first: really appreciate feedback on something that is somewhat hard for me to talk about ^^

(thread) https://twitter.com/selentelechia/status/1267287093304193025

this is somewhat surprising (the "fight or be upset" bit) because I feel like my relationship with religion and christianity in particular has been improving over the last year or two

I definitely respect the faith I was raised in a lot more than I did a few years ago

some theories about what you may be picking up on:

I definitely "brace" myself a little when the topic comes up. it might be presumptuous, but I do get tense when I talk about a topic where a lot of people are invested in changing my mind (not mine *specifically* ofc)

as a topic, I feel like it's amorphous, loaded with so much feeling and implication, something that is core to many people's lives, and also something that a lot of people have valid reasons to be wary of or even hate.

I was around for the Atheist vs. Christianity debates that dominated a lot of online discourse for years, and while I didn't participate much, I feel like I did get inundated with information from both sides

and I rarely saw a kind, productive conversation around it

it may have been the product of the online spaces I spent time in during those years

possibly I could have picked better ones

but it doesn't change the fact that there's this entire "ugh" field around how religion convos go down, specifically on the internet

so I do tense up when the conversation about religion turns from joking to earnest

my own process of leaving the faith of my upbringing was pretty painful and I did not do it on a whim; I thought long and hard, and while I consider myself open to having my mind changed in *general,* I wouldn't be able to do it on anyone else's timetable

there's too much

so I'm wary of conversion attempts, wary of nasty discourse patterns I saw when I was younger

wary of attempted conversion

so I keep it to jokes, mostly

the jokes are also a bit of cope for my own complicated feelings about being vaguely agnostic-atheist now

this thread contains a lot of my thoughts on my "conversion" process if you're curious

I think as I've gotten older I've developed more respect for the role religion played, but the epistemic confidence is just gone https://twitter.com/selentelechia/status/1209393832929816576?s=20

anyways -- I don't particularly want to fight or get upset about religion, but it is a very loaded topic emotionally

not just for me, but for so many other people too

so I do tense up a lot when I sense earnest religion discourse starting, and that may be what you're seeing

curious on your thoughts, if you feel like elaborating, because this is definitely not the impression I intend to give off when I talk about religion!

and again, thanks for the feedback :)