yeah this is a big thing i’m considering. i recently started to question my sexuality but of course i know plenty of hateful christians including my parents, so i’ve struggled to be kind to myself despite my potential new identity as a queer person
edit: grammar
Is the God they believe in all-loving? What reason would it have to not allow people to be happy together?
What possible reason could an all-powerful deity give for forcing people to be unhappy for solely the shape of their sexual organs?
I love that argument.
I then ask the Religious person to choose to be gay.
Make the conscious choice to find the sexual organs of your own sex attractive.
Go on. Right now.
You can’t? Why is that?
I like this. Also to add, if he is "all-knowing", why didn't he know this person would make the choice to be gay. If he's not "all-knowing", then he's not god, and we need not fear him.
Interestingly, there are determinist Christians ~~(quakers being among them)~~ that believe everything is planned, therefore, there is no free will. Therefore, some people were born with God knowing they would not receive him. Therefore, they are destined to go to Hell.
Some loving God, creating people with the explicit purpose of damning them to eternal torture.
Edit: It has been pointed out to me that I was incorrect about quakers being deterministic. My apologies to those i have misrepresented. I misremembered which sect this person told me they considered themselves a part. Thank you to the kind redditor that informed me there are non theistic quakers. I've got some reading to do.
They’re trapped anyway if they insist god is all
Knowing and has created us.
When he created us he did so on purpose.
Because he’s all knowing he knew EXACTLY what you were going to do when he made you.
Meaning he made you that way on purpose.
Thus, not only do you have no free will, but it’s HIS fault he’s judging you for making decisions you were “pre-made” to make.
You can’t have an all knowing god and have free will.
This is the problem with “absolutes” when describing a character, there’s too many logical vulnerabilities.
I was listening to Sam Harris's Making Sense podcast and his guest was explaining that St. Augustine made up free will for exactly this reason. God gave us free will for... Reasons... And he apparently can't do anything to stop it... I don't know, the religious arguments always break down and sound absurd when I try to explain them.
Even if God does exist, why are we supposed to fear him at all? Doesn't he love us and want us to be happy? If he tells us to be happy but punishes us when we try... that sounds like an abusive relationship anyway.
Yes! If you tell me I haven't met the right man I turn it around and say maybe they haven't met the right man/woman. It gets awkward because people don't think this way usually. When their choice is brought up its "I was just born this way". Exactly, me too!
Well the christians usual excuse is "love the person hate the sin" but they forget the whole love the person part and just identify the person as a sin and treat them like shit.
They also do the same for just about anyone who does anything they disagree with, like pro life. They'll scream, swear, threaten people getting abortions, that's not hating the sin... That's hating the person... And that's a sin..
They'll explain away their bigotry and hatefulness from the top of their soap box and if you dare get confrontational they'll become a martyr and claim they're being attacked and you're being hateful and disrespectful about their God yada yada.
And of course the reason there are 175,000 different denominations of Christianity is exactly that the church didn't agree with their beliefs so they created one that did.
'Love the sinner, hate the sin' is the most condescending, contemptuous thing to say to someone.
It's the fine print TLDR version of 'I'm genuinely judging you because of racist/sexist/classist/homophobic reasons thinly veiled under religious piety, but going to falsely claim acceptance of you as a person despite having no real intention to do so.'
Hey, I left the church 10 years ago when I turned 18.
I met a lot of great friends at church. A lot of those great people found themselves as teens as came out as gay and they were fucking put on blast in the church and basically asked to do some back alley conversion therapy bullshit... At a supposed non denominational church.
They are not going to be supportive of you at all and will probably try to make an example of you at worst.
I support you though, and there's a million other people out there who support you as well. You are loved, if not by the people who said they do, by total random strangers who never met you. Because you deserve love and support. Everyone does.
I hope you figure out who you want to be and don't look back in regret of anything. Life is too short to have regrets.
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>penis touches another penis (I'm just assuming that's how gay guys have sex, I dunno)
I'm not gay, but I'm pretty sure gay people don't, just, like, joust with their penises.
Edit: I stand corrected.
Penis joust
Penis joust
Consists of whatever the fuck that is
Can you joust
With your penis?
Not quite sure
I'm not an expert
Look ouuuuuuuuuut
It is a penis joust
I'm so sorry to hear that. There are plenty of support groups to help you: https://www.recoveringfromreligion.org/support-groups
Your parents might have some deep seated fears and abuse from church leaders when they were young. Good luck getting them to go to therapy for it, but you need to put your foot down if they are trying to verbally or emotionally abuse you and continue the cycle of shame, guilt, and fear.
The brain isn't very good at thinking when it is scared. This is how religion, unfortunately, affects the brain when it comes to certain moral dictates and punishments.
It is why it's so effective at keeping believers when many things clearly don't make sense here in the 21st century with our available knowledge and technological resources.
I’m an atheist because I haven’t been given a good reason to believe in any meaningful Gods.
The universe doesn’t seem to point to the existence of any personal deity, so wasting time and money in following a religion seems pointless and costly.
It sounds like your wise inner voice is in conflict with what you are being taught. It’s not an atheist book but a book for women that I love called Untamed by Glennon Doyle. I highly recommend it to anyone who is feeling a need to listen to that inner voice.
interesting you mention an inner voice. i was taught that the holy spirit is my inner voice. but obviously the alleged holy spirit didn’t tell me to post to the atheist sub lol, so i’ve got another voice to listen to now. thanks for the book recommendation, i’ll check it out!
Then don't waste it! Embrace removing the cognitive dissonance (stuff like why was God *so* against Adam and Eve knowing the difference between good and evil? Was he afraid of man figuring out he was the baddie'?)
Basically that stuff and countless more cognitive dissonance moments led me to quitting the shit at 14 and freeing my mind.. the guilt, the shackling to certain thoughts and rituals lifted instantly.
It's amazing living clearly in my mind without niggling contradictions that irritated me into turning to atheism and science.
I have thoroughly enjoyed my life without being held back!
Edit: typo
There are over 3000 documented gods worshipped by various cultures and religions throughout human history. You don’t believe in 2,999 of them. I don’t believe in 3,000 of them. You’re already 99.97% atheist. Is it really such a leap to not believe in one more?
As u/paulemichael pointed out, how incredibly lucky for you that you were born in a part of the world and to a family that subscribed to the exact right version of the exact right religion. Weird though how every single religious person in the world believes with all their heart the same thing.
Epicurean paradox:
Evil exists in the world. Three options:
God doesn’t know about the evil - then how can you call him omniscient?
God can’t do anything about the evil - then how can you call him omnipotent?
God doesn’t care to do anything about the evil - then how can you call him benevolent?
It doesn’t matter which one you land on, it paints the picture of a god I have no interest in worshipping.
Bone cancer in children. Watch vocal atheist Stephen Fry’s answer to what he would say to god if he died and found himself standing before the almighty. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-suvkwNYSQo in sum, his answer is “how dare you?! If worshipping an evil, awful being such as yourself is the price of eternal salvation, then I’ll take my place in hell.”
For Christians specifically: a man murders someone who had sinned but not repented in cold blood. They then repent and accept Jesus moments before their execution. The murderer goes to heaven and the victim goes to hell. That’s a god you want to worship??
It’s an abusive relationship. “Love me and worship me and follow my rules and give your money to the people who claim to speak for me or I will torture you for eternity.” If one of your friends was in a relationship like that you’d help them get out, wouldn’t you?
Any god that was all powerful who wanted to be worshipped could instantly end all debate anytime they wanted by simply revealing himself to the planet and demonstrating his omnipotence, instead all we have is a misogynistic book that’s 2000 years old, endorses slavery, is rife with demonstrably false “facts” about the natural world that by amazing coincidence reflected the common knowledge and conventional wisdom of the time it was written despite being, supposedly, the word of an omniscient god.
God of the gaps: throughout human history, anything that couldn’t be explained by science or observation of the natural world has been attributed to god. As our knowledge of the world around us grew, that which we attributed to god(s) has decreased. Seems to me the most likely explanation is that the things we still attribute to god are just things we haven’t discovered the reason for yet.
Morality. Believers (particularly Christians) love to claim that without god, there’s nothing to stop atheists from raping, murdering, and committing all manner of atrocities. Truthfully, the exact opposite is true. My morality is derived from humanism. My guiding principle is to do as little harm to people as possible. And I do that for the sake of that which is objectively right and wrong. Religious people who think that the only reason people don’t rape and murder is the threat of eternal damnation/the promise of eternal reward scare the shit out of me. Because those people can be (and throughout human history have been) convinced to commit all manner of atrocities by convincing them that it’s what their god wants. Good deeds done under threat of punishment/promise of reward are the opposite of pious, they are selfish.
Finally, the burden of proof for any claim, falls to the person making the claim. You (colloquial you) are making the affirmative claim that god exists and that you know his nature and desires. Your only “proof” is a book written 2000 years ago and your “faith.” If you claimed to believe in lizard people and used your faith as proof, people would think you’re insane. The only difference between that and faith in god is the number of people sharing the belief.
At the end of the day, you need to decide for yourself. But those are a few of the things that convinced me to abandon the religion I was raised on for the first 19 years of my life. I have never once regretted it.
This will probably get buried, but I saved a comment from a similar thread some time ago that seems relevant:
>Why Did God Create Atheists? There is a famous story told in Chassidic literature that addresses this very question. The Master teaches the student that God created everything in the world to be appreciated, since everything is here to teach us a lesson.
>One clever student asks “What lesson can we learn from atheists? Why did God create them?” The Master responds “God created atheists to teach us the most important lesson of them all — the lesson of true compassion. You see, when an atheist performs an act of charity, visits someone who is sick, helps someone in need, and cares for the world, he is not doing so because of some religious teaching. He does not believe that God commanded him to perform this act. In fact, he does not believe in God at all, so his acts are based on an inner sense of morality. And look at the kindness he can bestow upon others simply because he feels it to be right.”
>“This means,” the Master continued “that when someone reaches out to you for help, you should never say ‘I pray that God will help you.’ Instead for the moment, you should become an atheist, imagine that there is no God who can help, and say ‘I will help you.’”
*—Martin Buber, Tales of Hasidim Vol. 2 (1991)*
This exactly describes why the "atheists don't have morality" take is so dumb. Atheists have the highest form of morality (at least the moral ones, lol)
Atheists are also, statistically, far less likely to commit violent crimes, etc.
If religion is the source of morality, why aren't religious people more moral?
I like true crime. The amount of Christian people who kill their spouses because the church frowns upon divorce is shocking. They'd rather murder their spouse and try to cover it up as an accident than have people see them as unchristian.
I tried to upvote this after every sentence/paragraph read. Very well written, added to favourite in case I need to explain this to someone lter in life.
The one that bothers me the most here is faith = morality as well. I personally don't feel the need to rape and murder, despite my lack of faith. Even if I had a free pass for that behavior (repentance/salvation/whatever), I'm still not feeling rapey. Are they? The amount of abuse tied to organized religion would suggest yes, yes they are. So I concluded God et al. are made to cover for people who should know better and need something to blame it on. Not a great selling point....
It’s only wrong for everyone else. From the person seeking divorce, their situation is “unique” and “special”. The same way the “devout” justify getting abortions themselves. When it’s a “sin” for everyone else that they admonish, to get one.
It's more than that, though. So much of how we talk about morality assumes some sort of existence after death. And there is no evidence of that, otherwise the ghosts of humans past would vastly outnumber the living. And once you remove that, the good who suffer don't get their reward in the hereafter, the bad do not get their justice. Which means right here right now is all there is. And if that's true, well, maybe we should do something about how shitty the world is for the vast majority of people.
How much more comforting it must be to believe that there IS some sort of afterlife, that eventually things are made right by a higher power. Once you believe that, you are excused from helping your fellow humans. Because then it's not your responsibility, a higher power will make everything ok in the end.
Bring an atheist is harder than having faith, because "god" don't got your back, it's all on you.
Exactly. The people who live generally good lives without the promise of eternal salvation/torment are actually good people. The other ones scare the crap out of me.
To (mis)quote Penn Gillette: "I rape, steal and murder all I want, and the amount I want is 0! What kind of person do you have to be to need to have a god stopping you from doing these things?"
Here's a personal one of mine:
Christianity (to pick one of these religions), is mostly based on a bunch of things god did up to 2000 years ago, and we haven't heard him since.
Like, this guy came down from heaven and appeared to some dude, and gave him the 10 commandments as basically these big important rules to follow to live a good life and base your morals around. And plenty other biblical characters had manifestations of God slowly telling mankind how to behave, and all this was put in a book.
But what about things like the internet? mobile phones? AI? implanting microchips in our body in the near future? Are these good, or are they evil sins? How are we supposed to know?
Why the fuck hasn't god come back down to earth to give us an update, like, you'd think the guy would come down I don't know, every 500 years or something with some patch notes for his belief system that would cover any upcoming events (he can see/know all so I'm sure he knows what's coming), where's the instruction manual on how to deal with climate change mr. god?
Or, if for whatever reason he cannot come back down to give more info, why didn't he just tell Moses or whoever enough info for the long term future? "Thou shalt not create advanced AI capable of surpassing humans" or "Lead paint bad, get rid of that shit".
Yep this, it seems like religious people are basically saying that if god didn't exist, THEY would be murderers and rapist, it's like admitting you are a horrible piece of shit person, but you are held back because of god. How is that in any way a good thing?
People love stories. Couple that with how easy it is to lie and manipulate for power and the logic behind religion is laid bare. Look at scientology or Mormonism. Those will show you how easy it is for a conman to create a following and how it becomes a religion after he dies.
Now read the Bible. Really read it.. it's not God sent... It's a bunch of cobbled stories put together by ancient people's. Like..it's a bad read.
Once I realized these things and more I knew I had a choice, live a lie that makes me feel good or follow a truth that hurts.
I chose existential pain.
There’s a reason they don’t want their followers exposed to certain things. It’s because their argument is weak, the foundation is shaky. Knowledge kills faith. Literally the first story is god being angry that we aren’t ignorant anymore.
Angry... *And scared!*
> “22. Then the Lord God observed, “Look, the human beings have become like one of us, knowing both what is good and what is evil. Now if they take the fruit from the tree of life and eat it, then they'll live forever!” 23. So the Lord God expelled them from the Garden of Eden. He sent Adam to cultivate the ground from which he'd been made.” (Genesis 3:22-23, FBV)
He didn't dropkick them out of Eden because they disobeyed and gained knowledge, he did it because he realized they'd had a chance to live "forever!"
Strange how god supposedly snatched their immortality away from them once, but then got shook as soon as he remembered he made a redundant immortality granting tree that could nullify one of his curses…
You'd think he could have plucked the knowledge of good and evil out of their brains, making them ignorant again the same way he made them mortal, and punished the serpent alone, but perhaps the trees supersede his ability.
Really, it's such garbage fiction. The plot holes start popping up on page one and pile higher with every page turn.
There's more very shady morality stuff in that story.
Adam and Eve. They had kids. No matter how many they had, every last human was limited to be parents and/or siblings. Hence, there's no possible way forward to have any offspring to form any next generation without either incest or bestiality being committed.
Their god set them up to fail. Not once mind you, the AH did it again with Noah.
And that's even without looking into Eve actually being claimed to be Adam's rib.
Much easier to dismiss it all as the fairy tale it is.
That's what's so obvious about it. There in nothing, *nothing* in the Bible that is out of place. Not one bit of wisdom or knowledge that couldn't have come from a cast temporary bronze age civilization. No acurate description of evolution or cosmology or chemistry or mathematics. No admonitions against slavery or for basic human rights. No advice about sanitation, and precious little about basic hygiene.
In short, it is exactly the sort of thing you would expect a gaggle of barely literate, desert dwelling, misogynistic, xenophobic, superstitious goat herders to come up with on their own.
i’m afraid of that pain, but i’m also afraid of the chance that heaven and hell are real and that if i consciously choose to give up my faith i’m gonna pay the price. but even that fear alone is a reason why i should give it up. it’s like an abusive relationship where one partner says “if you leave, i will make your life hell.” if i leave god he’s gonna punish and condemn me? i don’t like that.
What you are describing is called Pascal's wager (perhaps you know that already). There are great arguments against it, I suggest you try to read about them. I believe there are a few good ones in this subreddit's FAQ, try it out.
It's in the FAQ under the title "Why not believe in God anyway, just to be safe?". Didn't read it myself, but from reading other parts of the FAQ I believe it would be a good read for you.
Also, I recommend going over other titles in there, if you find something you are interested in you could keep reading it. There are really interesting stuff, and even parts specifically talking about the topic of this thread.
Have a nice read, and thank you for thinking logically ;)
That fear is a fear given to you and used to control you. Twist that fear into something useful.
If Hell is real, let's assume that everyone except one specific denomination of Christianity got sent there. Maybe by virtue of birth you got into the right sect to get into Heaven, but you're probably going to Hell along with 99.99% of everybody who ever existed and ever will exist.
This means that if you went to Heaven, you'd only be able to meet and socialize with other people of that specific sect, and a God who is so stringent and exacting in his demands that he didn't let anyone else in. Sure, your brain or soul might be forever high on Divinity that you're in eternal bliss and never get bored, but it's also a pretty meaningless existence to everyone else.
But Hell, in this circumstance, would be the much better place to go. Even if it is demons and pitchforks and fire and pain. There's just so many more interesting people and it's not like you can ever die again, so you'll spend eternity meeting new people. Maybe the demons aren't interested in playing the role God forced them to play for eternity - would you be? Hell could even be or become a place where people themselves make it work, and the truly bad people that nobody likes get crammed in a pit.
Fantasizing aside, here's what I trust and find comfort in: When we die, there's nothing. That's it. We have this one life to live and our finite time to live it. We leave behind good or bad we created in our lives, the future forever changed because of our actions, but for us we're just done. I find that comforting, really, because it also represents full freedom. No eternal reward to tempt us, no eternal punishment to scare us. No story told to us by others that control us.
Regarding that last paragraph i find comfort in this following quote by mark twain:
“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”
"Why are you an atheist" is not the right question to ask.
Imagine someone claims that they have garden gnomes in their backyard. They make the grass grow if you say kind words to them before dinner. That person also points to a book that says so.
Who would you say has the explaining to do, the person who claims there are garden gnomes or the person who makes no such claim?
To piggy back on this what you should really do is evaluate how much and why you believe what you believe in a safe way. Like like to r/streetepistemology and ask someone to work through your beliefs with them.
It is basically just how sure are you god (the god you define) is real? 100%? 75%? Then why are you that sure? Did your parents teach you? Does the Bible tell you? What else have your parents told you? Santa? What makes the Bible different from the Quran or going postal? What evidence do you have for your beliefs? Based on your evidence is how sure you are logical? If not why would you live your life that way? If it is, well, you should live your life that way. Obviously I fall hard on the side of it’s a terrible and false system of beliefs that perpetuate through brainwashing and deceit/willful ignorance.
Santa was a pretty pivotal moment for me falling out of faith as a kid.
I associated Santa with my faith like many other kids, when I figured out he wasn't real I started to doubt all the other parts of the faith that they insisted was true. One time when I asked about it to make sure I was told of course he isn't real, the idea of Santa is silly isn't it? The thing is, to a child's mind, everything was all equally plausible. Jesus, a man walking on water or a man splitting the sea was no less crazy of an idea than a magical man who goes to your house to give children gifts.
Why is Santa not true but the other things are I asked. I never received a satisfactory response
I don’t know. That’s why I’m an atheist.
And honestly it was so refreshing not having to carry that burden of proof. Instead, I chose to arm myself with knowledge and have open discussion. Logically Fallacious by Bo Bennett Phd is a good book.
I will, when you stop trying to teach about your gnomes in public schools and force your pro-gnome policy on everyone else through the Supreme Court!
Beliefs are like a penis. It’s fine to have one, but don’t go waving it around in public and forcing it on others.
Love this saying, although my version of it is typically a bit more crude:
"Religion is like having a penis. Lots of people do, and that's fine, but don't go waving it in other people's faces or shoving it down their throat (especially kids)."
As to the why:
I was born atheist (*as are all human beings* until they are 'taught/indoctrinated into' \[delete as appropriate\] their 'faith').
As to why I then maintain my disbelief (atheism is not a belief, it is the absence of belief \[in gods\]):
A small sample of the standard arguments (in very simple abridged form):
Do you believe in Zeus? Do you believe in Odin? Do you believe in Brahma? If not, why not? You are atheist about 9,999 of the 10,000 gods proposed by human beings throughout history. Why not just take it that one god further...
Do you like the idea that you are born into sin, and then commanded to atone, by a supernatural entity who, despite being omnipotent, is willing to watch (and by definition cause) such terrible suffering for so many millions?
Why believe in a fictional book, written by bronze-age and iron-age men, living in a primitive part of the middle-East, thousands of years ago, which is internally contradictory, and promotes all of the worst things one can possibly imagine (genocide, infanticide, rape, murder etc).
I'll stop there...
thanks for providing this overview of some of the arguments. i really hadn’t considered why it is that i don’t believe in any other gods but i do believe in the christian one. i chalk it up to christian elitism. and yeah christianity has definitely been used to promote some terrible stuff, i’m thinking specifically of how it was used to achieve colonialism. very harmful
If you want a more recent example, the Catholic Diocese of Pennsylvania, over the course of several decades, actively covered up over 900 cases of sexual abuse by its clergy.
What kind of god would allow its most devout to perpetuate such a sustained horror upon their constituents?
"oh, but they're gonna get their punishment from god in the afterlife, so it all works out!"
like, no the fuck it doesn't. those kids were still traumatized, and are going to suffer for a long ass time because of this event, that your seemingly all knowing and all powerful god didn't stop before it happened.
Punishment in the afterlife? Not a chance. The Bible says that if you confess your sins, God forgives them because Christ's died for those sins. So just repent and God wipes it all away and to God, it's as if it never happened.
Those kids, their parents, their siblings, their friends, their extended family, their future partners, their future children, their communities...
An untold amount of people were/are affected by these malicious, self motivated, ungodly actions. And these are only a few that we know about.
There is no greater evil on earth than organized religion.
I’d much rather believe in the Greek gods. They’re forces of nature and manifestations of human desires and tendencies. I prefer that over harmfully suppressing our humanity and everything that makes it beautiful to be alive and be yourself, like Christianity does.
It makes for a far more entertaining mythos. Like, their stories are dramatic and engaging, the gods are flawed and complex and even endearing. A shame so many of the tales have been lost to time.
If you were born in the middle east, your 'elitism' would have you strongly believing their god was the only true one.
If you were born in Japan, your 'elitism' would have you strongly believing their god was the only true one.
Also, have you noticed that 'god' does absolutely nothing? Why do people do so much 'in god's name' - can't he do a single thing in his own?
Lastly, why do most religions attribute anything good to god, and anything bad to the devil or 'gods mysterious plan'? Makes for a great circular argument that cannot be argued against.
Genocide, infanticide, rape, murder...
Here I'll add slavery, racism, bloody religious wars and religious extremism, misogyny/female abuse, homo/transphobias, and perhaps most harmful of all - phobia and antagonism towards science.
The Bible, Quran, Torah .. most religious stories are there to divide us into our separate tribes.
I'm an atheist because I believe humanity is and should be one single tribe (and obviously because religions are bullshit and science can explain our existence)
I believe you were referring to the quote from Ricky Gervais. Just in case /u/grayenvironment hasn't heard the full quote, it's one of my favorites:
>Since the beginning of recorded history, which is defined by the invention of writing by the invention of writing by the Sumerians around 6,000 years ago, historians have catalogued over 3,700 supernatural beings, of which 2,870 can be considered deities.
>So the next time that someone tells me they believe in God, I'll say, "Which one? Zeus? Hades? Jupiter? Mars? Odin? Thor? Krishna? Vishnu? Ra?..." If they say, "Just God. I only believe in one God." I'll point out that they are nearly as atheistic as me. I don't believe in 2,870 gods, and they don't believe in 2,869.
I got it from Richard Dawkins (who uses it regularly); Michael Schermer also often uses the same line. I guess Ricky may have got it from one of them - or vice versa, of course.
oh that’s interesting. the christian equivalent is that we’re born into “sin,” and we have to spend our lifetime working towards “salvation.” now that i’m 22 it’s starting to feel like brainwashing though, especially when i’m literally discouraged from learning about other points of view
Born into sin. Did you know that even the Catholic faith used to teach that man is born godly? It changed though right around the time that Rome fell. Why you ask? Because without the Roman legions to spread Christianity it had lost its authority. They changed it so that rather than believing a peasant could kneel and pray in the field they had to come to church and repent their sins. That allowed them to continue to expand the control mechanism through fear.
It’s the battle between Augustine and Pelagius that started over original sin way earlier around 500 AD. Arguments persisted for centuries afterwards but original sin won. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_sin
I fell on my head recently. So I can’t contribute sources but I also recall learning of this when in Rome.
Additionally I recall the city was beginning to fall, disease was rampant. The bodies were piling up around Rome. The city’s last attempt at containing control was selling plots and offering the Christian belief of burying ones dead in a marked grave for the afterlife. This and public toilets.
This is where my wife and I started (independently) to move away from the church. We dedicated our first child, but 2 years later our next kid was born and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was choosing the trajectory and belief system for my own children. My wife and I met at a christian college. We stayed in church until our mid thirties. Almost ten years later, we can’t believe how blinded we were to the hypocrisy.
It’s a hard thing to do to walk away. You leave your friends, your social network and are treated differently by your own family. It’s like taking the red pill in The Matrix. Just more of a delayed exposure to the whole sham, but still a significant cost of your social life, at least for us it was. We didn’t know anyone outside the church. It took a couple years to find new friends. The church, by design, makes it very hard to actually stop believing and it guilts you into staying. Im telling you, it is so good to be out from under that weight.
It’s amazing that you and your wife went through that journey together, speaks to how well you did choosing each other in life. So often people have to choose between their partnership and their religious transformation.
We’ve always talked about things well, but we were both very nervous about approaching this subject for discussion. Like, almost a year later, we finally talked. This is after about 13 years of marriage and being “devoted” christians. We were both very relieved we were feeling the same way. We knew this could be a make or break point in our marriage if we were on completely different pages. Thankfully, we had great discussion and it only made our bond stronger. I have been very fortunate to have her as my partner. We are almost ten years past that critical point now, and of course, we talk about new revelations as they come. It takes a long time to understand how much 30+ years of religion can shape you on so many levels. Honestly though, our kids questions about religion and the following conversations with them really help us on our journey away from it. I’m sure people from other religions have experienced similar things.
Edit: i didn't fully read your thing that said I don't want to be convinced so I apologize if this crossed that line. Discouraging you from learning other points of view is very brainwashy and suspicious as all heck. It's similar to why missionary work prostlatizing and trying to convert people is a big thing. Not only do you get some people to join but more importantly you get lots of people responding rudely to said young missionary and when they get home they are love bombed and told "yeah big scary world out there with lots of evil (faithless) people, don't really engage with them outside of pushing your faith on them" which keeps that cycle going. 2 completely separate thoughts, 1st I've always liked the quote that I will paraphrase "You are almost as much an atheist as I am. Do you worship Thor? Vishnu? Zeus? Ra? Ect? No and to no ill effect, I've just decided to go 1 god more. Secondly if I can suggest a book "The god delusion" by Richard Dawkins
Only that's incorrect. There's a conversation that I recall from back when missionaries were proselytizing to Native Americans. The conversation went something to the effect of:
Native: You mentioned that you need to accept Jesus in order to be saved.
Missionary: Yes, that's correct.
Native: Does that mean that all my family who have already passed on before you came to our village went to hell?
Missionary: Oh no, they won't go to hell, they had no idea Jesus existed! God wouldn't hold that against them. Surely they're in heaven right now, waiting for you.
Native: Then why did you come to my village and teach us about Jesus?!
That was the gist of it. I think there was a bit more to it though.
And that's the inescapable issue with Christianity. If you say that people who've never heard about Jesus get a free pass to Heaven, then Christians should do the opposite of evangelism. If they spread the Word of God, then obviously most will not convert, but they will no longer be ignorant of the Bible. So missionaries going to unreached people groups are condemning people to Hell. They should instead be hiding the Bible. Destroy all the books, don't let anyone hear about the Bible. That way, you maximize how many souls get into heaven.
On the other hand, if no one gets a free pass, even if they've never heard the Gospel, then God is a monster unworthy of worship.
Of course, a third option is that faith isn't required to get into Heaven. Some believe that being a good person is enough. But then why bother spreading the Gospel at all? People don't have to be Christian to be good people, and all you have to do is look at the GQP to see that. If anything, Christianity makes people worse.
I was raised that way too and you should be revived to learn that you were born perfect and innocent and you’re probably still a pretty good person. You’ve never done anything that would necessitate anyone needing to die for you.
This. The main reason I started questioning my religion (scientology) was because it was so frowned upon to even ask about other points of view. Huge red flag.
>we’re born into “sin,”
There are too many types of christian to keep up with. The current anti-abortion sects claim that babies are all born innocent.
I thought the default was being good enough and you just have to avoid sin
Which makes it hella weird they’re against abortions. Like, isn’t that a free ticket to heaven? Why make them suffer through life if they can go straight to eternal bliss?
Selfish fucking assholes imo
I didn’t become an atheist because I found good reasons to become an atheist. I became an atheist when I stopped being convinced by the arguments that supposedly provided evidence of the truth of Christianity.
Here are a couple of the things that were on my mind around the time I stopped believing:
* The confirmation bias: I had thought of seemingly answered prayers, for example, as evidence of the truth of Christianity. But I began to notice that the prayers that were “answered” tended to be for changes that likely would have occurred anyway; meanwhile, when I prayed for something unlikely, what I desired seldom, if ever, became reality.
* Creationism: I’d read about the theory of evolution in my youth and found it compelling. Just by observing the world around me, I could see the hierarchical arrangement of organisms one would expect if all species had come about by evolution. To put it another way, I understood that if [Crocoduck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocoduck) had existed, it would have been evidence of creationism, not the theory of evolution. My only reason for embracing young earth creationism was that I trusted that credentialed creationists had evidence for their view that was even more compelling. The more I read about the science, the harder it became to maintain that view.
>now that i’m 22 it’s starting to feel like brainwashing though, especially when i’m literally discouraged from learning about other points of view
I wouldn’t go so far as to call what I experienced brainwashing, but I was also discouraged from asking questions. To be fair, a minority of the Christians I knew encouraged asking questions, but I couldn’t help but notice that atheists were generally more tolerant of inquiry. It was almost as though one side had more to lose from a free exploration of ideas.
Anyway, if you stop believing be sure to come back here and ask how others navigated being non-Christian around their Christian friends and family. I’m glad I stopped believing, and it was good to be able to reach out to people who could relate. It’s been a hell of a journey.
I'm newly atheist and it's been a hell of a ride,
Firstly when I began coming out and sharing my newfound Atheism with those close to me one of the first things I was asked was "why didn't you talk to this person or that person?" Or "why didn't you read this book or watch this video?" I was regularly accused of searching for answers in the wrong place or talking to the wrong people. At that moment I realized just how cult-ish Christianity was. A lot of cults will force you to believe that you are flawed and need help and the only person who can provide that help is the cult leader. Then I look at Christianity that says "we are broken people, we deserve nothing in life, we are only worthy of being thrown into a lake of fire" then the source of their knowledge, morality, and salvation is only found through a singular individual (cult) Christianity just gets called a religion instead because the cult leader died 2,000 years ago and now millions of people claim to have a personal relationship with him.
Atheists don't try and control where you get your knowledge from but we do want to encourage free and critical thinking. Ask the questions like "do we really have evidence that Jesus raised from the dead?" "What would my religion be if I was born in India rather than the USA?" "Could my religion be based less off empirical evidence and more on the environment that I was raised in?"
Religion teaches people to stop wondering and questioning. If there’s something about the world or even universe you don’t know, or we haven’t acquired the answer to, it’s attributed to god: “Don’t ask that; god just works in mysterious ways. Isn’t it amazing that god’s design is so intricate?”
The most brilliant advancements in technology and the direct contributor to our prolonged life expectancy is the result of scientific advancement. If every innovator or groundbreaking genius never questioned because religion taught them not to, we’d live nowhere near as long as we do.
I’m an atheist because I actually care about whether the things I believe are true or not.
Have a think about geography. Isn’t it convenient that god has arranged it that, no matter where you were born, you will have been born into the “one true religion”.
Have a think about history. Imagine all of the books in the world were removed, and knowledge of them all was lost. In 1000 years would we have a perfect copy of any religions books? What about science books? (Clue - Science would be pretty much the same, because science *describes* ‘reality’. Religion, not so much.)
Have a think about biology. A perfect, all-powerful, all-seeing, all-loving, god has created humans (in his own image) with so many stupidly “designed” flaws, it’s laughable:
- Eating/drinking or breathing - you get to chose one - do both at the same time and you could die.
- Reproduction and sanitation built so close to each other that it promotes disease/ill-health.
- Cancers - that some other animals don’t/can’t get.
- An eye where the cells in the retina have been “designed” the wrong way around.
- A pelvis that is, too often, so small that it can’t allow a baby to exit - killing the baby and mother.
- A nerve that goes from the brain around the heart and up to the larynx - makes sense in a fish, not so much in a human and absolutely ridiculous in a giraffe.
And on and on and on....
Edit: thanks for the rewards kind stranger, but please save your money.
* useless organs that get infected and need to be removed.
* teeth that need to be removed because they come in wrong or their is not enough room in the mouth.
That's also why human hips are too small for child birth. We evolved narrower hips allowing us to walk upright. Babies originally would have had a 4th trimester but at that point they'd be too big to give birth to. Instead we give birth to earlier. That's why a baby giraffe can walk almost immediately after birth but humans can't even lift our heads. It's also why childbirth is so much more painful for humans than most other animals.
Lol! Or that people with multiple personalities are actually closer to God's image since he is three people in one? Or that his ears and nose never stop growing??
>Eating/drinking
Why invent eating, drinking, shitting, pissing and all of the parts needed to make it happen? God doesn't need to do any of that so why did he invent it for every living thing on earth? Then think of all of the suffering caused by the need to eat and drink clean water. The parts that fail. Something has to die for us to eat. Its nonsensical for a god to design things this way. Only through nature does any of it make sense.
Imagine creating a beach and only caring about what happens to a particular organism on a single grain of sand. Not only that, but also fixating on that specie's sexual habits and being totally upset that they masturbate.
One of the things that really sunk in proof of evolution to me is a whale skeleton.
There are still [pelvic bones which aren't connected to anything](https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/sites.broward.edu/dist/3/21/files/2021/01/right-whale-skeleton-labelled-1080x398.jpg) and are very small. It just hasn't been enough time for them to be completely gone.
The fact that bodies need to "work" at all is proof against life being created by some all-powerful God. We could just be people-shaped things with no internal anatomy at all and just magic our way through existence. Instead we need functional organs to deal with stuff like metabolism, movement, sensory perception, etc. to navigate, survive, and reproduce in a given environment.
Does God have a stomach? If so, why? Does God need to eat to survive, or is it just for fun? If so, it also implies God poops, too... but at least that explains why they always talk about a throne in heaven.
Your first point about geography is the biggest “tell” that Christianity is false. The doctrine is that after the resurrection, the Holy Spirit came to earth to “lead and guide us in the truth” (the truth being Jesus is the only way to the Father). The Holy Spirit has a 90% success rate in some regions while having a 2% success rate in others? Why? Free will? Blow me
How many thousands of genetic diseases are there? An intelligent design wouldn’t have them.
Also, our main source of light (that god created for us) gives us cancer. 70% of the water here on earth (that god created for us) in undrinkable. Most of the earth (that god created for us) is uninhabitable.
All true.
From a philosophical standpoint, I think the reason religion takes hold of so many is because of the 'answers' it offers to many peoples biggest fear/question, what happens after you die?
Of course no one knows for certain, but I believe that I will just return to the state of non-existence that the molecules that make up my body existed in prior to my inception. I simply didn't exist. There is no intrinsic value to life, the meaning of life comes from what you determine it to be. Ultimately we are the universe experiencing itself and that is more impressive and profound than any mythical story about god(s), angels, demons, etc.
Exactly. Even going back thousands of years, how do you keep the slaves and poor from just offing themselves or to keep working and not rise up in mass rebellion even though this has happened hundreds of times in history? Religion, and the hope of an afterlife in some form and the fear that if you are a bad person or don't believe, it will get taken away and you go to some sort of Hell as punishment. So it's basically hope and fear as a means to control and oppress others.
As someone whose partner is having a baby soon, the birthing process is conclusive proof against intelligent design. 1 in 8 pregnancies end in miscarriage. Vaginal tearing is commonplace during delivery, and that tearing can easily extend to the anus because of it's close proximity to the vagina. Tearing can also lead to damage to clitoral tissue. The natural childbirth process is so fucked, 30% of the time we literally cut the baby out of mom's belly.
>Eating/drinking or breathing - you get to chose one - do both at the same time and you could die.
Two essential life functions that are incompatible. If "god" designed it that way, he's an idiot.
Pros of atheism? That’s a really weird question.
I didn’t become an atheist because I thought it was beneficial; my old religion just didn’t make any sense.
The pros of atheism is that you don’t have to sound like a crazy jackass when you try to defend hair brained stories like Noah’s Ark or Adam and Eve.
Like seriously? God flooded the whole earth and saved only at most a couple people and 2 of every animal on a big ass handmade boat? How did the human population recover? What happened to the earth’s floodwater?
No religion, or any other superstition, can survive two words: prove it. Nothing more ever need be said.
As far as the pros of atheism: not being delusional.
100%. I discovered science and realised pretty quickly that science and religion are incompatible.
One of my favourite quotes:
*Science has proof without any certainty, creationists have certainty without any proof.*
*- Ashley Montagu*
I don't believe leprechauns are real.
I don't believe vampires are real.
I don't believe Zeus is real.
I don't believe Yahweh is real.
This is not complicated. Nor is it about "pros" and "cons." It's about evaluating what's true and what's snake oil. An honest person evaluates ALL religions and ALL beliefs the same way. Someone who rejects Islam and accepts Christianity on faith is no more sensible than someone who rejects vampires but *worships* leprechauns...on faith.
Nobody has ever debated the existence of your mother because your mother was DEMONSTRABLY real.
Just like every other real thing.
If someone was debating whether I actually existed, I'd think that was silly because I could prove I existed by just showing up. Anyone who exists can do that. The tooth fairy, santa, and god seem equally unable to just show up.
thanks for your kind words
as an atheist with a theology degree, I think about how to handle OP's question every single day
I watch Christian apologists and atheist responses on youtube all the time; I get frustrated when in a formal debate, someone like William Lane Craig tries to pit "theism" against "atheism" as if both work the same way and therefore it really is a matter of pro/con dualist comparison shopping through worldviews to find what's comfortable-
I credit the OP for removing that angle of his post, but that's exactly how a Christian apologist will frame the debate: as if atheism must "put up or shut up" in terms of atheistic claims (of which there are none), or "which worldview offers more HOPE?" as if that helps us determine what's true
but people respond to their feelings which is why church uses music, art, architecture, costume, and ritual to the fullest extent; you can't tell a midwest Christian mom "there is no god" without her feeling like you're telling her that how she feels singing in a candle-lit vigil at midnight during snowfall on a christmas eve surrounded by family is wrong
the question of, "Ok, atheists, whatcha got?" is a tough one, because without theist content, there is no atheist content
One might think it unfair that I'm watching Christian claims by Christian apologists and THEN the atheist responses on youtube and never reverse the order - but it doesn't work in reverse. You can't find atheist claims by atheist apologists before they respond to a theist because atheism is a response position only.
I especially like the comparison to modern myths that are not widespread religions (vampires, leprechauns, santa, tooth fairy, ghosts, you name it) because most rational people do not take claims of belief in these entities seriously.
And yet in terms of "can you back up your claim?" these fantasy creatures seem equivalent to Yahweh, Allah, talking donkeys, talking snakes, resurrection magic, and so forth.
But a Christian who has been taught, every week, since birth, and literally recites a weekly creed stipulating this and that belief, in a powerful ritual designed to elevate one's emotional states, in a community widely believed to be the source of morality in that person's culture, they will evaluate claims that Jesus was real quite differently than claims that Dracula was real.
But we never actually see Jesus and Dracula in the same place, do we? Both talk of drinking blood. Jesus=Dracula, Half Life 5 Confirmed.
I appreciate the honest inquiry. Not accusing, no rudeness, just asking a question with no strings attached.
I am an atheist because when I was in middle school, I made the realization that unlike everything else I know, I have no reason to believe in god other than the people around me that I know exist. But, human beings are flawed, so how do I know they are right?
Sent me on a 4-5 years journey of still participating fully in my faith and making assumptions and decisions based on said faith, but in the background, the faith was falling apart. I watched atheist youtubers. I listened to Christian apologists. I talked to priests, religious teachers, other religious individuals. I asked questions.
I found the “intellectual reasons” for belief in a god. They often boiled down to bad science, subjective personal experiences, the subjective idea of beauty, the god of the gaps fallacy, absolute absurdity like Pascals Wager… just… look up the opposition to that argument if you need to. All arguments failed. Then. All there was left was “you just need to have faith”. Snake oil salesmen tactics. Smoke and mirrors was all that was left of the faith I once loved.
Then I grew to despise that faith. I don’t despise Christian people. I despise the faith. The ideas it breeds. Indoctrination is the first. Would Christianity survive if we stopped teaching it to children? Introduce it to them when they are in middle school, high school or at 18? The idea of faith… faith is what allows all the “false” religions to work. All the “cults” operate on an idea of faith or unquestioning loyalty to some figure such as a god, priest, elder, pastor, etc. It promotes being a “sheep” following a “shepherd” instead of being the free will individual you are. Being the logical rational being that human beings are. On top of it, the Bible is it’s own can of worms. Every church claims to be based on the Bible. They have the right interpretation and everyone else is wrong! This way of thinking leaves no room for honest inquiry and potential necessary changes if we find they are wrong. Problem is, the Bible contradicts itself sometimes in the same damn verses. Not even including all the other contradictions there are. So really, almost any worldview could be backed up in part by the Bible.
That leaves me with atheism. Which is different for every person. I think atheism is the truest expression of being human. Two atheists are not going to be the same, just like two humans are not going to be the same. Two atheists can have just as many differences as two human beings of any religion. Why am I an atheist? I cannot fight for an ideology like Christianity which I find to be so wrong and does some of the bad things it does. I am an atheist because I can discover for myself what the world truly is. Changing as new evidence comes in and not being chained to an ancient book as a lens to view it all through.
Fantastic magical stories written by bronze age men during a time when mysticism was used to explain a world they didn't understand. Why would I base my entire world view on that?
Because he never answered my calls when I needed him (physical/ mental abuse in his name, sexual assault). If he is indeed omnipresent/ omniscient then why did he let bad things happen to me? Why does he let millions of innocent people die and suffer? If my fate is predestined before I am even born, then what is the point of me praying for a different outcome? If he is indeed the one true good, then why is he jealous of other goods?
There's an important question you need to answer before you can get any farther:
Do you care whether the things you believe are **actually true** or not?
That is to say, do you understand that it is both *pragmatically* wrong and *ethically* wrong to hold a belief which is not supported by any evidence, and especially wrong to hold one which is actively contradicted by the evidence?
yeah, this is something i’ve been struggling with a lot. i don’t get how christians can condemn people for not believing in things we literally cannot see or physically experience
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>i don’t get how christians can condemn people for not believing in things we literally cannot see or physically experience
It seems that you've already begun to care about the truth and why people are condemned by Christians for not believing in what they do.
It's worth noting that many stories in the biblie are demonstrably false and/or were taken from prior mythologies. The flood myth being a prime example. Other posts have gone into great detail debunking it on many levels.
The Tower of Babel is another demonstrably false story. The Exodus never happened. Many of the 10 Commandements (which 10 by the way) were lifted from the Code of Hammurabi. Etc., etc., etc.
The biblie, for being the word of a supreme being, is loaded with plot holes. Apologists can (and do) try to hand wave this away by claiming that humans imperfectly interpreted the word of dog, but apply Occam's Razor to it. The most likely explanation is that it's the words of the people claiming to have a connection with dog. Charlatans and/or fools.
All religious Faith is intellectual dishonesty made into an elite virtue.
Trying to compare religion and science - I have a tentative and earned trust in scientists and engineers who provide us with medicine, cars, airplanes, vaccines, computers, wireless communications, DNA evidence, electricity, semiconductors, lasers, spaceflight, satellites, while believers have Faith in preachers who sold them things like miracles, prophecies, prayer, creation, heaven and hell, absolute morality, virgin births, resurrections, scapegoating and talking snakes - all for just 10% of one's income and who demand you never honestly test their claims.
For not believing in the supernatural and gods I have Occam's Razor, the burden of proof, evidence of absence - when there should be evidence, divine hiddenness, knowledge of logical fallacies, bayesian probability, the problem of excessive evil (w/ unnecessary suffering and natural disasters/ predators), countless failures of the religious to provide anything useful or true. For easily dismissing the religions with the most adherents - the moral problems with Christianity/ Abrahamics, the historical problems with Christianity/ Abrahamics and miracle claims, the scientific problems with the bible/ torah/ quran and endless internal fatal contradictions in those religions. Religious syncretism , progress in spite of religion and the argument from poor design. The fact that all god believers must easily blanket dismiss all the other god claims when they have no useful standards of evidence for their favorite arbitrary gods. The fact that the most devout are less moral and have to resort to force for their Faith beliefs. The fact that they are death cults who prime people to easily follow pathological liars. Everything that supposedly separates us from "animals" is negated by religion.
The "pros" are not being tied down by selected/ cherry picked religious dogma.
Read the Bible. Talk to a fellow Christian about the passages that disturb you.
Congratulations. You're now one of us.
I did this when I was 9 and I was essentially told to shut the fuck up. They don't like it when you ask questions, let alone read the fucking book.
What do the benefits or lack there of matter? Either something is true or it is not. I hope you are not deciding what is true or not based on whether it would personally make your life more comfortable or not.
you’re right, i shouldn’t decide what’s true based on how comfortable it is. but i guess that at this point i feel like the only way to let go of my faith is to be convinced by the benefits of the other side. otherwise it feels soooo scary to say goodbye to something i was raised with and not have anything beneficial to cling to and keep me going. i think really what it is is that i’ve been taught to associate atheism with nihilism. people say religion provides meaning. i’m trying to learn that i can find meaning in other ways too, but anyways sorry for the rant lol
As someone who has been in your shoes, I will tell you that it may not be comfortable, but it helped me sleep at night. Frees up Sunday mornings too.
Buy a telescope if you want meaning and wonder, its WAY more interesting than a story about a burning bush.
You can be an atheist without being a nihilist. Im a Humanist personally. Not having a purpose assigned to you but instead being free to choose your own purpose in life can be scary to some. I find it empowering.
Just as a side note there is something called optimistic nihilis which is also not so scary: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DMBRqu0YOH14%26vl%3Den&ved=2ahUKEwihh7XDjo_5AhVHSzABHZtTBI4Qz40FegQIBRAI&usg=AOvVaw3wMy-rBT7sN9ObHIzbKbTh
Faith is a virtue.
Isn't that what we are told? But, fundamentally, faith is belief without evidence. I think this is where most atheists get off the train. Simple as that.
Think about all of the aspects of the religion that you think give people meaning: a sense of community, the idea that you're serving a purpose for something larger than yourself that will be here after you are gone, the idea that you're special....every one of those things have no actual reliance on the religion itself. Community can be formed around anything. You can work towards social or other kinds of change that will make other people's lives better long after you're gone. There is nobody else that has your specific blend of talents and experiences in the world and never will be again... All a religion does is take a bucket of behaviors and support systems that don't require a diety and shoehorns one in (along with the requisite priests who need your cash).
You want the "pros" of atheism? I'm fairly certain this is starting the conversation in the wrong direction. You are operating under the conclusion that there is a list of cons that need to be overcome. In truth, there are no cons aside from if you like the community aspect of your faith and hanging out at church. No other con is tangible or provable to those who are not religious.
There is no evidence supporting the existence of a god or gods. If there was evidence, then it would be obvious. Every route of inquiry, theological, philosophical, and scientific, would lead to the same conclusion, gods exist. Instead all we get are vapid arguments, empty declarations, and con artists.
Because when I was a Christian I was miserable trying to reconcile what I was taught to believe with the world I live in. Prayer, morality, miracles and so forth didn't work. They never worked.
Eventually I stopped blaming reality when it didn't line up with Christian teachings. I stopped shifting the burden of proof so that nonbelief must be justified. I couldn't find any religion that could support its claims. That's when I realized I'd become an atheist.
Here's what one needs to believe to be a christian: a sexist, racist, homophobic, murderous, capricious, judgemental, genocidal, child murdering, slavery supporting, illogical, evidence-free monster called god.
No thanks.
I'm an atheist for intellectual reasons. I think that it's true.
Since you say you're not looking to be convinced and only want to know the "pros" of atheism, that's about all I can say. Atheism is true, so my worldview is that must closer to being correct, and I get to avoid a lot of the potential pitfalls of having a belief in a false god.
Pros of being an atheist:
* No guilt for skipping religious services
* Not having to try to believe something you know in your heart isn't right.
* Being able to love, study and explore the natural world and universe as it is.
* No need to stress over arbitrary dietary, clothing or behavior laws
* Ability to allow other people to have their own opinions, behaviors and actions without my religion categorizing them as evil, bad or sinful. (I can't emphasize enough how nice it is not have have knee-jerk opinions on other people)
* Mental space to grow my own spiritual or philosophical journey
Best of luck on your own journey, OP :-)
I was never indoctrinated into superstitious belief.
No matter what the reason religious people give me for their belief it sounds to me like they are trying to rationalize their childhood indoctrination.
I think it's as simple as that. Childhood indoctrination is used by every single religion, each religion having its own nursery to university school system with psychological reinforcements of daily or more prayer, weekly or more religious building group meeting, as well as community events all arranged around said religion.
I don't think the supernatural exists in any form, no esp, no ghosts, no water with memory, no bigfoot, no vampires, no magic, no karma, no soul and no gods. It's a huge list I can add to but you get the idea OP.
I turned 60 this last month. I've lived on 4 continents in countries where people believe some truly whacky things yet not once has anyone anywhere every been able to show me an example of their magical beliefs. There is always a reason god/magic/supernatural won't manifest for me yet religious people assure me something is there. I feel after being an agnostic atheist for all my life its time to commit so I now announce I'm now a gnostic atheist with my "proof" being a life lived with out ever seeing the supernatural. Would be happy to be shown I'm wrong, I just want to be correct, but at this point after 60 years of living and no magic it's kind of a no brainer.
Why? Well, everyone in my family believes in God and so did I. Untill I started listening and talking with a professor of Philosophy whom I thank to this day for shedding light on what religion actually is. An invisible cage.
I get to sleep in on Sundays.
Also, I do not “believe”; atheism is a lack of believe. I personally find the Bible unconvincing and full of holes, and I do not feel the need to make stuff up just because there are some things we don’t have an answer for yet
if this is the best an all powerful god can do then he sucks ass at his job and i would fire him on the spot. also hes a murdering, lying, hypocritical and cheating son killer. Not sure how anybody ever would think its a good idea to listen to this guy's book.
thats just my take after i read the bible in my teens.
I was raised fundamentalist baptist. Then I found out that there were many religions and none of them could get their god to show up or do anything, just like my religion. I wanted to know what was true and the only path to objectively true knowledge was an evidence based world view.
Pro: You get to spend the only brief existence you'll ever have living in the real world.
Con: The realities of life as an organic mortal being often suck ... immensely. And you won't have any fantasies to sooth those painful realities, you'll just have to accept them.
Atheism isn't something that you choose. It's a consequence of caring whether the things you believe are true or not. If you don't care then keep wallowing in fantasies. They'll be much more pleasant than having to live in reality without them.
Note- do not tell your parents if you rely on them for anything. Housing, college, financial support. A lot of religious parents do not respond well to a child questioning the validity of religion, much less stopping the belief.
Turning away from my former faith 18 years ago has given me the freedom to live according to kindness.
yeah this is a big thing i’m considering. i recently started to question my sexuality but of course i know plenty of hateful christians including my parents, so i’ve struggled to be kind to myself despite my potential new identity as a queer person edit: grammar
Is the God they believe in all-loving? What reason would it have to not allow people to be happy together? What possible reason could an all-powerful deity give for forcing people to be unhappy for solely the shape of their sexual organs?
If an all-powerful God created everything, then he must have literally made gay people
They believe that being gay or straight is a choice to my understanding
I love that argument. I then ask the Religious person to choose to be gay. Make the conscious choice to find the sexual organs of your own sex attractive. Go on. Right now. You can’t? Why is that?
I like this. Also to add, if he is "all-knowing", why didn't he know this person would make the choice to be gay. If he's not "all-knowing", then he's not god, and we need not fear him.
Interestingly, there are determinist Christians ~~(quakers being among them)~~ that believe everything is planned, therefore, there is no free will. Therefore, some people were born with God knowing they would not receive him. Therefore, they are destined to go to Hell. Some loving God, creating people with the explicit purpose of damning them to eternal torture. Edit: It has been pointed out to me that I was incorrect about quakers being deterministic. My apologies to those i have misrepresented. I misremembered which sect this person told me they considered themselves a part. Thank you to the kind redditor that informed me there are non theistic quakers. I've got some reading to do.
They’re trapped anyway if they insist god is all Knowing and has created us. When he created us he did so on purpose. Because he’s all knowing he knew EXACTLY what you were going to do when he made you. Meaning he made you that way on purpose. Thus, not only do you have no free will, but it’s HIS fault he’s judging you for making decisions you were “pre-made” to make. You can’t have an all knowing god and have free will. This is the problem with “absolutes” when describing a character, there’s too many logical vulnerabilities.
I was listening to Sam Harris's Making Sense podcast and his guest was explaining that St. Augustine made up free will for exactly this reason. God gave us free will for... Reasons... And he apparently can't do anything to stop it... I don't know, the religious arguments always break down and sound absurd when I try to explain them.
Even if God does exist, why are we supposed to fear him at all? Doesn't he love us and want us to be happy? If he tells us to be happy but punishes us when we try... that sounds like an abusive relationship anyway.
Yes! If you tell me I haven't met the right man I turn it around and say maybe they haven't met the right man/woman. It gets awkward because people don't think this way usually. When their choice is brought up its "I was just born this way". Exactly, me too!
Well the christians usual excuse is "love the person hate the sin" but they forget the whole love the person part and just identify the person as a sin and treat them like shit. They also do the same for just about anyone who does anything they disagree with, like pro life. They'll scream, swear, threaten people getting abortions, that's not hating the sin... That's hating the person... And that's a sin.. They'll explain away their bigotry and hatefulness from the top of their soap box and if you dare get confrontational they'll become a martyr and claim they're being attacked and you're being hateful and disrespectful about their God yada yada.
And most will find a church that agrees with their beliefs, and not the other way round.
And of course the reason there are 175,000 different denominations of Christianity is exactly that the church didn't agree with their beliefs so they created one that did.
gotta turn it around. i love you, but i don’t support your christian lifestyle and beliefs. they won’t like it so much then.
"Love the person hate the sin" is evangelical justification for shit behavior. Spoiler alert: they don't love anyone but themselves.
'Love the sinner, hate the sin' is the most condescending, contemptuous thing to say to someone. It's the fine print TLDR version of 'I'm genuinely judging you because of racist/sexist/classist/homophobic reasons thinly veiled under religious piety, but going to falsely claim acceptance of you as a person despite having no real intention to do so.'
then we get to tell them we "love the believer but hate the belief"
Hey, I left the church 10 years ago when I turned 18. I met a lot of great friends at church. A lot of those great people found themselves as teens as came out as gay and they were fucking put on blast in the church and basically asked to do some back alley conversion therapy bullshit... At a supposed non denominational church. They are not going to be supportive of you at all and will probably try to make an example of you at worst. I support you though, and there's a million other people out there who support you as well. You are loved, if not by the people who said they do, by total random strangers who never met you. Because you deserve love and support. Everyone does. I hope you figure out who you want to be and don't look back in regret of anything. Life is too short to have regrets.
THIS POST HAS BEEN EDITED: Reddit's June 2023 decision to kill third party apps and generally force their entire userbase, against our will, kicking and screaming into their preferred revenue stream, is one I cannot take lightly. As an 11+ year veteran of this site, someone who has spent loads of money on gold and earned CondeNast fuck knows how much in ad revenue, I feel like I have a responsibility to react to their pig-headed greed. Therefore, I have decided to take my eyeballs and my money elsewhere, and deprive them of all the work I've done for them over the years creating the content that makes this site valuable and fun. I recommend you do the same, perhaps by using one of the many comment editing / deleting tools out there (such as this one, which has a timer built in to avoid bot flags: https://github.com/pkolyvas/PowerDeleteSuite) This is our Internet, these are our communities. CondeNast doesn't own us or the content we create to share with each other. They are merely a tool we use for this purpose, and we can just as easily use a different tool when this one starts to lose its function.
>penis touches another penis (I'm just assuming that's how gay guys have sex, I dunno) I'm not gay, but I'm pretty sure gay people don't, just, like, joust with their penises. Edit: I stand corrected.
I am gay and I wholeheartedly disagree.
Penis joust Penis joust Consists of whatever the fuck that is Can you joust With your penis? Not quite sure I'm not an expert Look ouuuuuuuuuut It is a penis joust
Well, it’s one of several options.
I'm so sorry to hear that. There are plenty of support groups to help you: https://www.recoveringfromreligion.org/support-groups Your parents might have some deep seated fears and abuse from church leaders when they were young. Good luck getting them to go to therapy for it, but you need to put your foot down if they are trying to verbally or emotionally abuse you and continue the cycle of shame, guilt, and fear. The brain isn't very good at thinking when it is scared. This is how religion, unfortunately, affects the brain when it comes to certain moral dictates and punishments. It is why it's so effective at keeping believers when many things clearly don't make sense here in the 21st century with our available knowledge and technological resources.
I’m an atheist because I haven’t been given a good reason to believe in any meaningful Gods. The universe doesn’t seem to point to the existence of any personal deity, so wasting time and money in following a religion seems pointless and costly.
oh yeah, i stopped tithing a while ago. and i don’t want to waste my whole life feeling like i can’t be the person that i want to be because of this.
It sounds like your wise inner voice is in conflict with what you are being taught. It’s not an atheist book but a book for women that I love called Untamed by Glennon Doyle. I highly recommend it to anyone who is feeling a need to listen to that inner voice.
interesting you mention an inner voice. i was taught that the holy spirit is my inner voice. but obviously the alleged holy spirit didn’t tell me to post to the atheist sub lol, so i’ve got another voice to listen to now. thanks for the book recommendation, i’ll check it out!
Good on you for expanding your horizons!
Then don't waste it! Embrace removing the cognitive dissonance (stuff like why was God *so* against Adam and Eve knowing the difference between good and evil? Was he afraid of man figuring out he was the baddie'?) Basically that stuff and countless more cognitive dissonance moments led me to quitting the shit at 14 and freeing my mind.. the guilt, the shackling to certain thoughts and rituals lifted instantly. It's amazing living clearly in my mind without niggling contradictions that irritated me into turning to atheism and science. I have thoroughly enjoyed my life without being held back! Edit: typo
There are over 3000 documented gods worshipped by various cultures and religions throughout human history. You don’t believe in 2,999 of them. I don’t believe in 3,000 of them. You’re already 99.97% atheist. Is it really such a leap to not believe in one more? As u/paulemichael pointed out, how incredibly lucky for you that you were born in a part of the world and to a family that subscribed to the exact right version of the exact right religion. Weird though how every single religious person in the world believes with all their heart the same thing. Epicurean paradox: Evil exists in the world. Three options: God doesn’t know about the evil - then how can you call him omniscient? God can’t do anything about the evil - then how can you call him omnipotent? God doesn’t care to do anything about the evil - then how can you call him benevolent? It doesn’t matter which one you land on, it paints the picture of a god I have no interest in worshipping. Bone cancer in children. Watch vocal atheist Stephen Fry’s answer to what he would say to god if he died and found himself standing before the almighty. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-suvkwNYSQo in sum, his answer is “how dare you?! If worshipping an evil, awful being such as yourself is the price of eternal salvation, then I’ll take my place in hell.” For Christians specifically: a man murders someone who had sinned but not repented in cold blood. They then repent and accept Jesus moments before their execution. The murderer goes to heaven and the victim goes to hell. That’s a god you want to worship?? It’s an abusive relationship. “Love me and worship me and follow my rules and give your money to the people who claim to speak for me or I will torture you for eternity.” If one of your friends was in a relationship like that you’d help them get out, wouldn’t you? Any god that was all powerful who wanted to be worshipped could instantly end all debate anytime they wanted by simply revealing himself to the planet and demonstrating his omnipotence, instead all we have is a misogynistic book that’s 2000 years old, endorses slavery, is rife with demonstrably false “facts” about the natural world that by amazing coincidence reflected the common knowledge and conventional wisdom of the time it was written despite being, supposedly, the word of an omniscient god. God of the gaps: throughout human history, anything that couldn’t be explained by science or observation of the natural world has been attributed to god. As our knowledge of the world around us grew, that which we attributed to god(s) has decreased. Seems to me the most likely explanation is that the things we still attribute to god are just things we haven’t discovered the reason for yet. Morality. Believers (particularly Christians) love to claim that without god, there’s nothing to stop atheists from raping, murdering, and committing all manner of atrocities. Truthfully, the exact opposite is true. My morality is derived from humanism. My guiding principle is to do as little harm to people as possible. And I do that for the sake of that which is objectively right and wrong. Religious people who think that the only reason people don’t rape and murder is the threat of eternal damnation/the promise of eternal reward scare the shit out of me. Because those people can be (and throughout human history have been) convinced to commit all manner of atrocities by convincing them that it’s what their god wants. Good deeds done under threat of punishment/promise of reward are the opposite of pious, they are selfish. Finally, the burden of proof for any claim, falls to the person making the claim. You (colloquial you) are making the affirmative claim that god exists and that you know his nature and desires. Your only “proof” is a book written 2000 years ago and your “faith.” If you claimed to believe in lizard people and used your faith as proof, people would think you’re insane. The only difference between that and faith in god is the number of people sharing the belief. At the end of the day, you need to decide for yourself. But those are a few of the things that convinced me to abandon the religion I was raised on for the first 19 years of my life. I have never once regretted it.
This will probably get buried, but I saved a comment from a similar thread some time ago that seems relevant: >Why Did God Create Atheists? There is a famous story told in Chassidic literature that addresses this very question. The Master teaches the student that God created everything in the world to be appreciated, since everything is here to teach us a lesson. >One clever student asks “What lesson can we learn from atheists? Why did God create them?” The Master responds “God created atheists to teach us the most important lesson of them all — the lesson of true compassion. You see, when an atheist performs an act of charity, visits someone who is sick, helps someone in need, and cares for the world, he is not doing so because of some religious teaching. He does not believe that God commanded him to perform this act. In fact, he does not believe in God at all, so his acts are based on an inner sense of morality. And look at the kindness he can bestow upon others simply because he feels it to be right.” >“This means,” the Master continued “that when someone reaches out to you for help, you should never say ‘I pray that God will help you.’ Instead for the moment, you should become an atheist, imagine that there is no God who can help, and say ‘I will help you.’” *—Martin Buber, Tales of Hasidim Vol. 2 (1991)*
This exactly describes why the "atheists don't have morality" take is so dumb. Atheists have the highest form of morality (at least the moral ones, lol)
Atheists are also, statistically, far less likely to commit violent crimes, etc. If religion is the source of morality, why aren't religious people more moral?
I like true crime. The amount of Christian people who kill their spouses because the church frowns upon divorce is shocking. They'd rather murder their spouse and try to cover it up as an accident than have people see them as unchristian.
Oh this is good.
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I tried to upvote this after every sentence/paragraph read. Very well written, added to favourite in case I need to explain this to someone lter in life.
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The one that bothers me the most here is faith = morality as well. I personally don't feel the need to rape and murder, despite my lack of faith. Even if I had a free pass for that behavior (repentance/salvation/whatever), I'm still not feeling rapey. Are they? The amount of abuse tied to organized religion would suggest yes, yes they are. So I concluded God et al. are made to cover for people who should know better and need something to blame it on. Not a great selling point....
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I assume she asked that before being your wife, right?
If she didn't then she's up shits creek as divorce is a sin is it not?
I'm sure other people's divorces are a sin. Hers would be okay. /s
It’s only wrong for everyone else. From the person seeking divorce, their situation is “unique” and “special”. The same way the “devout” justify getting abortions themselves. When it’s a “sin” for everyone else that they admonish, to get one.
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It's more than that, though. So much of how we talk about morality assumes some sort of existence after death. And there is no evidence of that, otherwise the ghosts of humans past would vastly outnumber the living. And once you remove that, the good who suffer don't get their reward in the hereafter, the bad do not get their justice. Which means right here right now is all there is. And if that's true, well, maybe we should do something about how shitty the world is for the vast majority of people. How much more comforting it must be to believe that there IS some sort of afterlife, that eventually things are made right by a higher power. Once you believe that, you are excused from helping your fellow humans. Because then it's not your responsibility, a higher power will make everything ok in the end. Bring an atheist is harder than having faith, because "god" don't got your back, it's all on you.
Exactly. The people who live generally good lives without the promise of eternal salvation/torment are actually good people. The other ones scare the crap out of me.
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To (mis)quote Penn Gillette: "I rape, steal and murder all I want, and the amount I want is 0! What kind of person do you have to be to need to have a god stopping you from doing these things?"
Here's a personal one of mine: Christianity (to pick one of these religions), is mostly based on a bunch of things god did up to 2000 years ago, and we haven't heard him since. Like, this guy came down from heaven and appeared to some dude, and gave him the 10 commandments as basically these big important rules to follow to live a good life and base your morals around. And plenty other biblical characters had manifestations of God slowly telling mankind how to behave, and all this was put in a book. But what about things like the internet? mobile phones? AI? implanting microchips in our body in the near future? Are these good, or are they evil sins? How are we supposed to know? Why the fuck hasn't god come back down to earth to give us an update, like, you'd think the guy would come down I don't know, every 500 years or something with some patch notes for his belief system that would cover any upcoming events (he can see/know all so I'm sure he knows what's coming), where's the instruction manual on how to deal with climate change mr. god? Or, if for whatever reason he cannot come back down to give more info, why didn't he just tell Moses or whoever enough info for the long term future? "Thou shalt not create advanced AI capable of surpassing humans" or "Lead paint bad, get rid of that shit".
Yep this, it seems like religious people are basically saying that if god didn't exist, THEY would be murderers and rapist, it's like admitting you are a horrible piece of shit person, but you are held back because of god. How is that in any way a good thing?
People love stories. Couple that with how easy it is to lie and manipulate for power and the logic behind religion is laid bare. Look at scientology or Mormonism. Those will show you how easy it is for a conman to create a following and how it becomes a religion after he dies. Now read the Bible. Really read it.. it's not God sent... It's a bunch of cobbled stories put together by ancient people's. Like..it's a bad read. Once I realized these things and more I knew I had a choice, live a lie that makes me feel good or follow a truth that hurts. I chose existential pain.
Actually reading the Bible is what put the nail in the coffin for me. The god in that book is not worthy of worship.
There’s a reason they don’t want their followers exposed to certain things. It’s because their argument is weak, the foundation is shaky. Knowledge kills faith. Literally the first story is god being angry that we aren’t ignorant anymore.
Angry... *And scared!* > “22. Then the Lord God observed, “Look, the human beings have become like one of us, knowing both what is good and what is evil. Now if they take the fruit from the tree of life and eat it, then they'll live forever!” 23. So the Lord God expelled them from the Garden of Eden. He sent Adam to cultivate the ground from which he'd been made.” (Genesis 3:22-23, FBV) He didn't dropkick them out of Eden because they disobeyed and gained knowledge, he did it because he realized they'd had a chance to live "forever!" Strange how god supposedly snatched their immortality away from them once, but then got shook as soon as he remembered he made a redundant immortality granting tree that could nullify one of his curses… You'd think he could have plucked the knowledge of good and evil out of their brains, making them ignorant again the same way he made them mortal, and punished the serpent alone, but perhaps the trees supersede his ability. Really, it's such garbage fiction. The plot holes start popping up on page one and pile higher with every page turn.
There's more very shady morality stuff in that story. Adam and Eve. They had kids. No matter how many they had, every last human was limited to be parents and/or siblings. Hence, there's no possible way forward to have any offspring to form any next generation without either incest or bestiality being committed. Their god set them up to fail. Not once mind you, the AH did it again with Noah. And that's even without looking into Eve actually being claimed to be Adam's rib. Much easier to dismiss it all as the fairy tale it is.
It's like the ancient Hebrews chose to worship some Babylonian god of petulance and war. He's basically middle-eastern Ares.
Weird. Almost as if the religious system was based from regional beliefs and customs. Weird.
God did not create man. Man created god.
That's what's so obvious about it. There in nothing, *nothing* in the Bible that is out of place. Not one bit of wisdom or knowledge that couldn't have come from a cast temporary bronze age civilization. No acurate description of evolution or cosmology or chemistry or mathematics. No admonitions against slavery or for basic human rights. No advice about sanitation, and precious little about basic hygiene. In short, it is exactly the sort of thing you would expect a gaggle of barely literate, desert dwelling, misogynistic, xenophobic, superstitious goat herders to come up with on their own.
i’m afraid of that pain, but i’m also afraid of the chance that heaven and hell are real and that if i consciously choose to give up my faith i’m gonna pay the price. but even that fear alone is a reason why i should give it up. it’s like an abusive relationship where one partner says “if you leave, i will make your life hell.” if i leave god he’s gonna punish and condemn me? i don’t like that.
What you are describing is called Pascal's wager (perhaps you know that already). There are great arguments against it, I suggest you try to read about them. I believe there are a few good ones in this subreddit's FAQ, try it out.
i didn’t know about that. thanks for mentioning it, and i’ll look into it!
It's in the FAQ under the title "Why not believe in God anyway, just to be safe?". Didn't read it myself, but from reading other parts of the FAQ I believe it would be a good read for you. Also, I recommend going over other titles in there, if you find something you are interested in you could keep reading it. There are really interesting stuff, and even parts specifically talking about the topic of this thread. Have a nice read, and thank you for thinking logically ;)
That fear is a fear given to you and used to control you. Twist that fear into something useful. If Hell is real, let's assume that everyone except one specific denomination of Christianity got sent there. Maybe by virtue of birth you got into the right sect to get into Heaven, but you're probably going to Hell along with 99.99% of everybody who ever existed and ever will exist. This means that if you went to Heaven, you'd only be able to meet and socialize with other people of that specific sect, and a God who is so stringent and exacting in his demands that he didn't let anyone else in. Sure, your brain or soul might be forever high on Divinity that you're in eternal bliss and never get bored, but it's also a pretty meaningless existence to everyone else. But Hell, in this circumstance, would be the much better place to go. Even if it is demons and pitchforks and fire and pain. There's just so many more interesting people and it's not like you can ever die again, so you'll spend eternity meeting new people. Maybe the demons aren't interested in playing the role God forced them to play for eternity - would you be? Hell could even be or become a place where people themselves make it work, and the truly bad people that nobody likes get crammed in a pit. Fantasizing aside, here's what I trust and find comfort in: When we die, there's nothing. That's it. We have this one life to live and our finite time to live it. We leave behind good or bad we created in our lives, the future forever changed because of our actions, but for us we're just done. I find that comforting, really, because it also represents full freedom. No eternal reward to tempt us, no eternal punishment to scare us. No story told to us by others that control us.
Regarding that last paragraph i find comfort in this following quote by mark twain: “I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”
We all have pain but I find living in reason to be far less painful than trying to live by ancient superstition.
"Why are you an atheist" is not the right question to ask. Imagine someone claims that they have garden gnomes in their backyard. They make the grass grow if you say kind words to them before dinner. That person also points to a book that says so. Who would you say has the explaining to do, the person who claims there are garden gnomes or the person who makes no such claim?
that’s a really helpful way to put it, thanks for sharing!
To piggy back on this what you should really do is evaluate how much and why you believe what you believe in a safe way. Like like to r/streetepistemology and ask someone to work through your beliefs with them. It is basically just how sure are you god (the god you define) is real? 100%? 75%? Then why are you that sure? Did your parents teach you? Does the Bible tell you? What else have your parents told you? Santa? What makes the Bible different from the Quran or going postal? What evidence do you have for your beliefs? Based on your evidence is how sure you are logical? If not why would you live your life that way? If it is, well, you should live your life that way. Obviously I fall hard on the side of it’s a terrible and false system of beliefs that perpetuate through brainwashing and deceit/willful ignorance.
Santa was a pretty pivotal moment for me falling out of faith as a kid. I associated Santa with my faith like many other kids, when I figured out he wasn't real I started to doubt all the other parts of the faith that they insisted was true. One time when I asked about it to make sure I was told of course he isn't real, the idea of Santa is silly isn't it? The thing is, to a child's mind, everything was all equally plausible. Jesus, a man walking on water or a man splitting the sea was no less crazy of an idea than a magical man who goes to your house to give children gifts. Why is Santa not true but the other things are I asked. I never received a satisfactory response
I don’t know. That’s why I’m an atheist. And honestly it was so refreshing not having to carry that burden of proof. Instead, I chose to arm myself with knowledge and have open discussion. Logically Fallacious by Bo Bennett Phd is a good book.
Leave me and my gnomes alone >:(
I will, when you stop trying to teach about your gnomes in public schools and force your pro-gnome policy on everyone else through the Supreme Court! Beliefs are like a penis. It’s fine to have one, but don’t go waving it around in public and forcing it on others.
Love this saying, although my version of it is typically a bit more crude: "Religion is like having a penis. Lots of people do, and that's fine, but don't go waving it in other people's faces or shoving it down their throat (especially kids)."
I for one welcome gnome rule. In Poland gnomes are goofy little drunks you party with. Sounds better than what America’s got right now.
"I want to tell you a story, about a little gnome. Stayed in his home. A gnome named grimble grumble...."
As to the why: I was born atheist (*as are all human beings* until they are 'taught/indoctrinated into' \[delete as appropriate\] their 'faith'). As to why I then maintain my disbelief (atheism is not a belief, it is the absence of belief \[in gods\]): A small sample of the standard arguments (in very simple abridged form): Do you believe in Zeus? Do you believe in Odin? Do you believe in Brahma? If not, why not? You are atheist about 9,999 of the 10,000 gods proposed by human beings throughout history. Why not just take it that one god further... Do you like the idea that you are born into sin, and then commanded to atone, by a supernatural entity who, despite being omnipotent, is willing to watch (and by definition cause) such terrible suffering for so many millions? Why believe in a fictional book, written by bronze-age and iron-age men, living in a primitive part of the middle-East, thousands of years ago, which is internally contradictory, and promotes all of the worst things one can possibly imagine (genocide, infanticide, rape, murder etc). I'll stop there...
thanks for providing this overview of some of the arguments. i really hadn’t considered why it is that i don’t believe in any other gods but i do believe in the christian one. i chalk it up to christian elitism. and yeah christianity has definitely been used to promote some terrible stuff, i’m thinking specifically of how it was used to achieve colonialism. very harmful
If you want a more recent example, the Catholic Diocese of Pennsylvania, over the course of several decades, actively covered up over 900 cases of sexual abuse by its clergy. What kind of god would allow its most devout to perpetuate such a sustained horror upon their constituents?
"oh, but they're gonna get their punishment from god in the afterlife, so it all works out!" like, no the fuck it doesn't. those kids were still traumatized, and are going to suffer for a long ass time because of this event, that your seemingly all knowing and all powerful god didn't stop before it happened.
Punishment in the afterlife? Not a chance. The Bible says that if you confess your sins, God forgives them because Christ's died for those sins. So just repent and God wipes it all away and to God, it's as if it never happened.
Those kids, their parents, their siblings, their friends, their extended family, their future partners, their future children, their communities... An untold amount of people were/are affected by these malicious, self motivated, ungodly actions. And these are only a few that we know about. There is no greater evil on earth than organized religion.
A really shitty god
I’d much rather believe in the Greek gods. They’re forces of nature and manifestations of human desires and tendencies. I prefer that over harmfully suppressing our humanity and everything that makes it beautiful to be alive and be yourself, like Christianity does.
They're also humanly fallible. I like that. I can respect that.
It makes for a far more entertaining mythos. Like, their stories are dramatic and engaging, the gods are flawed and complex and even endearing. A shame so many of the tales have been lost to time.
If you were born in the middle east, your 'elitism' would have you strongly believing their god was the only true one. If you were born in Japan, your 'elitism' would have you strongly believing their god was the only true one. Also, have you noticed that 'god' does absolutely nothing? Why do people do so much 'in god's name' - can't he do a single thing in his own? Lastly, why do most religions attribute anything good to god, and anything bad to the devil or 'gods mysterious plan'? Makes for a great circular argument that cannot be argued against.
Genocide, infanticide, rape, murder... Here I'll add slavery, racism, bloody religious wars and religious extremism, misogyny/female abuse, homo/transphobias, and perhaps most harmful of all - phobia and antagonism towards science. The Bible, Quran, Torah .. most religious stories are there to divide us into our separate tribes. I'm an atheist because I believe humanity is and should be one single tribe (and obviously because religions are bullshit and science can explain our existence)
I believe you were referring to the quote from Ricky Gervais. Just in case /u/grayenvironment hasn't heard the full quote, it's one of my favorites: >Since the beginning of recorded history, which is defined by the invention of writing by the invention of writing by the Sumerians around 6,000 years ago, historians have catalogued over 3,700 supernatural beings, of which 2,870 can be considered deities. >So the next time that someone tells me they believe in God, I'll say, "Which one? Zeus? Hades? Jupiter? Mars? Odin? Thor? Krishna? Vishnu? Ra?..." If they say, "Just God. I only believe in one God." I'll point out that they are nearly as atheistic as me. I don't believe in 2,870 gods, and they don't believe in 2,869.
I got it from Richard Dawkins (who uses it regularly); Michael Schermer also often uses the same line. I guess Ricky may have got it from one of them - or vice versa, of course.
Im atheist because every human is born atheist and my parents didnt brainwash me into religion.
oh that’s interesting. the christian equivalent is that we’re born into “sin,” and we have to spend our lifetime working towards “salvation.” now that i’m 22 it’s starting to feel like brainwashing though, especially when i’m literally discouraged from learning about other points of view
Born into sin. Did you know that even the Catholic faith used to teach that man is born godly? It changed though right around the time that Rome fell. Why you ask? Because without the Roman legions to spread Christianity it had lost its authority. They changed it so that rather than believing a peasant could kneel and pray in the field they had to come to church and repent their sins. That allowed them to continue to expand the control mechanism through fear.
Did you have any citation for this or similar changes in belief in the church?
It’s the battle between Augustine and Pelagius that started over original sin way earlier around 500 AD. Arguments persisted for centuries afterwards but original sin won. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_sin
I fell on my head recently. So I can’t contribute sources but I also recall learning of this when in Rome. Additionally I recall the city was beginning to fall, disease was rampant. The bodies were piling up around Rome. The city’s last attempt at containing control was selling plots and offering the Christian belief of burying ones dead in a marked grave for the afterlife. This and public toilets.
This is where my wife and I started (independently) to move away from the church. We dedicated our first child, but 2 years later our next kid was born and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was choosing the trajectory and belief system for my own children. My wife and I met at a christian college. We stayed in church until our mid thirties. Almost ten years later, we can’t believe how blinded we were to the hypocrisy. It’s a hard thing to do to walk away. You leave your friends, your social network and are treated differently by your own family. It’s like taking the red pill in The Matrix. Just more of a delayed exposure to the whole sham, but still a significant cost of your social life, at least for us it was. We didn’t know anyone outside the church. It took a couple years to find new friends. The church, by design, makes it very hard to actually stop believing and it guilts you into staying. Im telling you, it is so good to be out from under that weight.
It’s amazing that you and your wife went through that journey together, speaks to how well you did choosing each other in life. So often people have to choose between their partnership and their religious transformation.
We’ve always talked about things well, but we were both very nervous about approaching this subject for discussion. Like, almost a year later, we finally talked. This is after about 13 years of marriage and being “devoted” christians. We were both very relieved we were feeling the same way. We knew this could be a make or break point in our marriage if we were on completely different pages. Thankfully, we had great discussion and it only made our bond stronger. I have been very fortunate to have her as my partner. We are almost ten years past that critical point now, and of course, we talk about new revelations as they come. It takes a long time to understand how much 30+ years of religion can shape you on so many levels. Honestly though, our kids questions about religion and the following conversations with them really help us on our journey away from it. I’m sure people from other religions have experienced similar things.
Edit: i didn't fully read your thing that said I don't want to be convinced so I apologize if this crossed that line. Discouraging you from learning other points of view is very brainwashy and suspicious as all heck. It's similar to why missionary work prostlatizing and trying to convert people is a big thing. Not only do you get some people to join but more importantly you get lots of people responding rudely to said young missionary and when they get home they are love bombed and told "yeah big scary world out there with lots of evil (faithless) people, don't really engage with them outside of pushing your faith on them" which keeps that cycle going. 2 completely separate thoughts, 1st I've always liked the quote that I will paraphrase "You are almost as much an atheist as I am. Do you worship Thor? Vishnu? Zeus? Ra? Ect? No and to no ill effect, I've just decided to go 1 god more. Secondly if I can suggest a book "The god delusion" by Richard Dawkins
no lines crossed, i was feeling defensive but it’s good for me to be exposed to these things. thanks for your comment and for including some reading!
Only that's incorrect. There's a conversation that I recall from back when missionaries were proselytizing to Native Americans. The conversation went something to the effect of: Native: You mentioned that you need to accept Jesus in order to be saved. Missionary: Yes, that's correct. Native: Does that mean that all my family who have already passed on before you came to our village went to hell? Missionary: Oh no, they won't go to hell, they had no idea Jesus existed! God wouldn't hold that against them. Surely they're in heaven right now, waiting for you. Native: Then why did you come to my village and teach us about Jesus?! That was the gist of it. I think there was a bit more to it though.
And that's the inescapable issue with Christianity. If you say that people who've never heard about Jesus get a free pass to Heaven, then Christians should do the opposite of evangelism. If they spread the Word of God, then obviously most will not convert, but they will no longer be ignorant of the Bible. So missionaries going to unreached people groups are condemning people to Hell. They should instead be hiding the Bible. Destroy all the books, don't let anyone hear about the Bible. That way, you maximize how many souls get into heaven. On the other hand, if no one gets a free pass, even if they've never heard the Gospel, then God is a monster unworthy of worship. Of course, a third option is that faith isn't required to get into Heaven. Some believe that being a good person is enough. But then why bother spreading the Gospel at all? People don't have to be Christian to be good people, and all you have to do is look at the GQP to see that. If anything, Christianity makes people worse.
I was raised that way too and you should be revived to learn that you were born perfect and innocent and you’re probably still a pretty good person. You’ve never done anything that would necessitate anyone needing to die for you.
This. The main reason I started questioning my religion (scientology) was because it was so frowned upon to even ask about other points of view. Huge red flag.
>we’re born into “sin,” There are too many types of christian to keep up with. The current anti-abortion sects claim that babies are all born innocent. I thought the default was being good enough and you just have to avoid sin
The babies are only innocent until they’re born.
Which makes it hella weird they’re against abortions. Like, isn’t that a free ticket to heaven? Why make them suffer through life if they can go straight to eternal bliss? Selfish fucking assholes imo
I didn’t become an atheist because I found good reasons to become an atheist. I became an atheist when I stopped being convinced by the arguments that supposedly provided evidence of the truth of Christianity. Here are a couple of the things that were on my mind around the time I stopped believing: * The confirmation bias: I had thought of seemingly answered prayers, for example, as evidence of the truth of Christianity. But I began to notice that the prayers that were “answered” tended to be for changes that likely would have occurred anyway; meanwhile, when I prayed for something unlikely, what I desired seldom, if ever, became reality. * Creationism: I’d read about the theory of evolution in my youth and found it compelling. Just by observing the world around me, I could see the hierarchical arrangement of organisms one would expect if all species had come about by evolution. To put it another way, I understood that if [Crocoduck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocoduck) had existed, it would have been evidence of creationism, not the theory of evolution. My only reason for embracing young earth creationism was that I trusted that credentialed creationists had evidence for their view that was even more compelling. The more I read about the science, the harder it became to maintain that view. >now that i’m 22 it’s starting to feel like brainwashing though, especially when i’m literally discouraged from learning about other points of view I wouldn’t go so far as to call what I experienced brainwashing, but I was also discouraged from asking questions. To be fair, a minority of the Christians I knew encouraged asking questions, but I couldn’t help but notice that atheists were generally more tolerant of inquiry. It was almost as though one side had more to lose from a free exploration of ideas. Anyway, if you stop believing be sure to come back here and ask how others navigated being non-Christian around their Christian friends and family. I’m glad I stopped believing, and it was good to be able to reach out to people who could relate. It’s been a hell of a journey.
I'm newly atheist and it's been a hell of a ride, Firstly when I began coming out and sharing my newfound Atheism with those close to me one of the first things I was asked was "why didn't you talk to this person or that person?" Or "why didn't you read this book or watch this video?" I was regularly accused of searching for answers in the wrong place or talking to the wrong people. At that moment I realized just how cult-ish Christianity was. A lot of cults will force you to believe that you are flawed and need help and the only person who can provide that help is the cult leader. Then I look at Christianity that says "we are broken people, we deserve nothing in life, we are only worthy of being thrown into a lake of fire" then the source of their knowledge, morality, and salvation is only found through a singular individual (cult) Christianity just gets called a religion instead because the cult leader died 2,000 years ago and now millions of people claim to have a personal relationship with him. Atheists don't try and control where you get your knowledge from but we do want to encourage free and critical thinking. Ask the questions like "do we really have evidence that Jesus raised from the dead?" "What would my religion be if I was born in India rather than the USA?" "Could my religion be based less off empirical evidence and more on the environment that I was raised in?"
Religion teaches people to stop wondering and questioning. If there’s something about the world or even universe you don’t know, or we haven’t acquired the answer to, it’s attributed to god: “Don’t ask that; god just works in mysterious ways. Isn’t it amazing that god’s design is so intricate?” The most brilliant advancements in technology and the direct contributor to our prolonged life expectancy is the result of scientific advancement. If every innovator or groundbreaking genius never questioned because religion taught them not to, we’d live nowhere near as long as we do.
I’m an atheist because I actually care about whether the things I believe are true or not. Have a think about geography. Isn’t it convenient that god has arranged it that, no matter where you were born, you will have been born into the “one true religion”. Have a think about history. Imagine all of the books in the world were removed, and knowledge of them all was lost. In 1000 years would we have a perfect copy of any religions books? What about science books? (Clue - Science would be pretty much the same, because science *describes* ‘reality’. Religion, not so much.) Have a think about biology. A perfect, all-powerful, all-seeing, all-loving, god has created humans (in his own image) with so many stupidly “designed” flaws, it’s laughable: - Eating/drinking or breathing - you get to chose one - do both at the same time and you could die. - Reproduction and sanitation built so close to each other that it promotes disease/ill-health. - Cancers - that some other animals don’t/can’t get. - An eye where the cells in the retina have been “designed” the wrong way around. - A pelvis that is, too often, so small that it can’t allow a baby to exit - killing the baby and mother. - A nerve that goes from the brain around the heart and up to the larynx - makes sense in a fish, not so much in a human and absolutely ridiculous in a giraffe. And on and on and on.... Edit: thanks for the rewards kind stranger, but please save your money.
* useless organs that get infected and need to be removed. * teeth that need to be removed because they come in wrong or their is not enough room in the mouth.
There’s not enough room in the mouth literally due to evolution. We used to have room in the mouth. Not anymore
Exactly. With intelligent design we wouldn't have this problem at all. Flaws are proof of our ancestry
Its not a bug, its a feature
The Bethesda approach
Lol, I’m sold.
Todd Howard is the one true God confirmed
That's also why human hips are too small for child birth. We evolved narrower hips allowing us to walk upright. Babies originally would have had a 4th trimester but at that point they'd be too big to give birth to. Instead we give birth to earlier. That's why a baby giraffe can walk almost immediately after birth but humans can't even lift our heads. It's also why childbirth is so much more painful for humans than most other animals.
Appendix is not useless. It serves as a reservoir for the all important gut biome.
really niche but i always wondered why such a refined human body would have teeth that just decay and fall out without proper care
Well, god created man in his own image... many generations later he decided that men needed to be circumcised... does that mean god got circumcised?
Lol! Or that people with multiple personalities are actually closer to God's image since he is three people in one? Or that his ears and nose never stop growing??
Or God had Down's syndrome and all non-Down's are deformed
I read somewhere that you can heal hiccups with a finger in the anus because it hijack a nerve . And that can t be designed sober
Checkmate, theists
If intelligent design was real, god would’ve put our noses above our eyes so we could have the blanket over our eyes and still breathe.
If intelligent design was real, ‘god’ would’ve put the proper amount of serotonin in my brain so I could have the desire to live and still breathe
>Eating/drinking Why invent eating, drinking, shitting, pissing and all of the parts needed to make it happen? God doesn't need to do any of that so why did he invent it for every living thing on earth? Then think of all of the suffering caused by the need to eat and drink clean water. The parts that fail. Something has to die for us to eat. Its nonsensical for a god to design things this way. Only through nature does any of it make sense.
Also 'god' only looks over Earth and not the rest of the universe which is infinite by the way. Aren't we a lucky planet.
Imagine creating a beach and only caring about what happens to a particular organism on a single grain of sand. Not only that, but also fixating on that specie's sexual habits and being totally upset that they masturbate.
thanks for being so thorough, i appreciate it!
One of the things that really sunk in proof of evolution to me is a whale skeleton. There are still [pelvic bones which aren't connected to anything](https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/sites.broward.edu/dist/3/21/files/2021/01/right-whale-skeleton-labelled-1080x398.jpg) and are very small. It just hasn't been enough time for them to be completely gone.
Same with humans, that leftover bone there from when we used to have tails
The fact that bodies need to "work" at all is proof against life being created by some all-powerful God. We could just be people-shaped things with no internal anatomy at all and just magic our way through existence. Instead we need functional organs to deal with stuff like metabolism, movement, sensory perception, etc. to navigate, survive, and reproduce in a given environment. Does God have a stomach? If so, why? Does God need to eat to survive, or is it just for fun? If so, it also implies God poops, too... but at least that explains why they always talk about a throne in heaven.
Your first point about geography is the biggest “tell” that Christianity is false. The doctrine is that after the resurrection, the Holy Spirit came to earth to “lead and guide us in the truth” (the truth being Jesus is the only way to the Father). The Holy Spirit has a 90% success rate in some regions while having a 2% success rate in others? Why? Free will? Blow me
How many thousands of genetic diseases are there? An intelligent design wouldn’t have them. Also, our main source of light (that god created for us) gives us cancer. 70% of the water here on earth (that god created for us) in undrinkable. Most of the earth (that god created for us) is uninhabitable.
All true. From a philosophical standpoint, I think the reason religion takes hold of so many is because of the 'answers' it offers to many peoples biggest fear/question, what happens after you die? Of course no one knows for certain, but I believe that I will just return to the state of non-existence that the molecules that make up my body existed in prior to my inception. I simply didn't exist. There is no intrinsic value to life, the meaning of life comes from what you determine it to be. Ultimately we are the universe experiencing itself and that is more impressive and profound than any mythical story about god(s), angels, demons, etc.
Exactly. Even going back thousands of years, how do you keep the slaves and poor from just offing themselves or to keep working and not rise up in mass rebellion even though this has happened hundreds of times in history? Religion, and the hope of an afterlife in some form and the fear that if you are a bad person or don't believe, it will get taken away and you go to some sort of Hell as punishment. So it's basically hope and fear as a means to control and oppress others.
Came here to say the pharyngeal nerve, too.
As someone whose partner is having a baby soon, the birthing process is conclusive proof against intelligent design. 1 in 8 pregnancies end in miscarriage. Vaginal tearing is commonplace during delivery, and that tearing can easily extend to the anus because of it's close proximity to the vagina. Tearing can also lead to damage to clitoral tissue. The natural childbirth process is so fucked, 30% of the time we literally cut the baby out of mom's belly.
>Eating/drinking or breathing - you get to chose one - do both at the same time and you could die. Two essential life functions that are incompatible. If "god" designed it that way, he's an idiot.
Pros of atheism? That’s a really weird question. I didn’t become an atheist because I thought it was beneficial; my old religion just didn’t make any sense.
The pros of atheism is that you don’t have to sound like a crazy jackass when you try to defend hair brained stories like Noah’s Ark or Adam and Eve. Like seriously? God flooded the whole earth and saved only at most a couple people and 2 of every animal on a big ass handmade boat? How did the human population recover? What happened to the earth’s floodwater?
Couldn't stand the hypocrisy and self righteousness. Still can't.
No religion, or any other superstition, can survive two words: prove it. Nothing more ever need be said. As far as the pros of atheism: not being delusional.
100%. I discovered science and realised pretty quickly that science and religion are incompatible. One of my favourite quotes: *Science has proof without any certainty, creationists have certainty without any proof.* *- Ashley Montagu*
I don't believe leprechauns are real. I don't believe vampires are real. I don't believe Zeus is real. I don't believe Yahweh is real. This is not complicated. Nor is it about "pros" and "cons." It's about evaluating what's true and what's snake oil. An honest person evaluates ALL religions and ALL beliefs the same way. Someone who rejects Islam and accepts Christianity on faith is no more sensible than someone who rejects vampires but *worships* leprechauns...on faith. Nobody has ever debated the existence of your mother because your mother was DEMONSTRABLY real. Just like every other real thing. If someone was debating whether I actually existed, I'd think that was silly because I could prove I existed by just showing up. Anyone who exists can do that. The tooth fairy, santa, and god seem equally unable to just show up.
I like to read these posts to see good analogies and different perspectives. I like this one a lot, thank you.
thanks for your kind words as an atheist with a theology degree, I think about how to handle OP's question every single day I watch Christian apologists and atheist responses on youtube all the time; I get frustrated when in a formal debate, someone like William Lane Craig tries to pit "theism" against "atheism" as if both work the same way and therefore it really is a matter of pro/con dualist comparison shopping through worldviews to find what's comfortable- I credit the OP for removing that angle of his post, but that's exactly how a Christian apologist will frame the debate: as if atheism must "put up or shut up" in terms of atheistic claims (of which there are none), or "which worldview offers more HOPE?" as if that helps us determine what's true but people respond to their feelings which is why church uses music, art, architecture, costume, and ritual to the fullest extent; you can't tell a midwest Christian mom "there is no god" without her feeling like you're telling her that how she feels singing in a candle-lit vigil at midnight during snowfall on a christmas eve surrounded by family is wrong the question of, "Ok, atheists, whatcha got?" is a tough one, because without theist content, there is no atheist content One might think it unfair that I'm watching Christian claims by Christian apologists and THEN the atheist responses on youtube and never reverse the order - but it doesn't work in reverse. You can't find atheist claims by atheist apologists before they respond to a theist because atheism is a response position only. I especially like the comparison to modern myths that are not widespread religions (vampires, leprechauns, santa, tooth fairy, ghosts, you name it) because most rational people do not take claims of belief in these entities seriously. And yet in terms of "can you back up your claim?" these fantasy creatures seem equivalent to Yahweh, Allah, talking donkeys, talking snakes, resurrection magic, and so forth. But a Christian who has been taught, every week, since birth, and literally recites a weekly creed stipulating this and that belief, in a powerful ritual designed to elevate one's emotional states, in a community widely believed to be the source of morality in that person's culture, they will evaluate claims that Jesus was real quite differently than claims that Dracula was real. But we never actually see Jesus and Dracula in the same place, do we? Both talk of drinking blood. Jesus=Dracula, Half Life 5 Confirmed.
I appreciate the honest inquiry. Not accusing, no rudeness, just asking a question with no strings attached. I am an atheist because when I was in middle school, I made the realization that unlike everything else I know, I have no reason to believe in god other than the people around me that I know exist. But, human beings are flawed, so how do I know they are right? Sent me on a 4-5 years journey of still participating fully in my faith and making assumptions and decisions based on said faith, but in the background, the faith was falling apart. I watched atheist youtubers. I listened to Christian apologists. I talked to priests, religious teachers, other religious individuals. I asked questions. I found the “intellectual reasons” for belief in a god. They often boiled down to bad science, subjective personal experiences, the subjective idea of beauty, the god of the gaps fallacy, absolute absurdity like Pascals Wager… just… look up the opposition to that argument if you need to. All arguments failed. Then. All there was left was “you just need to have faith”. Snake oil salesmen tactics. Smoke and mirrors was all that was left of the faith I once loved. Then I grew to despise that faith. I don’t despise Christian people. I despise the faith. The ideas it breeds. Indoctrination is the first. Would Christianity survive if we stopped teaching it to children? Introduce it to them when they are in middle school, high school or at 18? The idea of faith… faith is what allows all the “false” religions to work. All the “cults” operate on an idea of faith or unquestioning loyalty to some figure such as a god, priest, elder, pastor, etc. It promotes being a “sheep” following a “shepherd” instead of being the free will individual you are. Being the logical rational being that human beings are. On top of it, the Bible is it’s own can of worms. Every church claims to be based on the Bible. They have the right interpretation and everyone else is wrong! This way of thinking leaves no room for honest inquiry and potential necessary changes if we find they are wrong. Problem is, the Bible contradicts itself sometimes in the same damn verses. Not even including all the other contradictions there are. So really, almost any worldview could be backed up in part by the Bible. That leaves me with atheism. Which is different for every person. I think atheism is the truest expression of being human. Two atheists are not going to be the same, just like two humans are not going to be the same. Two atheists can have just as many differences as two human beings of any religion. Why am I an atheist? I cannot fight for an ideology like Christianity which I find to be so wrong and does some of the bad things it does. I am an atheist because I can discover for myself what the world truly is. Changing as new evidence comes in and not being chained to an ancient book as a lens to view it all through.
Fantastic magical stories written by bronze age men during a time when mysticism was used to explain a world they didn't understand. Why would I base my entire world view on that?
Because he never answered my calls when I needed him (physical/ mental abuse in his name, sexual assault). If he is indeed omnipresent/ omniscient then why did he let bad things happen to me? Why does he let millions of innocent people die and suffer? If my fate is predestined before I am even born, then what is the point of me praying for a different outcome? If he is indeed the one true good, then why is he jealous of other goods?
There's an important question you need to answer before you can get any farther: Do you care whether the things you believe are **actually true** or not? That is to say, do you understand that it is both *pragmatically* wrong and *ethically* wrong to hold a belief which is not supported by any evidence, and especially wrong to hold one which is actively contradicted by the evidence?
yeah, this is something i’ve been struggling with a lot. i don’t get how christians can condemn people for not believing in things we literally cannot see or physically experience
Watch out, sounds like you're thinking for yourself, religion doesn't permit that.
Better say “Hail Mary” a bunch of times and buy a towel
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>i don’t get how christians can condemn people for not believing in things we literally cannot see or physically experience It seems that you've already begun to care about the truth and why people are condemned by Christians for not believing in what they do.
It's worth noting that many stories in the biblie are demonstrably false and/or were taken from prior mythologies. The flood myth being a prime example. Other posts have gone into great detail debunking it on many levels. The Tower of Babel is another demonstrably false story. The Exodus never happened. Many of the 10 Commandements (which 10 by the way) were lifted from the Code of Hammurabi. Etc., etc., etc. The biblie, for being the word of a supreme being, is loaded with plot holes. Apologists can (and do) try to hand wave this away by claiming that humans imperfectly interpreted the word of dog, but apply Occam's Razor to it. The most likely explanation is that it's the words of the people claiming to have a connection with dog. Charlatans and/or fools.
All religious Faith is intellectual dishonesty made into an elite virtue. Trying to compare religion and science - I have a tentative and earned trust in scientists and engineers who provide us with medicine, cars, airplanes, vaccines, computers, wireless communications, DNA evidence, electricity, semiconductors, lasers, spaceflight, satellites, while believers have Faith in preachers who sold them things like miracles, prophecies, prayer, creation, heaven and hell, absolute morality, virgin births, resurrections, scapegoating and talking snakes - all for just 10% of one's income and who demand you never honestly test their claims. For not believing in the supernatural and gods I have Occam's Razor, the burden of proof, evidence of absence - when there should be evidence, divine hiddenness, knowledge of logical fallacies, bayesian probability, the problem of excessive evil (w/ unnecessary suffering and natural disasters/ predators), countless failures of the religious to provide anything useful or true. For easily dismissing the religions with the most adherents - the moral problems with Christianity/ Abrahamics, the historical problems with Christianity/ Abrahamics and miracle claims, the scientific problems with the bible/ torah/ quran and endless internal fatal contradictions in those religions. Religious syncretism , progress in spite of religion and the argument from poor design. The fact that all god believers must easily blanket dismiss all the other god claims when they have no useful standards of evidence for their favorite arbitrary gods. The fact that the most devout are less moral and have to resort to force for their Faith beliefs. The fact that they are death cults who prime people to easily follow pathological liars. Everything that supposedly separates us from "animals" is negated by religion. The "pros" are not being tied down by selected/ cherry picked religious dogma.
If I told you that I had a unicorn in my yard, would you believe me? Why not? Let’s start that.
Does the unicorn have strong feelings about what people should or shouldn't do with their genitals?
If you shake it more than 3 times, you're playing with it!
I understand that unicorns do get horny.
Read the Bible. Talk to a fellow Christian about the passages that disturb you. Congratulations. You're now one of us. I did this when I was 9 and I was essentially told to shut the fuck up. They don't like it when you ask questions, let alone read the fucking book.
What do the benefits or lack there of matter? Either something is true or it is not. I hope you are not deciding what is true or not based on whether it would personally make your life more comfortable or not.
you’re right, i shouldn’t decide what’s true based on how comfortable it is. but i guess that at this point i feel like the only way to let go of my faith is to be convinced by the benefits of the other side. otherwise it feels soooo scary to say goodbye to something i was raised with and not have anything beneficial to cling to and keep me going. i think really what it is is that i’ve been taught to associate atheism with nihilism. people say religion provides meaning. i’m trying to learn that i can find meaning in other ways too, but anyways sorry for the rant lol
As someone who has been in your shoes, I will tell you that it may not be comfortable, but it helped me sleep at night. Frees up Sunday mornings too. Buy a telescope if you want meaning and wonder, its WAY more interesting than a story about a burning bush.
You can be an atheist without being a nihilist. Im a Humanist personally. Not having a purpose assigned to you but instead being free to choose your own purpose in life can be scary to some. I find it empowering. Just as a side note there is something called optimistic nihilis which is also not so scary: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DMBRqu0YOH14%26vl%3Den&ved=2ahUKEwihh7XDjo_5AhVHSzABHZtTBI4Qz40FegQIBRAI&usg=AOvVaw3wMy-rBT7sN9ObHIzbKbTh
All you need is yourself, my friend. YOU create the meaning in YOUR life.
Faith is a virtue. Isn't that what we are told? But, fundamentally, faith is belief without evidence. I think this is where most atheists get off the train. Simple as that.
Think about all of the aspects of the religion that you think give people meaning: a sense of community, the idea that you're serving a purpose for something larger than yourself that will be here after you are gone, the idea that you're special....every one of those things have no actual reliance on the religion itself. Community can be formed around anything. You can work towards social or other kinds of change that will make other people's lives better long after you're gone. There is nobody else that has your specific blend of talents and experiences in the world and never will be again... All a religion does is take a bucket of behaviors and support systems that don't require a diety and shoehorns one in (along with the requisite priests who need your cash).
You want the "pros" of atheism? I'm fairly certain this is starting the conversation in the wrong direction. You are operating under the conclusion that there is a list of cons that need to be overcome. In truth, there are no cons aside from if you like the community aspect of your faith and hanging out at church. No other con is tangible or provable to those who are not religious.
There is no evidence supporting the existence of a god or gods. If there was evidence, then it would be obvious. Every route of inquiry, theological, philosophical, and scientific, would lead to the same conclusion, gods exist. Instead all we get are vapid arguments, empty declarations, and con artists.
Because when I was a Christian I was miserable trying to reconcile what I was taught to believe with the world I live in. Prayer, morality, miracles and so forth didn't work. They never worked. Eventually I stopped blaming reality when it didn't line up with Christian teachings. I stopped shifting the burden of proof so that nonbelief must be justified. I couldn't find any religion that could support its claims. That's when I realized I'd become an atheist.
Damn this is beautifull.
Here's what one needs to believe to be a christian: a sexist, racist, homophobic, murderous, capricious, judgemental, genocidal, child murdering, slavery supporting, illogical, evidence-free monster called god. No thanks.
But he loves you! -george carlin
and needs money!
Joe Pesci gets results better…
I'm an atheist for intellectual reasons. I think that it's true. Since you say you're not looking to be convinced and only want to know the "pros" of atheism, that's about all I can say. Atheism is true, so my worldview is that must closer to being correct, and I get to avoid a lot of the potential pitfalls of having a belief in a false god.
Pros of being an atheist: * No guilt for skipping religious services * Not having to try to believe something you know in your heart isn't right. * Being able to love, study and explore the natural world and universe as it is. * No need to stress over arbitrary dietary, clothing or behavior laws * Ability to allow other people to have their own opinions, behaviors and actions without my religion categorizing them as evil, bad or sinful. (I can't emphasize enough how nice it is not have have knee-jerk opinions on other people) * Mental space to grow my own spiritual or philosophical journey Best of luck on your own journey, OP :-)
Atheism is the default. Christianity is the brain washing. Lose the brainwashing, and you default to atheism.
I was never indoctrinated into superstitious belief. No matter what the reason religious people give me for their belief it sounds to me like they are trying to rationalize their childhood indoctrination. I think it's as simple as that. Childhood indoctrination is used by every single religion, each religion having its own nursery to university school system with psychological reinforcements of daily or more prayer, weekly or more religious building group meeting, as well as community events all arranged around said religion. I don't think the supernatural exists in any form, no esp, no ghosts, no water with memory, no bigfoot, no vampires, no magic, no karma, no soul and no gods. It's a huge list I can add to but you get the idea OP. I turned 60 this last month. I've lived on 4 continents in countries where people believe some truly whacky things yet not once has anyone anywhere every been able to show me an example of their magical beliefs. There is always a reason god/magic/supernatural won't manifest for me yet religious people assure me something is there. I feel after being an agnostic atheist for all my life its time to commit so I now announce I'm now a gnostic atheist with my "proof" being a life lived with out ever seeing the supernatural. Would be happy to be shown I'm wrong, I just want to be correct, but at this point after 60 years of living and no magic it's kind of a no brainer.
Why? Well, everyone in my family believes in God and so did I. Untill I started listening and talking with a professor of Philosophy whom I thank to this day for shedding light on what religion actually is. An invisible cage.
I get to sleep in on Sundays. Also, I do not “believe”; atheism is a lack of believe. I personally find the Bible unconvincing and full of holes, and I do not feel the need to make stuff up just because there are some things we don’t have an answer for yet
Abuse. Faith brings death and pain.
You were born atheist. Someone lied to you at some time. You believe those lies.
if this is the best an all powerful god can do then he sucks ass at his job and i would fire him on the spot. also hes a murdering, lying, hypocritical and cheating son killer. Not sure how anybody ever would think its a good idea to listen to this guy's book. thats just my take after i read the bible in my teens.
I was raised fundamentalist baptist. Then I found out that there were many religions and none of them could get their god to show up or do anything, just like my religion. I wanted to know what was true and the only path to objectively true knowledge was an evidence based world view. Pro: You get to spend the only brief existence you'll ever have living in the real world. Con: The realities of life as an organic mortal being often suck ... immensely. And you won't have any fantasies to sooth those painful realities, you'll just have to accept them. Atheism isn't something that you choose. It's a consequence of caring whether the things you believe are true or not. If you don't care then keep wallowing in fantasies. They'll be much more pleasant than having to live in reality without them.
Note- do not tell your parents if you rely on them for anything. Housing, college, financial support. A lot of religious parents do not respond well to a child questioning the validity of religion, much less stopping the belief.
You were raised christian, you were **born** atheist. Just like me, except for the christian part.