mrjonno: Do you know anyone specifically who made such a change? I would be interested to hear a kind of before and after comparison of what they were like and how they got there, in terms of their thinking and experiences.

Some background: This video was what spurred this question. It's very interesting, although I don't think it says everything there is to say about the topic:

YouTube - The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Belief.

My father-in-law has actually become quite liberal in the 12 years I've known him. He was never insane right-wing Republican ala Rush Limbaugh or anything, but he was certainly to the right of moderate. I think part of his conversion was due to both of his daughters turning out liberal, and the rest was due to the results of 8 years of George W. Bush. He voted for Obama in the last election.

there are plenty of famous examples of left-to-right "conversion."  the ones who immediately spring to my mind are john dos passos, sidney hook, and james burnham.  dos passos went from being a socialist to a cold warrior and supporter of goldwater.  sidney hook was a communist before also becoming a cold warrior.  burnham was a trotskyist, then ditto.  hook and burnham both ended up being lauded by reagan.

I grew up in a conservative religious family, and basically held to both of those values until my early to mid 20s.  Along with my deconversion from theism, I experienced a substantial shift in my social political views, and am now very liberal in that regard.  My shift from conservative to liberal in this area was drastic and abrupt.  My economic stance has changed significantly, but the change has been more gradual, and not as polar as my social position.

Whereas I held firmly to the principles of Reaganomics in my early 20s, I now believe that stable strong economies are actually built from the bottom up, so that's a complete reversal.

I am now a firm believer in the necessity of strong social support mechanisms and tax relief for the poorest members of society.  However, I do not think socialism works in totality.  I believe a semi-free market, regulated to prevent monopoly and other abuse, is the best system.  So this is not a complete polar shift.  I suppose economically, I've moved from conservative to moderate.

I used to strongly support the drug war.  I now oppose it, and believe that marijuana should be completely legal, and that most other drug use should be treated as a peripheral issue, not a main pursuit.

I never believed that gay marriage should be outlawed, but to be fair, this simply wasn't an issue when I was a conservative.  It was something that I had considered, though, and I always thought that the constitution should provide equality for all citizens, even if I didn't approve of their particular exercise of their equality.  Of course, now I am a strong advocate for complete equality for gays on all political and social fronts.

Funny.  That's the same thing that happened to me (except for the fully free market part) but I say that I went from conservative to liberal.  I think your use of the terms is more correct than mine, but Americans are just fucked up.  We have no idea what conservative and liberal mean.  It's not worth fighting, so I just go with what most Americans think the words mean.

Your thread begs the question of what do you define as "liberal" and "conservative"? I find atheists to be either liberal, libertarian or somewhere in between (like me). I think we need limited government to provide some backbone of a safety net but I also ferociously believe in personal fiscal responsibility. Government cannot solve all problems.

Often being politically liberal seems to give allowances to the most intolerant among the masses as in the case of multiculturalism. Let's take Ontario, Canada for example. There is universal health care and government backing of various social/religious groups' representation. From this milieu are Islamic extremists who want Sharia courts. Why should any sane and tolerant Canadian taxpayer pay a nickel for an extremist group's welfare. And when liberals stay silent, the far right catch hold of the frustrated masses as in the case of the nordic liberal democracies of Europe.

There are several liberal ideas which I support which include providing a safety net for the poor, some form of universal healthcare, cultural diversity, feminism to name a few. Yet noble ideas can be misused to violate civil liberties. I recall back in the early 80s at University of Ottawa standing in front of the department of Women's Studies where I saw a huge banner which read "Men should stop watching pornography". I personally love porn (just like many pro-sex feminists) and I strongly defend freedom of speech. No one has the right to regulate your personal freedom to masturbate. I get extremely annoyed when "liberals" encase themselves in rigid ideological spheres and self-righteously preach to the masses of what is right and wrong just like their nutbag religious conservative counterparts.

I was a conservative republican, based off the ideology on the founding principles of the party.

The GOP however today is entirely different, and I changed over to be a democrat because we are unfortunately trapped in a two-party system by the "winner takes all" rules they have set up, to block any other groups out in this nation. The democratic party has problems, but mostly seems to be ran with a bit more diversity of ideas. There is no diversity in the republican party, and they discourage it.

Diversity of ideas is needed to solve problems. It exposes flaws that need to be corrected BEFORE being implimented.

I am a liberal today, because I believe that everyone should have freedom to do whatever they want unless it tramples on the freedom directly of others.

I will never vote for any political party that is homophobic, foreigner hating racists regardless of any other politics they possess.

In the UK this basically rules out at least until recently the Conservative party (I think their leadership is changing on this but there grass roots are as a bigoted as ever).

Unfortunately I also won't vote for a party that can't win , ie 3rd party's in most cases are a waste of a vote.

So I don't really have much of a choice on who I vote for in the UK, the Labour party which I truely despise for their lies and incompotence.

Americans should really be grateful that they had such a clear choice in their last elections

Yeah: me. When I shed my belief in a god, I went back and started reevaluating my political beliefs as well. I am psychologically drawn to the pro-life position, for example. Rationally, however, I realize that it not a cut and dry situation, and I have been revising my beliefs. Then again, I have always tried to hold beliefs for a reason(which is why I eventually had to leave Christianity). I was never a "straight line" conservative or liberal. Rarely do I find that real world topics can be defined by terms as shallow as "liberal" and "conservative." But, in very general terms, I have certainly shifted in my opinions towards a more liberal position.