Atheism
Community Guide
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Statement of Purpose
- This is a support and conversation community for people who don't believe in gods.
- Superstition hucksters have no reason to subscribe or post here at all.
- If you are looking to debate or proselytize, options will be linked lower in the sidebar.
Acceptable
- Honest questions or conversations.
- Discussions on parenting or advice.
- Struggles, frustrations, coming out.
- Atheist memes. We can have fun!
- News headlines relevant to atheism.
Unacceptable
Depending on severity, you might be warned before adverse action is taken.
- Anything against site rules.
- Illegal and/or NSFW material.
- Troll posts and comments. There will be no attempt to explain what that means.
- Leading questions, agenda pushing, or disingenuous attempts to bait members.
- Personal attacks or flaming.
Inadvisable
- Self promotion or upvote farming.
- Excessive shitposting or off-topic discussion.
Application of warnings or bans will be subject to moderator discretion. Feel free to appeal. If changes to the guidelines are necessary, they will be adjusted.
If you vocally harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathizer or a resemblant of a group that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of any other group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you you will be banned on sight.
Provable means able to provide proof to the moderation, and, if necessary, to the community.
~ /c/nostupidquestions
If you want your space listed in this sidebar and it is especially relevant to the atheist or skeptic communities, PM DancingPickle and we'll have a look!
Connect with Atheists
- Matrix: #atheism:envs.net
Help and Support Links
- Freedom From Religion Foundation
- The Secular Therapy Project
- Secular Students Alliance
- Black Nonbelievers
- The Clergy Project
- Atheist Alliance International
- Sunday Assembly
- Atheist Ireland
- Atheism UK
- Atheists United
Streaming Media
This is mostly YouTube at the moment. Podcasts and similar media - especially on federated platforms - may also feature here.
- Atheist Debates - Matt Dillahunty
- Rationality Rules
- Friendly Atheist
- Making Sense with Sam Harris
- Cosmic Skeptic
- Genetically Modified Skeptic
- Street Epistemology
- Armored Skeptic
- NonStampCollector
Orgs, Blogs, Zines
- Center for Inquiry
- American Atheists
- Humanists International
- Atheist Republic
- The Brights
- The Angry Atheist
- History for Atheists
- Rationalist International
- Atheist Revolution
- Debunking Christianity
- Godless Mom
- Atheist Freethinkers
Mainstream
Bibliography
Start here...
...proceed here.
- God is Not Great (Hitchens)
- The God Delusion (Dawkins)
- The End of Faith (Harris)
- Why I Am Not a Christian (Russell)
- Letter to a Christian Nation (Harris)
Proselytize Religion
From Reddit
As a community with an interest in providing the best resources to its members, the following wiki links are provided as historical reference until we can establish our own.
God will always be lurking in the imaginations of stupid people, and we will always have stupid people on this planet.
I'd be careful there. I'm guessing there are people who would call you stupid for the things you believe.
And there are plenty of very smart people who simply happen to be incorrect about their beliefs. Not even god belief things. Linus Pauling has insane beliefs about vitamin C being a panacea. Bobby Fischer believes antisemitic conspiracy theories.
Believing something silly doesn't make you stupid, just wrong.
I called myself stupid in my own post, so I have no problem with other people reaching the same conclusion.
Believing something that is wrong can make people dangerous, and I think that’s cause for concern.
True, but that still does not make them stupid. As I said, very smart people believe things that are simply wrong.
I probably should’ve used “ignorant” or “uneducated” instead of “stupid”.
What I was trying to say is that as long as people continue to have imperfect knowledge of the universe there will always be room for speculation/imagination.
We need more science education, and basic epistemology taught at every level. Not What to believe, but How and Why; and the What's follow from there.
I have a dear friend who fell down the Flat Earth rabbit hole some years ago, and only upon discussing the topic with him did I learn just how bad his science education had been all his life; and trying to get him interested in actual science proved impossible because the conspiratorial mindset was already in place alongside the "you're being lied to" defense.
Like, yeah, I personally can't detect the Cosmic Microwave Background of the Big Bang with the Observatory that's not in my back yard. But that's not proof that the scientists are lying, making up stories. Reproducibility can be a problem in science; but not with basic physical facts of the universe that have been reproduced across the continents, multiple times.
Education may not be a magic bullet, but it's definitely a fantastic tool to begin the journey towards the more rational.
Yeah, I absolutely agree. I think encouraging a scientific perspective (forming conclusions based on testing, while being open to the idea that those conclusions might change with additional testing) is incredibly important because it fosters the attitude that there are a lot of things we can’t know “for sure”, but we can be confident enough in our knowledge to take action, and humble enough to admit when we’re wrong.
You can get pretty far in life just by applying the scientific method and the golden rule.
Sorry about your friend. I hope that despite their distorted world view they’re still able to maintain healthy relationships and find/provide love and happiness, because at a personal level I think that’s the most important thing someone can achieve.
When it comes to the Christian God, that's easy.
https://biblehub.com/judges/1-19.htm
The LORD was with the men of Judah. They took possession of the hill country, but they were unable to drive the people from the plains, because they had chariots fitted with iron.
https://biblehub.com/1_kings/6-7.htm
In building the temple, only blocks dressed at the quarry were used, and no hammer, chisel or any other iron tool was heard at the temple site while it was being built.
While the Bible never says what was used to fix Jesus to the cross, tradition says it was three iron nails. There are two reasons why the account of the crucifixion is atypical of normal Roman executions: first of all, they didn't usually waste good iron nailing victims to their crosses. They tied them to the posts. Secondly, crucifixion victims normally took days to die of dehydration and suffocation, which is why the Romans did it that way. But Jesus allegedly died in hours, not days.
So clearly, Yahweh has a weakness to iron. I fear no gods I know how to kill.
He could have died quickly if soldiers were piercing his heart with the spear of Longinus.
Sure, but the text claims he was already dead by that point. So we're back to my original claim.
Eeeeeh, depending on your interpretation, the physical body Jesus died from the iron spikes, the spirit Christ did not. The passage about the iron tools seems to be more symbolizing keeping as much of the labor away from the temple as possible.
It is a fun idea to think of the Christian God as a demon, weak to iron as some folk lore describe them. Kinda fits with the Gnostic demiurge too, but that's (the demiurge) distinctly not Christ.
That's pretty weak tea, especially considering how so many Christians (but not all, I know) insist that Jesus and Yahweh are the same person, just different aspects.
I'd say it's as fair as any other approach hahah. We're talking about fairy tales essentially, so I find it a pretty compelling argument to point out the wildly disparate beliefs of actual people throughout history. Just because they've homogenized largely to this point (there are still VAST differences in even just the abrahamic religions of today, but not as much as there were during its active spread and creation) doesn't really remove that history.
Either way, not trying to punch at your original comment, just love exploring and expanding on the different beliefs of the past, particularly apocryphal ones.
Stop believing in him. End of procedure.
If I can’t seem him he can’t see me! Perfect!
Crucifixion, maybe?
They've tried that already and the results were "inconclusive" 🙄
Tale Foundry has a whole episode dedicated to this topic in fiction, and the conclusion is
conclusion
you kill a god by turning them into a joke
Interesting idea, we’ll have to see how it plays out.
I think you may have had too much fundie with your shrooms.
Anyhow, god doesn’t exist. So while god can’t be killed, there is no need to either.
Atheists are more fun to talk to because they're more concerned about having facts and truth to backup their beliefs. Whereas if I get high and troll religious people they'd just think I'm another normal Christian, lol
The God of the Christians?
Time's killing it just as it does everyone. Not only is the vile religion diminishing currently but the claimed miracles of the fabled monster are also diminishing with time.
- In true Last Thursdayism fashion they claim the universe was created by the beast six millennia ago.
- 2 millennia later he demonstrably lost, if he ever had to begin with, the traits of omniscience and omnipotence. As demonstrated by taking a rash action, regretting it, and not undoing it.
- At some point he's developed a weakness to iron as stated by spaceghoti.
- Nowadays his grand "miracles" are causing light breezes, or small amounts of rain, or stopping either... things Humans are entirely capable of doing.
As for how to accelerate the death of this monster? Take a page from the countries that have done the best at wounding it so far: Raise general quality of life, not just education, for all the people of your society. It feeds on suffering, so we should starve it out.
Arceus used judgement!
Meowth fainted!
The individual desires judgment. Without that desire, the cohesion of groups is impossible, and so is civilization.
The human being created civilization not because of a willingness but because of a need to be assimilated into higher orders of structure and meaning.
The need to be observed and understood was once satisfied by God. Now we can implement the same functionality with data-mining algorithms.
The human organism always worships. First it was the gods, then it was fame (the observation and judgment of others), next it will be the self-aware systems you have built to realize truly omnipresent observation and judgment.
God was a dream of good government.
You will soon have your God, and you will make it with your own hands.
... prophetic words, one might say.
Anyway... in the sense you are speaking of, the only way to totally kill God would be the erasure of massive amounts of human history, combined with either killing or 'reducating' billions of people, and then the institution of some kind of Orwellian totalitarianism, which must basically persist in perpetuity.
Other than something like that... its not possible to totally exorcize the idea of God or Gods from humans... we are pattern seekers, we love simple explanations, and we love stories, narratives.
It's cool how Mass Effect and Terminator could be seen as religious prophecies in some crazy future timeline.
I have literally met high schoolers who sincerely believed the Marvel movies were based on real life events, until I explained to them that no, they're based on comic books, they are entirely fictional stories.
We already live in the dumbest possible timeline.
Remember how when Idiocracy came out, the general reception was 'wow this is over the top, dude-bro moron version of the future, not worth serious discussion', ... and now a good chunk of people are looking back at it as 'well actually, a lot of this seems scarily reasonable?'
That’s wild, but I almost can’t blame some kids for their misconceptions. Stories about Captain America fighting Nazis blur “reality” in a weird way because stories can be interpreted both literally and symbolically.
Like, the idea of Captain America being a “real” bio-engineered person might not seem as crazy to a person after they learn about something like MKUltra lol
The more we advance science and technology the more plausible our fantasy worlds become. You can still differentiate through experience, but I’ll cut high schoolers some slack since they just haven’t had that experience.
From my perspective the world high schoolers are growing up in today seems even more fantastical and comicbook-like than the one I grew up in as a high schooler.
Most of the Gen A and younger Gen Z I've randomly struck up conversations with in the last year or so have had their brains thoroughly rotted by TikTok, Instagram, Twitch, Rumble, etc.
Avril Lavigne is actually a clone, or Biden is, or Kanye is,
Astrology is completely real and my magic crystals will heal your chakras,
Atlantis was totally real and actually we are all partially descended from different alien species and that's what ethnicity and race actually are,
'Insert movie here' was basically actually real and making it into a movie is the way the powers that be laugh at us,
Shadow Work isn't just a very loose and differently defined psychological practice of attempting to understand yourself better and come to grips with trauma and negative urges its left you with, its actually that you literally have a shadow demon/spirit possessing you, and if you don't exorcise it 'properly', it will magically spread to other people.
... and I can tell this because I am a naturally born empath who is 100% accurate at determining what other people are thinking and feeling even if they directly tell me otherwise, which actually means that they are narcissists....
and so on and so on.
Of course this is my anecdotal experience, but this is what is normal for me to encounter... as I and the people around me are quite poor.
i like how Mike Judge found the stupidest looking shoes he could find, from a new niche shoe company. These will never take off, he thinks; they're too hideous. So he puts everyone in crocs and chortles to himself. And then, 20 years later ...
Two options:
Stop believing in him. Per American Gods logic, gods are immortal until the very last human who knows their name dies. Anthony Hopkins Odin is going to live for a very long time.
Or
We need to quintuple scientific research until we can research the end of the known universe and pierce the dimensional barrier into the undying realms and bring our black hole cannons to bear on his kingdom. For selfish reasons I choose this option.
Put him in a headlock and just snap his neck, like Methuselah but without asking to be blessed.
Meowth was Schrodinger's Cat the whole time and we never saw it because we were too busy with "more important things".
"What could be more important than understanding life?" - Nerd
"Uhhh... Living it?" - Jock
The eternal yin and yang of the virgin and the Chad binds us together.