they all go together. And I'm just gonna keep advocating for what I always advocate for. And because I can justify it in secular values, and because I literally designed this stuff WHILE I WAS AN ATHEIST, then it doesn't violate my principle that all law and morality should be secular in origin.
So yeah.Honestly? My spirituality is a very...personal topic to me. And I prefer to keep it personal. And I think the world would be a better place if we did keep it personal and didn't act like Mike Johnson and wanna force everyone to live according to a religious morality. Especially that of a god that doesn't actually exist. As Hillary once said, she had a public position and a private position. I kinda balked at her at the time because my private position was my public position, but given I have regained spirituality, I'm fine with keeping the same secular public morality while leaving whatever my personal values are to myself if they can't be justified in a secular ethos.
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