Only the intellectual sees man as intellectual. Yet in reality; man is simple first and foremost. We are all united in seeing things how they are just by looking at them. On account of this; I think we put too much focus on complex or well readed arguments towards religion. I am to this day much more convinced and challenged by issues that anyone can understand. The best argument for the catholic church in my mind is still "its big" and for christianity its "like the default choice". My biggest issues with it were always its positions on sexuality; until my cognitive dissonance numbed those intuitions, lol. I've also seen people leave over its scandals. Offshoots of Catholicism like Protestantism appear intellectually rigorous when you understand their reasoning; but to become one from a straightforward perspective seems; idk it's just too much complex of a learning curve. You can say "these intuitions are swayed by your starting point bias" but like... this is the case about all knowledge.
I've been keen to try to keep my political beliefs aligned with my base intuitions; not as like a virtue of it but just because it feels like how to go about things. I see modern liberalism as being aligned with my base intuitions in the vast majority of cases except for yknow the medical stuff (which is very very important) and I see them generally extremely close to the "base sense" of morality except on those very important non negotiables; were they err in a very disgusting fashion. Conservatives are often worse on the vast majority of general issues- some cut off entire sections of our intuitions like that anything positive can ever be owed to a person, others will take religious frameworks that are genuinely compatible with an intuitive understanding of law; but they will instead read them as "the most plane direct way" without letting common sense intuitions sway them in any way; for instance their weird relationship with marriage as a legal framework; adoption; and to legislate activities that appear intuitively to deal with moral law rather than legal law.
I believe my denomination has worked hard to rectify these issues, for instance on the death penalty.
Still among catholics I feel like conservatism hardens the heart on the general with a too fundamentalist perspective- which they misattribute as being "traditionalist". I do not know what truly brings about the grave errors of liberalism; they were so close in so many aspects- It could be because it was largely detached from a religious perspective of ethics; instead being enlightenment reconstructions of ethics based directly on our intuitions. If that alone caused this; it may be for them too that they built their morality; dogmatized it and then realised it could not adequately answer some questions which gave their hearts issue; and instead of complicating their ethic to align with their hearts, they decided to bite a nasty bullet. This can be seen in some leftist views that i consider very naive such as pure utilitarianism; which leads to morally monstrous conclusions that outweigh the very intuition of the ethical structure as a concept. Even when I was depressed I knew euthanasia should not be allowed. I reject the fact that the "others intuitions disagree" position sufficiently destroys intuition because all is fundamentally intuition so its unavoidable. I do think that if one was not exposed to an act of evil like or slavery and then learned of it at a later age in a neutral context; their intuitions would be immediately clear; as it was for certain subjects for me.
I was fascinated by ethics as a child; even things like veganism. I do not recall if I thought animals were on equal footing to humans; I do not think so- but I thought much more about them than you would expect. I wonder if there are vegan families who do not discuss the ethics of veganism at all; and what their children first think about eating meat- after seeing the animated eyes of animals. 🥺
