Born free

There are plenty of atheists on the internet, but at least among US atheists, I'm somewhat unusual in never having "de-converted" from a religion -- I just grew up without religion and never had any religious beliefs or identity to break free from.  It makes a difference.

In my experience, many atheists who were formerly religious still carry around a lot of religious clutter and contamination within their minds, which remained even after they cast off all their supernatural beliefs.  They struggle to find secular rationalizations for these leftover religious attitudes, which they persuade themselves are somehow "universal" values not tied to religion at all.

I harbor no such cobwebs, because I never had them in the first place.  I do not love my enemies.  I do not pray for those who persecute me.  I do not turn the other cheek.  And I disdain their "golden rule" -- I treat others, not as I wish them to treat me, but as is appropriate based on how they actually do treat me.  I am not burdened by Christianity's whole edifice of sniveling nonsense.  I never was.

This is why, for example, I don't feel any concern or sympathy for the legions of wingnut covidiots who are likely to suffer and die because they spurned the vaccines and other precautions.  I read their blogs and sites, remember, and I know how much they hate and disdain people like me.  Thus I have no reason not to hate and disdain them.  They represent a threat, thus it does not bother me if they reduce that threat by destroying themselves, as they are still determined to do, doubling down on all the same misinformation and conspiratardia.

Yes, I do feel concern for the innocent -- the people who for whatever reason can't receive the vaccine or who do not benefit from it, people in poorer countries who want the vaccine but can't get it because local supplies are inadequate.  Compassion is for those who deserve it.  Not for people who never felt any toward me and people like me, and are now suffering (or soon will be) due to their own willful stupidity.

Beliefs have consequences.  I've explained before how religion, in my view, is the root explanation for the staggering level of reality-denial and delusional thinking which now pervades the American right wing.  Since most religious beliefs are contrary to the evidence, holding them fervently and sincerely requires developing the ability to disregard evidence and rationalize clinging to favored ideas in spite of evidence.  Once that ability is established in the mind -- and inevitably becomes a major element of that mind's way of thinking, since religious ideas loom so large in the world-view of the hard-core believer -- it is easily extended to other areas, given enough time.  This is especially true since it inevitably includes a disdain for science, as science is the main discoverer of the evidence which the believer must hand-wave away.

This is how we get a whole major sub-population which is in denial about things like evolution, anthropogenic global warming, and now covid-19 and the tested means of fighting it -- as well as embracing lesser and more specific delusions like "stolen election" or QAnon.  It's because they started off with a religious world-view which they could only sustain in the first place by training themselves to cling to beliefs in the face of contrary evidence.  Those who claim that the wingnuts just naturally have some kind of ex nihilo propensity for reality-denial and that religion is merely one more example of it are failing to see the real picture.  Religion isn't just one example, it's the basis and origin of the whole problem.

Non-belief has consequences too.  Since I was never brainwashed into treating anything as "sacred" in the strict religious sense, it's easier for me to disregard sacred cows more generally.  I don't care where the Overton window currently is.  I'm not going to contort my word usage and capitalization to fit in with whatever the latest Orwellian fads are.  I don't care whether what I write is or is not within the parameters of some cobbled-together set of positions that happens to be embraced by the left-wing mainstream at the current transient moment.  I'm not even slightly impressed when somebody denounces something I've said (or a source I linked to) by brandishing some word ending in "ism" or "ist" as if it were a cross waved in the face of Dracula.  Labeling things is not an argument.  Being offended is not an argument.  Getting upset because I deviated from Mandatory Correct Thought about some issue and said something that "you are simply not supposed to say" is not an argument.  The fact that an idea makes somebody unhappy tells us nothing about whether it's true or not.

I am what I am, and I know what I know.  If it doesn't fit the narrative in some places, so much the worse for the narrative.  I'm not interested in being a spokesman for an existing ideology.  Only the subjugated mind treats anything as sacred.