Want to know why it hurts?

Earlier today I saw some bullshit article from other people giving normal-people answers for why Trump sucks for them. Some of their answers may have been legit, but it ignores my problems. I have totally different answers.

First of all, I hate when bad guys win, and in this case the worst person won. That's not the worst part tho.

My people have rejected me. Almost everyone in my demographic groups sold their soul to the devil. They couldn't resist. Most "Never Trump" conservatives realized they were gonna get punished if they didn't fall in line. To make it worse, the people who already rejected me all hate him because he represents my people. Most anti-Trump people really piss me off. A good chunk of them are anti-religious Berniebots from big cities who look down on rural Southern Christians like me. Every place I felt at home turned into Trump fandom. Evangelicalism is dead. It's so dead that it's easier to find actual Satanists against Satan than it is to find evangelicals against Satan. I want to change my religious beliefs so I'm no longer part of the #1 group that fell for Satan. Evangelicalism in the US is dead now. Nobody will want to convert any more, and people will leave because their Christian convictions kick them out.

I think Donald Trump has supernatural demonic power. I am not kidding. I am not exaggerating. I'm not saying he's "the" Anti-Christ or the Beast or whatever, but he has powers that nobody else has, and he's definitely an anti-Christ. He can do anything he wants. He is a god, with a little 'g'. And unlike the Christian God, there is 100% proof that he's real and powerful. I don't know if he's all powerful but it sure as hell seems like it. Trump is the god of 1% chances. FiveThirtyEight gave him a 2% shot of winning the Republican nomination, which he won by violating every rule of political science. Could anyone else do that? No. I think Trump could have defeated Barack Obama, George W Bush, Bill Clinton, etc. as president. If he sets his mind to something, he gets it, no matter the odds. FiveThirtyEight were the only pollsters to give him any chance at winning, and his chance was only about 20% on election night. He's clearly got the power to change minds and make them ignore any facts. He can harness and control the news media in a way nobody else can. I have a hunch every single thing he wished for in the election cycle came true. I will probably die in a Trump concentration camp for writing this post. I don't think me calling him a god makes me any less of a monotheist, he's not the true God. Altho sometimes I wonder...

I feel like Satan has killed Jesus. I don't know how else to say it. There is an evil supernatural force in the world and I don't know if there is any good force to counterbalance it. I want to believe there is, but 81% of people who claim there is fell for the evil force. Yesterday I found out the black metal band Venom had a song called "At War With Satan" about Satan invading Heaven and overthrowing God. I hate black metal and I don't plan to listen to the song, but here are the lyrics. Very offensive lyrics and I hated reading them, but it's how I feel. I feel like God went missing and there is no reason to be a good person any more. I should strive to be more evil to please the new god Trump. And I don't know if sins I'm into qualify as evil enough. Trump is so powerful that he could cheat God. He's definitely powerful enough to fool most "Christians". That's something nobody talks about. It may sound absurd to other people but it makes sense to me. The people who say they support my God turned their back on everything He supports and now support a false god. Albeit a false god with some power.

This page claims that Trump is the Anti-Christ. It's a bit crazy, but it brings me peace, and very little in the world does. I want people like that to be against him. It's like a little bit of home that Trump hasn't destroyed yet.

Satan Man and Jesus Girl

I know it sounds blasphemous and sexist. But it's the best way I can explain two archetypes I see over and over again in the world. The basic story is:

Satan man rapes and murders Jesus girl.

This is the law of nature. The bad guy always wins. Satan man will always win.

Terms like "gay" and "cuck" are code words for "Jesus girl". That's one way the alt-right was able to hijack the right wing. They kept calling regular Republicans cucks, aka Jesus girls. And even tho most Republicans claim to be Christian, they don't want to be raped and murdered for being too good. They understand how the world works. If they really believed their faith they'd be proud to be called cucks because it means they're doing the right thing. Trump captured people's hearts because they knew he was a Satan man who can rape and murder any Jesus girl he chooses. As for calling people gay, look at most of the stereotypes actual gay men have. People think gay men are gooder than everyone else. Not better, gooder. And that's one reason gay men face so much prejudice. They don't commit the socially acceptable sins. It's not about the sins they do commit, it's about the sins they don't commit. Gay men would face less prejudice if "angelic wimp" wasn't the default stereotype. If Jesus came back tomorrow, the culture would label Him "gay" because He doesn't lust after women. Being gay has very little to do with being attracted to the same sex.

Leftists, as a general rule, want to be Jesus girls. They disagree with the narrative I mentioned at the top of the page, despite the mountains of evidence in favor of it. Yet most of them want nothing to do with Christianity or any other religion that believes that good triumphs in the end. Which is insane bullshit of course. With rare exceptions, the bad guys win in real life. Look at the 2016 election - I wouldn't call any of the candidates good, but there was one overarching villain, who won because he's so evil. That's why I prefer fiction to reality. Good people can defeat bad people in fiction. In reality, the biggest, baddest, most Satan man person wins almost every time. Human nature is evil. Most of the right understands that, most of the left doesn't.

I'm a Christian but I struggle with my faith. The only reason I want to be good at all is my belief that Jesus will defeat evil in the end. It's illogical and not intuitive. Without faith there is no reason for me to be good. I'd be a lot further along in life if I put myself first and cared about others after that. I can't comprehend someone not believing anything supernatural but still acting like a pure good Jesus girl. Based on the world I see, I should do bad things just because they're wrong so I can accumulate "reverse karma" and become powerful like Donald Trump. Or for someone far more evil, Fidel Castro.

This sounds insane but it's the only way I know how to put this into words. Comments disabled because I know how crazy this sounds.

You Do What Your People Do/Why Hillary Lost

That explains most human behavior. I don't think that's a bad thing or a good thing. I want to do what my people do. But what do you do when you feel like your people abandoned you and everyone else hates you?

About a year ago I decided I wanted to be conservative. It would reduce dissonance in my world. I think and act like a conservative. I belong to the most conservative demographic in the country. I wouldn't have to explain "I vote this way, but I'm that kind of person". Then Satan (Trump) hit and used his supernatural power to convince almost my entire group to vote for him.

Most voting has nothing to do with policies or candidates. It's an expression of identity. I wanted to vote for a Republican this year to express my identity. I don't think or act like Democrats. I think and act like Republicans. I wanted to vote Republican. Then the Antichrist showed up and I got forced into voting Democrat, the people who rejected me before. Forced into voting Democrat because of my values rooted in my faith.

A lot of why Hillary lost is she couldn't get the votes of straight white men. Almost all liberal straight white men went for Bernie, and most of them voted for Trump, Johnson, or Stein in the general election. The culture decided that only minority groups can support Hillary. Almost all the people I know who openly supported Hillary are women or gay men. I don't even know any straight black men who openly supported her. As much as I respect the rights of minorities, you can't build a movement if you're restricted to the Glee fan demographic of LGBT people and women. So I'm going to ignore race for the rest of this post.

For a lot of straight men, voting for Hillary is the equivalent of having sex with another man. It's a denial of their identity. It's not just because she's female, because voting for Jill Stein is not a denial of your identity the same way. I don't know why it is. Could be because Bernie is cool and hip and edgy and Hillary isn't. Could be that Hillary has the wrong personality. Anyway, this culture decided that straight men aren't allowed to vote for Hillary, so very few of us did. And a lot of the ones who did probably weren't aware of the unwritten rule that straight men can't vote for her.

If I wasn't Christian (or religious), no way I'd vote for Hillary. I wouldn't feel a sense of duty to the rest of the country. I'd let my identity determine who I support instead. I would have voted for one of Trump, Johnson, or McMullin. Probably Johnson. Even tho he barely knows anything about foreign policy, he's much better for my identity. I'd have trouble voting for Trump but I could see doing it out of self-preservation. Kind of like how I don't care for Hillary but I voted for her anyway to try to keep Trump out. I really like McMullin but he had zero chance and he didn't even have write-in access in Mississippi.

The strange thing is I found Hillary fans to be way more accepting of me than Bernie fans. Bernie fans get pissed off if you dare criticize Saint Bernie Christ. Since I had questions about some of his weirder ideas, like the $15/hour minimum wage, they yelled at me. Which turned me against Bernie and his cult. Bernie fans represent the part of the left that mocks me for being from Mississippi. Hillary fans accept anyone they can get. Turns out they have to because society says straight men aren't allowed to vote for her. Most Hillary fan groups are almost all women and LGBT. Straight men don't vote for Hillary and I don't know why we don't. I realized that a few weeks after I told everyone I supported her because she's not Trump or Bernie. Now I wish I'd kept it to myself. With all respect to gay people, I don't want anyone to think I'm gay. I should have kept my mouth shut and just bashed Bernie Trump and made people think I was voting for someone cool like Johnson that doesn't damage my identity.

I predict for the next election the Democrats will have an openly anti-Christian candidate. So anti-Trump Christians like me will have no viable candidate to vote for. A lot of Democrats like to pretend Obama's not a Christian because they hate Christians. That's telling. I don't think Bill Clinton even got that. I'm a pessimist, but only because my worst predictions keep coming true.

Thought Criminal, My Favorite Liberal Blogger

Read Thought Criminal's blog.

I'm a self-described moderate. I even leaned conservative for a while. So why do I enjoy reading a blog by someone who's so far left he considers Obama a moderate sellout? Lots of reasons.

I found him after I saw a link to an Alternet article bashing Christians. I wanted to see if anyone else thought Alternet and the like had an anti-Christian bias, and I found his blog. He totally agrees. I realized pretty fast that 1) he's very, very far left and 2) he would accept someone like me into the liberal fold. He says that the secularization of the left is the worst thing that could happen to the left. As he wrote on this post:

I have absolutely no idea who most of the people who read my blog are, I do know that several hundred people read it every week if not every day. If your accusation is correct and they're all creationists, I can't say that I consider it to be a problem. If they want to read what is said here, maybe they'll learn that they don't have as much to fear from real liberals as they're led to by the atheist pseudo-liberals. ... If any evangelical or fundamentalist or creationist reads me saying that seriously considers it, I'm not unhappy to have written it. They have the same right to my consideration as anyone else who does me the honor of reading what I write.

I may have severed ties with evangelicalism since then, but I still believe similar to evangelicalism, I was an evangelical at the time he wrote that, and it means a lot to me. Most of the left won't give me the time of day. He explicitly said that he'll allow people who are far more fundamentalist than me to listen to him. Even creationists, the ultimate left-wing bogeymen.

The guy's a brilliant thinker, not afraid to think way outside the box. Also, he trashes the bad parts of the left as much as he trashes the right. Keep in mind this is someone who calls all Republicans fascists. He makes cultural conservatives like me feel more at home with liberal ideas. He's far from a cultural conservative himself, but he doesn't like a lot of the cultural liberal rallying points. He represents a left wing that wants to include everyone instead of one based on mocking rural Southern Christians like me. It's the left of Martin Luther King Jr., not the left of Seth MacFarlane. He often uses the phrases "pseudo-religious right" for the modern right and "pseudo-left" for the modern Seth MacFarlane-type left. I'd love to meet him someday and talk about life, politics, music, Christianity, whatever.

He also has an army of trolls. I won't mention their names, but one of them is like the platonic opposite of me. A "rock music critic" who hates Christians, rural people, and progressive rock. I'll bet he hates cats and pineapple salsa too. The sad thing is there's way more of him on the left than there are people like Thought Criminal. How I wish it was the other way around. Thought Criminal's pretty angry, so a lot of his posts are responses to hate mail. I kind of wish he'd ban the trolls, but on the other hand some of his best posts started as hate mail.

I'll openly admit that his blog has pushed me further to the left. He got me more comfortable with the idea of voting for Hillary this year, when I was very uncomfortable with it at first. You should read him too. Here's an intriguing place to start, a series of posts critical of famous skeptic James Randi. (Who I'd never heard of before his blog, but I don't run in the same circles either.) Or try this post, Alternet Belongs On The Southern Poverty Law Center's Hate Group Watch List, which compares some Alternet writers to the American Family Association. I don't know if he'd like much of what's on my blog, but I like a lot of what's on his blog, even when I don't agree with it. If Thought Criminal says something, I listen and I consider the idea.

I'm back after four years

So I let this blog lapse after a while. I may disable comments or I may not. I don't know. In the past four years I've gotten exactly one comment, so I probably will. For years I thought this blog was too angry and negative and I got ashamed of it. Then the election from hell hit and I got angrier and angrier. I decided I needed to blog again, then I remembered I had this old angry blog lying around, so I'm gonna revive it!

Some big changes:

• I got more conservative in the pre-Trump sense. In 2015 I was ready to vote Republican. Then the Antichrist (Donald Trump) hit and destroyed everything good on the right. Now I'm politically homeless. I would move further to the left again, but I despise the left almost as much as I despise the alt-right shitheads.
• I have a girlfriend now. So I'm going to post about some things I hid from everyone before. I didn't want to turn off single women by talking about some things. I'll ask her about the posts first to make sure she's fine with them.
• I let myself say "fuck" on here now because some things, like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, are hard to describe without the word "fuck".
• I quit identifying as "evangelical Christian" after the election because evangelicalism is apostate. I still believe the same. I still believe that Jesus saved me from my sins, that the Bible is inspired by God, and that Protestants are generally right. I just think evangelicalism has lost its mind completely. I still want to be the best Christian I can. I suck at it horribly of course. I have a bad temper and I hate it. Plus a lot of people would doubt my salvation because I say "fuck" and "shit" and other bad words. (Fact: I never used a swear word until I was 19.)
• I also lost any respect for the "reason logic fact science evolution fuck" militant atheist crowd. People like Bill Maher, PZ Myers, Richard Dawkins, etc. I can't even read Neil DeGrasse Tyson any more without responding "reason logic fact science evolution fuck" because THAT'S ALL THEY SAY. I wish the militant atheists supported Trump and the evangelicals were against him. Atheists face prejudice, so I want to make it clear that most atheists are fine with me, even if most of them supported Bernie Sanders (the substitute God for secular America). It's the minority of annoying ones I'll go after.
• I quit caring if I offend people or not.
• I said nice things about the Occupy movement? Seriously?!?! Those people are the Tea Party of the left. Those people got us Bernie fucking Sanders, the second worst major candidate in recent memory.

Expect me to bitch about just about everything wrong with modern American culture. Don't expect too many answers here. I don't know if there are any, and if there are, nobody's listening anyway.

Another long rant on politics, religion, personality, and forgiveness

I told some of my friends a few days ago that I feel like I get more conservative every day. It's not based on the beliefs, it's based on the lifestyles and the arguments. I explained that I understand conservatives even when I disagree with them, but I don't understand liberals when I disagree with them. So I have more sympathy for conservatives who say stupid stuff than for liberals who say stupid stuff. My conservative and libertarian friends were happy and my liberal friends were not. One of my liberal friends, who I respect a lot, accused me of confirmation bias. Which is probably true. Everyone's more likely to believe something they already agree with. I also said I like to fit in with people who are like me. Most people are like this. No matter how good liberal arguments are, they won't win me over because I like small towns and I don't drink. Stereotypical, but more true than it should be. And as I've said before, religious liberals have more in common with secular liberals than they do with religious conservatives. I may have liberal opinions on some things, but I have a conservative brain. So conservative arguments make more sense.

My Christian faith makes me more moderate or liberal than I would be otherwise. A lot of my liberal opinions go against what logic tells me. For me, logic supports conservatives more often than not. When I was in college I was both a hardcore Christian and a hardcore liberal, and I was every bit as obnoxious as the Religious Right. I disagreed with the left on a few things but I liked the way they talked. As I explained in a ha-ha-only-serious post on religion and politics last year, liberal arguments are similar to religious arguments. And both groups can slip into self righteousness real easily.

It really bugs me when some secular people, usually secular liberals, try to claim Jesus agreed with them. It bugs me when people claim Jesus was a socialist, a capitalist, a Republican, a Democrat, a Libertarian, a monarchist, etc. I also don't know why someone who rejects Jesus's supernatural claims would follow Jesus's morals. They're not practical at all. There are other moral teachers. It's a lousy attempt to try and win over Christians. I respect other religions and philosophies too much to cozy up to their followers. Too bad not everyone's that way.

For example, I don't understand why so many secular people are so pro-forgiveness. If I left Christianity that's the first thing I'd throw out. I honestly don't understand forgiveness. I never have. I think it perpetrates evil. It prevents evil from being punished. It keeps the forgivers subordinate to the forgiven. I guess I should be glad most people aren't as vindictive as me, but I don't understand it. Non-Christians usually tell me I'm a horrible person. Christians either do the same or admit they have no answer to my questions. I want to be more forgiving, but forgiveness makes no sense!

But once again I have a conservative brain. There's a lot of liberal arguments against Christianity, but very few conservative arguments, and the conservative arguments are the only ones that make sense to me. They reflect the way I see the world, which makes sense to me. And in the US nearly all conservatives are Christian. Whether they follow Christian morals or not is another matter, but they call themselves Christians, so they claim Christian teachings and morals as their own.

There's a book I want to read called The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided By Politics And Religion by Jonathan Haidt. I've read the first few chapters and I like it so far. It covers a lot of the same ground as some of my blog posts, only more positive and from a very different perspective. Haidt is a psychologist. He's also a former liberal turned moderate by his research into morality. Maybe he can help me make sense out of the world. The world looks absurd to me. My own half-baked theories make more sense than most of what I see out there. And when things seem to make sense, they always exclude me and say I can't exist.

Christianity Is a Religion and Jesus Is a Religious Figure

I'm sick of Christians saying Christianity's not a religion. Only Protestant Christians do this. Catholics and Orthodox don't. Here's why Protestants say it:

1. They want to distance themselves from formal liturgical churches. I like formal liturgical churches so this doesn't hold water with me.
2. They want to agree with people who bash religion. I don't know any anti-religious people who joined Christianity because it's "not a religion". Most secular people get pissed off when Christians say Christianity is not a religion.
3. They want to set themselves apart from the bad things done in the name of religion. In reality they sound like they're shrugging off any blame for the sins of the past. Like it or not, some Christians did evil things.
4. They want to be "cool" and "edgy" and "shocking". They fail. Saying Christianity is a religion is way more shocking than saying it's not.
5. They want to emphasize that it's about a relationship with Jesus. Which it is. I don't see how this conflicts with Christianity being a religion. It makes Christianity a distinctive religion but it doesn't make it any less of a religion.

The web site adherents.com has two interesting things on this here and here. The first link says other religions do this. I can believe this. A lot of Buddhists claim they're a philosophy, not a religion. But every Muslim I've met uses the word religion. The second link quotes James 1:27: "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world." (ESV) This is from the Bible. It doesn't say "relationship", it says "religion".

While everyone else boasts they're not part of a religion, I claim it with pride. It's honest. I don't claim everything done in the name of religion is good. Members of my religion did horrible things thinking it pleased God. But members of my religion also did great things thinking it pleased God. I believe organized religion has brought more good into the world than evil. I only wish I was a better follower of Jesus. If you read my blog you know I'm not.

P. S. Most secular people bash "organized religion" instead of any specific one. They always mean the group they grew up in.

Politics and Personality

I hate stereotypes, but sometimes they're true more often than not.

Most conservative men are jerks. Most conservative women are nice. Liberals are the opposite: Most liberal men are nice, and most liberal women are jerks. There's lots of exceptions but it's true more often than not. I assume people are like this. It's because of ME ME ME ME ME. Most liberals are feminists and most conservatives are for traditional gender roles. People who support themselves sound like jerks. People who support others sound nice.

I wrote before that most observant Christians are conservative and most others are liberal because the stereotypes cancel each other out. Gender throws another wrench into this. They don't come across neutral. They come across the way their gender does. What's sad is there's more jerk exceptions than nice exceptions. You find more jerk conservative women and jerk liberal men than you do nice conservative men or nice liberal women.

Politics play a bigger role than religion in how someone acts. Most left-wing Christians act more like left-wing secular people than conservative Christians. This always holds true. Most left-wing Christians swear and drink as much as their secular counterparts, even with conservative theology. I don't know enough right-wing secular people to know if they act like right-wing Christians. I don't know enough people in other religions to know how they act. From my experience, conservatives act conservative and liberals act liberal regardless of religion.

Once again libertarians don't fit into this.

Mark Driscoll Sucks

When I was younger I quit going to church because I was mad at God. I didn't like Christ's teachings, but I liked Christians and I identified as one because I wanted to love God again. Eventually I found a church/a church found me and I got back in.

Good thing I didn't know about Mark Driscoll then. If I did I wouldn't have bothered. He's a crazy nutjob preacher who combines the worst parts of fundamentalism with the worst parts of modern culture. He's controlling, sexist, and misunderstands grace like fundamentalism does. He's crass, obscene, and anti-morality like modern culture is. Of course, most evangelicals think he's awesome.

Driscoll claims the church is full of girls and guys who act like girls, and we need Real Men (assholes) in the church. Why do you think the church skews so female? Masculinity is more evil than femininity. Masculine sins include pride, anger, and lust. Think of your image of a Real Man. Is it some hulking, brutal, alpha male who cares about himself only? It is for me. Some sins are more "feminine", like vanity. However, most women have stronger morals because most morals are feminine traits. Likewise, women are more religious than men. Most secular women are tomboys.

Mark Driscoll promotes strict gender roles. He has a narrow view of masculinity. If you're not a Real Man he hates you. He gives people sex tips in his sermons. Why the hell is that in a sermon? He swears in his sermons. I swear too, but there's a time and a place for it. As much as I swear in this blog, if I preached a sermon I would never swear in it. He bashes men who don't drink alcohol. I don't drink because I have a family history of alcoholism, so I choose not to drink. "Holier than thou" people are annoying enough. "Unholier than thou" people are even worse. I don't want to hear a preacher who makes me feel like I'm too good to be a Christian. I'll take a fundamentalist preaching about the evils of the NIV or rock music any day. At least I can laugh at that. Driscoll hates gay people. Not just "love the sinner, hate the sin". Real hate. And if you hate a group you bring as many people into it as possible. So, "effeminate" worship leaders are gay. Anyone who's "gooder" than Driscoll is gay. It's hardly about sexual attraction any more.

Jesus was not a wimp. He was a carpenter and carpenters have to be strong. He spoke boldly. He was homeless. There is nothing wrong with most of masculinity. However, Jesus's teachings appeal more to women and non-alpha males. "Love your enemies" ain't a tough guy thing. Putting others before you ain't a tough guy thing. If Jesus came back today, Mark Driscoll would call Him a pussy.

People say he's a reaction against legalism. I say he's even worse. Legalism is the belief that we need extra works in addition to God's grace. The opposite, antinomianism, is the belief that you can do whatever you want when you're saved. This of course is a load of crap. I'm far from a good Christian but at least I don't defend my sins. It's easy to slip into both of them.

Driscoll's bullshit is especially dangerous because of his theology: he's within orthodox Christian teaching. Most dangerous cults have weird theology. Driscoll's a Calvinist. Fundamentalists are also in orthodox Christian teaching, but the danger's more obvious. Their culture doesn't allow non-KJV Bibles, dancing, beer, rock music, swearing, etc. They rebel against modern culture. Driscoll would call most fundamentalist men "gay" because they rebel against mainstream culture. Driscoll embraces mainstream culture. He thinks you're a wimp if you're a man and you're not a Real Man. This creepy cult leader sneaks by everyone's radar because his theology's fine. There's more to a "cult" than heretical theology. Mormons are heretics but they don't have creeps as famous preachers - and I bet Mark Driscoll thinks they're all gay too.

The worst part is almost nobody complains about him. Some feminists do because he's sexist. A lot of ex-Christians say he makes them glad they left Christianity. I see their point. In at least one case, someone left Christianity altogether because of Driscoll and his near-universal acceptance. Most evangelicals defend him. He's bad for Christianity and he needs to quit being such an asshole. He turns people off Christianity when they were interested before. I sure don't want to be part of his religion, but I am.

This link explains more. I doubt the author would like this blog, but I don't go around trashing women or swearing in sermons.

Racial Segregation

After college, there's two main ways to make friends: churches and bars. If you don't like religion or alcohol, you better like being alone. I'm a church person, so I don't know if bars are like this, but our churches have a huge racial segregation problem. Martin Luther King Jr. said "eleven o'clock Sunday morning is the most segregated hour and Sunday school is still the most segregated school of the week." (source)

My church is almost all-white. We have a few Hispanics but we don't have any black members now. We used to but they moved. Since then we haven't had any new black members. Segregation extends to other things too. Most events I go to are all-white or almost all-white. There's no "whites only" sign on the doors but it turns out that way.

Why? There's a big culture difference. Race has little to do with heritage and lots to do with culture. A good example: My musical taste is very white. I like plenty of musicians of other races, but they all have lots of white fans. Different races go to different social events. They're involved in different clubs. Sometimes they have different hobbies.

That's one reason there aren't a lot of interracial relationships. The ones that work best are the ones with less culture gap. Either the partners are interested in each other's culture or one of them is part of the other race's culture. I'm all for interracial marriage, but sometimes I feel bad for kids who are pulled between two cultures and aren't "white" enough or "black" enough. It extends to other races here: a Samoan friend of mine faces the same issue. There's hardly any Samoans in Mississippi.

Beverly Daniel Tatum wrote a book called Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? It challenged my thoughts on race more than anything else I've read. Here's a summary of the book. It made me think a lot about race and racial identity. It explains a lot of why society's still so segregated. I don't like segregation but I see why it still exists. I don't know if I agree with everything she says but it's worth a read.

Still, it sucks that I never see most of my black Facebook friends any more. It's not like they're less like me than my white friends. They're part of a different culture.

Religion and Politics

It doesn't make sense that religious people are more conservative and secular people are more liberal.‭ ‬It makes more sense the other way around.‭ ‬Why are people like that‭? Stereotypes‭‬.

Religious people and liberals have the same stereotypes.‭ ‬They're both motivated by good,‭ ‬holier than thou,‭ ‬hypocritical,‭ ‬ruled by feelings over logic,‭ ‬etc.‭ ‬People attack them because they're too‭ "‬good‭"‬.‭ ‬Secular people and conservatives also have the same stereotypes.‭ ‬They're selfish and evil,‭ ‬prejudiced,‭ ‬ruled by logic over feelings,‭ ‬etc.‭ ‬People attack them because they're too‭ "‬evil‭"‬.

Of course,‭ ‬these are stereotypes.‭ ‬They are‭ not true‬.

People choose religious views and political views that cancel out stereotypes.‭ ‬If you're very religious and very liberal,‭ ‬people think you're pure good.‭ ‬Sojourners ‬is a great example.‭ ‬I read it sometimes for two reasons:‭ ‬1‭) ‬it's interesting,‭ ‬and‭ ‬2‭) ‬they're gooder than me.‭ ‬Not better,‭ ‬but‭ gooder‬.‭ ‬You know what I mean.‭ ‬I admire them but I don't want to be like them.‭ ‬They care about people a lot,‭ ‬but they sound like wimps who don't know a thing about the real world.‭ ‬In real life,‭ ‬a lot of religious liberals are pretty tough.

If you're non-religious and conservative,‭ ‬people think you're too evil and don't care about them.‭ ‬The people at‭ ‬The Atheist Conservative ‬are harsh and they don't mince words.‭ ‬They're angry and they don't have to look like hypocrites.‭

If you're religious and conservative or secular and liberal,‭ ‬the stereotypes cancel each other out.‭ ‬People judge you on your character.‭ ‬People don't think you're heartless and dangerous.‭ ‬People don't think you're self-righteous and wimpy.‭ ‬They think you're normal like them.‭ ‬It moderates your views so you don't sound like a wimp or a brute.‭ ‬Lots of them sound like wimps or brutes anyway.

Also,‭ ‬gay abortion.

There's other reasons:‭ ‬Secular people are rarely Republican because Republicans weave religious language into everything and exclude them.‭ ‬Non-religious people are a minority group and most minorities are liberals because some conservatives hate minorities.‭ ‬Nobody wants to go where people hate them. This is also why most black people are Democrats regardless of religion - some white Republicans still hate black people. Or some Democrat leaders say Republicans do to get votes.

Frankly,‭ ‬religious liberals and secular conservatives make more sense than the other way around.‭ ‬Why‭? ‬Their arguments don't bore me to tears,‭ ‬and they're both less prejudiced because they're minority groups themselves.‭ ‬I don't know how Jesus or Athe would vote.‭ ‬It makes me sick when I see‭ "‬Support Jesus‭! ‬Support‭ (‬political issue here‭)!" ‬or‭ "‬Jesus was a‭ (‬conservative/liberal/libertarian/anarchist/fascist/socialist‭)"‬.‭ ‬Also,‭ ‬I don't know how you can be non-religious and have a positive view of human nature like most liberals do.‭ ‬Still,‭ ‬thank God for secular humanists with a positive view of human nature.‭ ‬I'd rather be around a bunch of them than a bunch of Objectivists.

Sorry libertarians,‭ ‬I left you out.‭ ‬You're not a stereotype group on CNN or Fox News.

Summer and Winter Christians

Read this: Summer and Winter Christians by Richard Beck

It's a great essay. Richard Beck says many people see Christian faith on a one-axis model: if you're Christian, you don't complain, and if you're not, you do. Beck prefers a two-axis model where faith and complaint are different dimensions. He calls high faith with low complaint "Summer Christians", high faith with high complaint "Winter Christians", low faith with high complaint "Spiritual Critics", and low faith with low complaint "Disengaged Believers".

I'm a Winter Christian. Maybe it's me getting older and more bitter. I can't understand Summer Christians at all, but I like being around them. I can understand Spiritual Critics well altho I think some of them use their complaints as an excuse not to go to church. As for Disengaged Believers, I was one once. When I didn't go to church regularly I didn't complain about it.

I can't say anything else he didn't say better, so read his essay.

Defining Evangelicals in an Election Year

I've come a long way since my days as a left-wing liberal. Still, I read the Sojourners blog sometimes. Here's a great post, Defining "Evangelicals" in an Election Year. I'm sick of people who assume all evangelical Christians are Republicans.

More posts on politics and religion coming soon.

Religion and Personality

Different churches draw different personalities. There's differences in doctrine, worship style, race, and class. There's also personality differences. This is true for Protestant denominations. Methodists, Baptists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Pentecostals, Church of Christ, etc. draw people with different attitudes and personal habits. If you drink alcohol, you're gonna join the Episcopal or Lutheran churches. If you're dead set against drinking, you're gonna join the Baptists. If some Baptists are intolerant toward alcohol, some Episcopalians are intolerant toward people who don't drink. It also depends on how much you care about the creeds. Many Episcopalians say the Nicene Creed every week but don't believe it. I like the Methodists because they have both the fundamentalist nutcases and the extreme liberal nutcases. I'd rather have both than just one.

Converts go to whatever group attracts their personality. It's more reliable than what is or isn't true. I don't drink or smoke and I'm a semi health nut, so I'm a good target for the Latter Day Saints. On the other hand, I admire Catholic Social Teaching and I like liturgy. Catholics are pretty open to all personalities, but a lot of Catholic converts are a certain type of person. The Young Fogey. The fan of GK Chesterton, CS Lewis, George MacDonald, etc. The medievalist. The history nut. They're in some Protestant churches but they're a dwindling minority. Protestantism has little to do with church history any more. It's sad.

It may work for other religions too. Most Wiccans are bisexual goth women. Not all, but most. I was interested in Orthodox Judaism for a while. I liked the strict rules. I don't know much about Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. In the US Buddhism draws the same kind of people who become liberal Christians.

A lot of people deconvert from religion altogether. Most people here are raised in religion so most agnostics and atheists are converts. There's a difference between agnostics and atheists. Atheists are sure there's no God, but agnostics aren't. This is mainly a personality difference. If fundamentalist Christians deconvert they become atheists. If the more tolerant kind deconvert they become agnostics. Agnostics are more laid back than atheists.

Kill the Heretic!

It's human nature. If someone disagrees with you, they're evil and you should kill them. You should destroy their writings. You should shut them up at all costs. If you're good enough at it, nobody will know what they stood for in the first place.

One example is the medieval church. I'm a Christian and I'm fine with doctrinal purity, but the church went to extremes in the old days. We only know about a lot of heresies from books arguing against them. People destroyed heretical books. During the Protestant Reformation the church/government killed reformers. For years Christians oppressed Jews, even tho Jesus and His first disciples were all Jewish.

Oppressive governments do the same thing. The Nazis and Communists killed lots of people for disagreeing with the party. Not for doing anything. They killed people for other reasons too. Nazis hated Jews, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and a bunch of other groups. They didn't do anything to the Nazis apart from existing.

We don't kill people or destroy their books any more in the Western world. Now we insult people, call them names, make fun of them, etc. It may not kill people but it hurts their careers. Here's a form of oppression in the music world:

Most rock critics praise genres like rockabilly, garage rock, 70's punk, post-punk, and early alternative. They trash genres like progressive rock and metal that don't fit their narrow view of rock.

When I was younger I didn't like progressive rock apart from Pink Floyd because things I read told me not to. People said it was "pretentious" and "self-indulgent" and it "violated the spirit of rock'n'roll". Then I discovered Procol Harum, who led me to Yes, who got me hooked on other progressive rock like King Crimson, early Genesis, Dream Theater, etc. Now I know rock critics are full of crap because those bands made great music. In the standard history of rock, punk "destroyed" progressive rock, like how grunge "destroyed" glam metal. Progressive rock bands and glam metal bands didn't do anything to offend punk and grunge bands. The rock purists killed the rock heretics in a heroic act to restore standard forms of rock.

Disco had a worse backlash from rock fans in the late 70s. There was a disco record demolition in 1979. That's real oppression.

I'm not the only one who sees a connection. John McFerrin says "I like a lot of punk rock and post-punk, but the punk "revolution" was really an inquisition." Nile Rodgers from disco/funk band Chic compared the anti-disco movement to Nazi book-burning.

The worst part is most rock critics hate religion. They embrace rock music like it's an alternative to religion that lets them do whatever they want. They probably say "religion kills so avoid it" like most anti-religious people do. But they still got the "kill the heretic" instinct because it's human nature.

The Lord's Prayer in Old English