r/atheism

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.

i see a lot of people on here being scared of death. why? literally why? death is simply one of our purposes. it’s just the end of an amazing book you’ve lived your whole life to write. i have become so at peace with my mortality. it used to scare me shitless when i was younger. i’ve heard enough near death experience stories to know that when you go, it feels so peaceful. nothing you could’ve ever grasped while you were alive. personally, i think it’s such a beautiful phenomenon and i truly hope the fundamentals of it never gets figured out.

I’m married to a practicing Hindu man. We’ve been together nearly a decade. We sometimes debate about religion but we both try to respect each other’s beliefs. I find it hard sometimes because he is Indian (originally from India, been in the states for like 13 years) and Hinduism is so intertwined with Indian culture, it’s basically inseparable. Example: a lot of music has Hindu undertones, many of their national holidays are Hindu based, greetings (like namaste) come from Hinduism (though most people will just say hi or bye now.) We had a secular wedding in the states and a Hindu wedding in India a month later.

After our son was born, we did some religious rituals for him. My astrology isn’t correctly placed so I had to be prayed over before our Hindu wedding. Like damn, why is this so complicated? But I love him so it’s whatever.

It’s hard to rationalize that one of the most interesting and intelligent men I know, believes in religion. Even one as old and as interesting as Hinduism.

But he’s basically all the accepted that I believe when we die nothing happens and that’s it. He always jokes that he’ll see me in our next life and let me know I was wrong. 😑 which is cute, I guess.

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.

Also, can’t their supposedly all-powerful, all-knowing god just stop “Satan” from making them question?

It could really just be the atheist that lives in all of them talking

The doubt they experience is a result of their sub’s conscious recognizing the logical inconsistencies of their religion but refusing to acknowledge them

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

I think I'm an agnostic atheist I don't believe in god and who knows there's no proof of it I used to be confused and feel forced to believe in god and there's no hell and heaven you die that's it that's why I stopped believing in god. Let me guys know what you think or opinion

I need to learn more about agnostic/atheist thank you!

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.

I used to constantly see Christian videos of people making others feel guilty for playing the popular videogames or watching the newest movies. They’d be like, Hollywood is demonic! It’s entertainment distracting you and taking you away from God! Or they’d be like videogames are violent and crazy! I would see this all the time lol and it’s actually insane. We’re lucky people like that aren’t currently trying to attack game releases like GTA 6 😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣. I used to hear them say the show Naruto is demonic because Naruto has an inner demon lol. Crazy stuff…

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.