Mine
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Vonnegut, specifically “Cat’s Cradle” (I know he’s a comrade, but I didn’t find that out until a decade after I read any of his work)
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Ursula LeGuin
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Kafka
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Camus
Honestly; Going through the New Testament with a Jewish theologian in a completely non-Christian context. Once you get in to the nitty gritty of the politics and culture of the 1st century AD you start to appreciate how incredibly radical the philosophy laid out in the New Testament was, and how aggressively, albeit non-violently, anti-imperialist and anti-roman it was. I don’t consider Evangelicals to be Christians at all because I’ve studied their book and I know what the context for the stories are and they generally practice the exact opposite. Does it matter that they’re not Christians? Not really, but hypocrites piss me off and understanding the vile depths of their hypocrisy and violence means I’ve never felt any need to compromise with them or even really pay attention to whatever they’re saying.
was this from a book or through a mentorship? I’d like to read that book!
Oh god, it was twenty years ago. I wouldn’t be able to give you a reading list if I tried.
I don’t consider Evangelicals to be Christians at all
I was raised Catholic and was devout in my younger days. I truly believed. I even thought about the priesthood. I later realized I had no faith in a god, I had no ‘faith’ at all. But I was captivated by the teachings and believed in the ideas of love and forgiveness and the advocacy for the poor and the themes about redemption. There is a mountain of bullshit hiding behind the Catholic facade but I doubt you would have seen Liberation Theology come into being if Latin America had been conquered by evangelicals.
Becoming an agnostic/atheist allowed me to take a step back and see things more clearly. I said this before but Evangelicals are like LaVeyan satanists but they’re pretending its not self-worship. The cowardice to not own up to that is one of the biggest reasons I hate them. Own up to it, its hurting real people not the egos of theoretical gods, the misanthropy of evangelicals is more real than the god they profess to “worship.”
I took the Catholic to Communist pipeline and it was a surprisingly easy transition. I struggled for a few years over accepting my lack of faith, but once I realized the values I actually liked could be applied outside of faith, everything just sort of clicked. I also gave serious thought to the priesthood as a young Catholic.
I had a similar experience, but I self-radicalized into it in the early days of the Internet. Thankfully I had this stuff figured out before Reddit existed and never got poisoned by /r/atheism types.
I still have a fascination with playing Paladins/Clerics in tabletop RPGs, and I think it’s because I have this vision of a radical religious character that I came up with in those days but can’t quite get right. Imagine if Jesus and Lenin were the same person.
People at the time wanted Jesus to be Lenin. The Messiah was supposed to be a warrior who was going to crush Rome in open combat and liberate Judea. Didn’t turn out that way, and the Jews are still waiting for their Messiah.
/r/Atheism and New Atheism in general have been a huge disappointment. Somehow “There is no god” turned in to a dumb, reactionary movement. Very disappointing.
