“Atheist pro-lifer”? Not an oxymoron

[napoleon_in_rags]

42. Yeah, good question.

In the Latino case, you have a fair amount of kids born without a lot of money, in a probably Catholic setting, who are supporting Dems and progressive causes.

I had a friend many years ago who wrote a poem with a line : "God is the drug that gets you through the 24 [hours]" That always stuck in my head. When I view it from a personal level, I can understand why people in hard times are religious. Its that hope. For instance in situations with a high infant mortality rate, I can understand the comfort that comes with the belief that some kids "just got to go to heaven early", how that could keep you going. And I think those forms of faith will always condemn certain behaviours: Everybody is a little gay, a little voyeuristic, a little something "sinful". In the hardest times, we make sense of the world by thinking of it as a punishment for our actions or desires. It returns to us a sense of being control where before there was none. The condemnation of groups who have the same attributes we blame ourselves for is the side effect of that.

Yeah, the study I linked to shows kids getting more and more individual as time goes on. I think that may be the answer, people are dynamic, people change. That may be the factor that keeps the world progressive: personal growth. If so, that's a powerful thing to know: We should be fostering it.