r/atheism

This man is just an incredible artist. Think Guthrie, Townes Van Zant, et al.

Too many lyrics to call out but, “I need money, time and to feel free. There up there Sunday, taking all three.” is up there.

He calls out L.Ron, Christians, Buddhists, the whole lot.

If you haven’t yet been exposed to his music, enjoy your next hour/weeks of getting to know our next folk legend.

EDITED To satisfy sub/mod rules. Sorry for oversight.

I'm sure this would apply to other religions too but gonna aim it towards Christianity. Anyways, if most of them think they're going to heaven why cry and be depressed over a loved one's death? If anything they should be happy or even throw a party when a loved one is dying or has died. It's kinda almost as if they know death is the final and permanent destination in life and nothing happens after it.

God, or Yahweh as he is properly called, was originally part of a larger polytheistic pantheon that included, among other deities, Asherah (Yahweh's wife), El (who was later merged with Yahweh), and Baal. As I like to say: Monotheism is a later heresy.

Have you heard any explanations for that from Jews, Christians, or Muslims? Do most of them even know about this?

Hi everyone, longtime atheist here. Wanted to share my article on a specific biblical contradiction, if anyone's interested.

In the New Testament, Matthew and Luke both give genealogies for Jesus tracing back through David. They contradict each other, listing different fathers for Joseph, different number of generations, different names almost the whole way down. So much for the "inspired" text apparently influenced by God.

Laid them out side by side. Wrote a longer breakdown here on my atheistic/secular Substack, addressing the usual counterarguments: https://thelightward.substack.com/p/jesuss-genealogies-are-contradictory

Happy to hear everyone's thoughts on this.

I have to just get this out there but shit I can’t talk to anyone who is Christian in America anymore because they’re all like cultish. It seems like every single one I talk to acts cultish about anything politics religion fucking whatever the color of the sky is it’s insane and I truly just don’t understand why people who are much older than me have seemingly decided that there’s a magic man in the sky, but there is some like horrible horror, stories of people who are“Christian “that are like horrible like I can’t even begin to explain the horrors that Christianity has caused

Every time I see someone (atheist or ex-christian, or agnostic or whatever ) verse by verse with a believer, debating what a passage "really" means, I get the ick. "Actually Jesus never condemned homosexuality." "Actually that verse is mistranslated." "Actually the original Hebrew says—"

I don't care what it actually says. None of it happened. It's not a nuanced legal text with a correct reading waiting to be uncovered, it's a collection of Bronze and Iron Age campfire stories that got compiled, edited, and politically weaponized for a couple thousand years. Debating the "true meaning" of a passage is like debating whether Cinderella's stepsisters really deserved it. There's no true meaning. There's no meaning at all beyond what people project onto it.

When we argue interpretation, we're implicitly accepting the premise that the interpretation matters . that if we could just get the reading right, the book would have something real to say. It doesn't. The whole exercise(to me ) props up the idea that this is a text worth that level of scrutiny in the first place and feeds into their delusion that this has some sort of validity

The actual argument isn't "you're misreading it." It's "none of this is true, so what it says is irrelevant."

This seems like an encouraging sign of the times to me. The ceremony was a civil, non-denominational event held at Madison Square Garden. Adam Sandler officiated the marriage ceremony. The ceremony did not follow traditional religious rites and served purely as a celebrity civil marriage ceremony and celebration.
Nobody seems to be talking about this aspect of the marriage ceremony, nobody seems to care that it was secular, which gives me further encouragement.

My oldest is on the cusp of 10 and is being raised in a church household. We've gotten past the idea that telling me that his step mom and I are going to hell is rude and not nice but it took time. I have been trying to teach him what being a skeptic means, to be skeptical, without going in on him over church so we've been going over different debate fallacies like bandwagon/peer pressure, ad hominem, etc. with the goal of starting to debate each other this week on prepared topics. Tonight we're going to go over the structure of a debate and then have the debate itself. Nothing difficult. Should you be allowed to bring pets to school? Age applicable topics and then reverse them so that he debates it from both sides. Its been difficult to get him to focus because of his age but its slowly starting to stick.

Is there a better way? We teach respect in my house for all beliefs. Some of his beliefs because of the baptist church he is in (not baptism in particular but from what I can sense from this church) are just blatantly inflammatory. His mother would not be receptive. It was one of the failing points of our relationship. I started off going to church with her but it only took a little bit of travel in the military to understand how wrong religion is as a concept. At this point I am agnostic because not only do I not care, I don't know either way.

So, a house in the next town was struck by lightning and set on fire. Nearly everyone on Facebook thanked god that the people in the house got out safely. None questioned if god was the cause. He just stepped in just in time to help, I guess. I will never understand the cognitive dissonance of the religious.

About a year ago, I’ve realized I am an atheist. Since that realization, I’ve been “acting” like I still believe in and follow the Christian god. My family, to my understanding, are all Christian (unless there’s someone in my same exact situation). I want to let this huge weight off my chest since I’m tired of going to church and having to partake in religious activities. I want to come out in a way that isn’t way too casual like “yo mom I don’t believe in god anymore” but I don’t know how or what I should say or do to come out to them. Any help is really appreciated.

It's been very hard for me to stop hating on them because part of me views them as being a dangerous influence on others. And that part of me feels so strongly about this, that every time they try to spread the gospel or tell someone about Jesus, I want to confront them about it. I want to tell them to stop giving people false hope, to stop setting them up to be disappointed, and most of all, to stop lying to them. They try to convince people that God and Jesus can solve all their problems no matter how bad it is. But if or when it doesn't happen, then they move the goal post. Then they start saying things like 'Oh just keep at it. It'll happen soon, we swear.' Or if something bad happened that was especially egregious they might start saying things like this. 'What? you thought the all powerful God we serve was actually supposed to intervene. Do you know what happened to Job? Don't you know that Christians are supposed to suffer. Don't you know that he left Israel to be enslaved for 400 years and that's just something they had to go through? How dare you actually believe the snake oil we're peddling here and actually expect God to answer your prayers. God can do whatever he wants. He is and will forever be all good.'

There's also the black and white thinking they constantly engage in. That there are no other valid methods of spirituality except Christianity and all others are of the devil. Or if you have a problem, and nothing else is working, to hear them say that Jesus is the only way! I think that one might bug me more than the rest, because I gave him a chance before and nothing happened. I just don't want anyone else to be as disappointed as I was I guess. Especially because you have to submit to all of their dogmatic rules, but so many people like myself just won't receive any real benefit. And then all the cognitive dissonance that comes from science disproving a literal interpretation of the Bible. It's nothing but downsides, but I digress. So has anyone else gone through this? Has anyone else been able to stop hating Christian fundamentalists?

Every time I find myself in an argument against abortion, I suddenly find a lot of atheists who happen to be against abortion.

I don't believe these people.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10660191/

The earliest theory of consciousness forming is the third trimester, long after any legal abortions take place.

Apparently that doesn't matter to these secular anti-abortionists.

It's just the fact that it's life somehow, but that idea is connected to belief.

How can it be seen as unethical to abort something incapable of thinking, feeling, or experiencing?

I think that all anti-abortion arguments boils down to belief or control. And any arguments otherwise, are simply excuses to pass fascist laws.

I really don't think this is a spoiler, but in the movie, there is (or at least what I thought was) a hyper-rational project leader/scientist who is leading a massive scientific/ technological effort. Late in the movie, she basically pulls a pascal's wager stating that she believes in God because it's "better than the alternative".

So dumb and hilariously for me, as someone who works in similar fields, this was the largest suspension of disbelief for me, despite the many other aspects of the movie...

Just felt like it was super unnecessary and, given the changes/removals from the book, the god discussion could have been replaced with so many better uses of that time.

It seems like the problem of evil is a major argument against the omni-Christian God.

However, Christians often argue that humans have a "blind-spot" perspective—much like a toddler who thinks a doctor giving them a painful vaccine is being evil.

What is the atheist counter-argument to this?