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.
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I definitely prefer rational, evidence-based thinking to thinking which isn't supported by evidence.
If I were to say "all religions are bad" though then I think I'd alienate some religious people who are decent. I might not agree with their religious views but if I think they're decent then I don't want to alienate them.
For example, apparently Zohran Mamdani and Sadiq Khan (the mayors of NYC and London respectively) are both Muslims. I don't agree with those views; I'm not a Muslim myself. But I still think both of those people are relatively decent, more so than some other politicians. I guess I'm more interested in whether a person is decent, than whether a person is religious.
OK but whether someone is decent or not is very subjective. It's going to vary from person to person, even between two people who otherwise have very similar worldviews. I don't know anything about Mamdani, or Sadiq Khan for that matter.
I am however concerned about religious people in positions of political power - I don't think they have any place there. I don't think it is possible to truly understand and apply critical thinking and to be genuinely religious - because of the "blind faith" problem, and also the magical thinking.
However public figures are not always honest about their religious feelings. As you said, followers of the Islamic faith in particular can be hostile towards people who have left the religion, so it would certainly affect his chances at the polls if he were to come out and admit to not believing in any of the woo-woo and the supremacism of Islam. (Just quickly want to point out that all Jewish religions are founded on woo-woo and supremacism, I'm not singling out Islam in particular. Perhaps it's true for all religions, I wouldn't be surprised but I don't know, in any case I'm just talking about Islam as that's the one you mentioned.)
I guess it is possible to consider yourself a believer of a particular religion but just not understand what that really entails. You can't believe that Mohammed was really a Jewish prophet *and* support rights for homosexuals for instance. If you call yourself a follower of Mohammed and yet say that gays should be allowed to have sexual relationships with whoever they please without feeling bad in any way, then you haven't studied your religion enough. The religion is quite clear: not only is homosexuality sinful, but homosexuals must be persecuted.
In any case, none of this changes anything about critical thinking. It is not possible to correctly practice critical thinking and be religious.
If you are religious, then giving up the religion is probably just the first step on the road towards becoming a critical thinker. However there's still a journey to make, and not every person to quit religion will ever start that journey, never mind complete it.
When I think about it, when I first quit religion, I didn't do it through critical thinking. Really it was an emotional decision, just like religious belief itself. I only arrived at my current appreciation for this process of rational thought after many years of continuing to try and understand the universe, making many wrong turns along the way.
Maybe we just have different ways of looking at it.
In terms of how Muslims view LGBT people: I mentioned that the mayor of London is a Muslim, and he has been to LGBT pride parades, so I think he's more supportive of LGBT people than a lot of non-Muslims are. So I guess it depends on the particular person. Some religious people might be anti-LGBT but other religious people are more welcoming of LGBT people.
But yes maybe we just have different ways of looking at it, which is fine I think.
well it's fine unless you're maybe still not getting it.
It's not fine to be wrong. It's not fine to have a bad way of thinking. Not in this day and age, when we are all connected and ideas can spread (and be manipulated) so widely and so easily.
If you know someone who supports gay rights and sex positivity, and they also say that they believe Mohammed was a Jewish prophet (the greatest ever Jewish prophet no less), then they are either being dishonest about one of those two things, or they are ignorant about what those two things really mean.
I don't really know who is right and who is wrong though. I don't believe in God, but maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there is a God and the religious people are correct. I just think that there are some religious people I've met, and surely others who I haven't met, who are relatively good people, and I'd like to get on well with them, even if I don't fully agree with their views. I can see why you find certain views frustrating though.
hmm so are you saying that a person who hears voices in their head might actually be talking to Spiderman, or a space alien, or an angel, or whatever it is they say they're talking to?
They could be talking to those entities. I haven't come across any convincing evidence to support the existence of angels, but maybe angels could exist. I think there's a lot about the universe we don't know.
I suppose if I were talking to a polite and friendly person who claimed to be in contact with angels, maybe I'd try to find things I might have in common with them, rather than focus on whether they're correct or not about angels existing.
well you really can go down to the local mental hospital. they deal with many people who think they have some "secret communication channel" with non-human intelligences.
you really should know this already.
some of these people will claim to talk to ghosts, for others it'll be aliens, and others again will claim they're talking to spiderman.
I am struggling to really believe you are being honest when you say you've rejected religion if you think that these people might in fact be talking to ghosts, or aliens or spiderman.
If you think such things could be real rather than simple constructions of tormented human imagination, what made you give up your religion?
I think they're probably not talking to ghosts/aliens/etc, but I can't rule it out 100%. Just like I don't believe in God, although I can't be 100% certain that God doesn't exist. So I'm an agnostic atheist I guess - I don't believe in God but I'm not 100% certain of his non-existence. Maybe God will reveal himself in the future, although I doubt it.
I've never been religious. My parents aren't religious, so religion was something our family was never into.
you keep skipping over the spiderman one. Don't think I haven't noticed lol
So I take it you don't think a mental patient might actually be talking to spiderman? Same goes for Gandalf presumably, or Yoda. What about Thor? You probably think Thor is legit because some people did once believe there was such a being, right? So what if you then found out that our mental patient was actually talking to the Marvel Thor from the movies? All of a sudden you lose interest, this guy's crazy, and definitely no longer a prophet, hmm?