My Story

 I wanted to write a blog post to talk a little bit about myself. Particularly I want to give a brief life story, in a way that relates to the forming of my ideologies. Everyone has their beliefs and biases, so we should stop acting like we don't. Our beliefs are shaped by our life events: either things we learned from parents, teachers, friends, research we did (and how well/poorly we conducted our research). We should be up front about our views and biases, and how we came to these conclusions.

One of the most important things in my blogs is wisdom: knowledge gained from experience. I want to obtain wisdom, and use my writing to spread wisdom, in all areas of life, but especially in religion and politics. I want to use this blog to infuse the wisdom of past generations, into the youthful vigor of my own generation. It is the young people who shape the world, the future, but too often we do so without learning from the experiences of generations past, and we plunge headlong into disaster.

I was raised Catholic, until I was 12 years old. My political influences? I was the son of two Democrats, living in a blue state. Even as a kid, I always wanted to be wise. I didn't want to make mistakes, I would much rather learn from the mistakes of others. I was a cautious kid, analytical (still am), always seeking to avoid mistakes. Kids, naturally, make mistakes and do stupid things. I did too, sometimes, but I deeply desired to be right, to do right, and to find the truth.

Children are believers, they believe wholeheartedly whatever we tell them, so it is important to tell them the truth. I was raised Catholic, so I never questioned the existence of God. That is until I was about ten years old, after I found the truth about Santa Claus. That event introduced doubt in me that followed me for the next 10 years. I still believed in God, mind you, but I always had a nagging doubt. I became a skeptical theist. I say this to prebuttal the genetic fallacy argument that I only arrived at my current ideology because I was raised into it. I have done a significant amount of reflection and research on what I believe. Not to say that I know everything, but I am not simply parroting what I was spoon-fed.

There is always an emotional element in what we believe. Many kids leave their faith because they feel hurt by their parents or simply want to rebel. Many take up political ideologies because they feel good. I don't want to say that I am immune to this, but I want to reflect deeply on what I believe and be open to critical analysis from myself and others.

When I was about 11 or 12 my dad, a very devout Catholic, began asking questions. When the priest didn't havd the answers he was looking for, my dad brought my whole family to an evangelical non-denominational church. It was here that our family became Christians (born-again), when I was twelve years old. This is probably one of the most significant and foundational paradigm shifts in my life. (The shift being in my soteriology: my view of redemption).

My faith waivered a lot over the next six years. In the back of my mind (not on any conscious level) I constantly dealt with this nagging doubt: what if it turns out that God is just like Santa Claus? Ok, well it wouldn't be exactly the same, obviously. My parents genuinely believed in God. How did I know that God wasn't also some elaborate hoax? I simply resolved that you could never know for certain.

In politics, my social views can be traced all the way back to my upbringing in the Catholic Church. They are not very different from what I was taught at my current church. Today, my socio-political views are slightly more complex then my childhood view. I openly admit that the philosophical foundation for my social and political view is in my religious views. However, I don't believe that you need to share my religious beliefs to share my political beliefs. You can come to the same conclusions by looking at the natural world that we share.

My economic views come from many small business owners that I have had the pleasure of knowing. I myself aspired (still do) to be self-employed, so I was attracted to the economic ideas which I felt would create a better climate for business. I think it was during this time that I became attracted to some form of libertarian ideology. In that time I had quite a few friends who were Ron Paul fans, so I thought I was too.

When I was 19, one of these small business owners (whom I was working for at the time) took me to town hall and registered me to vote. I really didn't know anything about politics at this point, only what I had been spoonfed (by both liberal and conservative sources). I wanted to pick one of the two major parties to register for, simply so that I could vote in their primaries. I knew that Democrats were liberal, and Republicans were conservatives. I didn't even know what 'liberal' and 'conservative' actually meant back then. So, I identified myself as a moderate, but registered as a Republican.

All through my life, one of my many mantras has been "balance between extremes". I used to always try to take the middle road. Hence, why I identified as a moderate. I still believe in this virtue of balance, however, I have found that often what seems like the "middle-road" position is simply a compromise of the truth.

In January of the next year, I was in a critical thinking course hosted at our church. The course became a launching pad for a Christian apologetics course. This course planted seeds in my mind that still continue to effect the way I think. Learning about critical thinking, epistomology, and getting back into apologetics, restored my rational confidence in God. I was very impressed particularly with the Cosmological Argument for God. Also learning more about epistemology taught me how we can know things with reasonable confidence, and not lapse into solipsism or agnosticism.

That summer, the teacher of the critical thinking class began to mentor me. We talked talked a lot that summer about Christianity, apologetics, philosophy, and simply life in general. It was also through these meetings that I came to identify myself as a conservative, rather than a moderate or libertarian. Before, I thought that conservative meant traditionalist. I didn't want to be a traditionalist, so I didn't identify as a conservative. Now I would frame the word a bit differently. To put it simply: conservatives support a strict interpretation of the Constitution, to limit the powers of government. No one is above the Law, not even the government.

I then spent two years at a Bible college in Upstate New York. I spent two semesters at community college, and now I'm finishing my degree at an online Christian college. For the past year and a half, I have spent my time checking out other views and testing them against my own views. I want to use this blog to share my own views, and maybe even hear some of your own.

Once again, I'm not without my biases, but hopefully I've exposes my biases and influences here, and laid them all bare.