atheism

Note: This post is based on a Youtube video I came across.

Jordan Peterson is famous for his nauseating use of words in religious discussions, words that gives no meaning to the argument/discourse, and in the video, it is no different. He make a claim [in the video], "There is no good argument for Atheism". Why? you may ask. His follow-up response is: "I think is based on a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of the world", and then proceeds to say, "It (Argument for atheism) is an illegal chess move"

Ok, what the actual fuck? "There is no good argument for Atheism, because I think Atheism is based on a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of the world" Atheism is the lack of believe in a god or deity, what does not believing in a god (due to the fact that there isn't any incorrigible proof), have to do with understanding (or misunderstanding) the nature of the world???????

There are more obscure responses in the video, but I'll stop here to avoid a lengthy post.

He is one of the many reasons I believe religion will fade into nothingness. No effort to prove (as many religious apologetics do), just word salad, and self-serving bs.

I expected it but it still disgusts me. Spreading the word about it and Christians getting excited at the idea of having their religion in power

Here’s the in-law’s family text message that got sent out yesterday (June 1st) in recognition of Pride Month.

“As our world celebrates pride (one of the 7 deadly sins) in June, know that the Church honors the Sacred Heart of Jesus for the month of June. The Feast Day is this Friday. Let's keep in mind what real love is and pray for those who don't know. If any of you would like a small 5x7 print of the Sacred Heart for your home I have some that I will put in frames for you just let me know. Love you all ❤️”

I can’t wait to reply with a photo of me and my partner at the Boston Pride parade next weekend. They hate how I’ve “indoctrinated and corrupted” their child.

The death of Christopher Hitchens was a huge tragedy, especially given the way he spoke about topics that are as relevant today as ever before.

What do you think he would have said about the current situation in Gaza?

I recently listened to a C-SPAN interview with him where he stated it’s appropriate to speculate what a departed philosopher, in that case they were talking about George Orwell, would have thought if they theoretically could have survived to the present moment. If cancer hadn’t taken him he would be 75 today.

Therefore I assume he would have found it just fine for us to speculate what he would say about the world today, based off his many books, interviews and debates.

Many Christians cite the Buddhist text "Sutrapridot", in which they claim that the Buddha prophesied Jesus. You can read a part of it below:

"“He is the Lord of Mercies. His name shall be called King of Kings, the Lord of Lords. He is all knowing, all wise. He knows all that is in the human heart. He is Lord of all the angels and of all humans. No one is greater than He” (Sutrapridot 3:107)."

OK, that sounds interesting, actually. The only problem is that there's no Buddhist text or chapter of a book called "Sutrapridot". It doesn't exist and this fragment is completely made up.

And that just shows that Christians often will just cherry pick and go against their own values they claim to stand for t if it promotes the agenda they want politically or socially.

What happened to "thou shall not have any gods before me?" The evangelical and fundamentalist right unapologetically makes an idol out of this god awful man. They idealize him similar to a messiah kind of character who will "save america" (and by save america they mean undo the progress we made regarding women's rights, lgbt rights, ect...freedom in general and basically turn all of America to the fascist hellhole that has already been tested out on Florida).

And you know what, at this point, I don't even bother arguing with her or any of my far-gone family members about this shit anymore. There's no point. It just makes tensions worse. People who are truly willing to be enlightened to understand the truth will find it. But I just needed a place to write out my thoughts about this prevalent irony.

So I grew up Catholic and went to mass every Sunday (ofc forced by my mother) and listened to the priests and such. They used to read a lot of the verses of the Bible and such, but I myself never got to read the old or new testament.

Anyways, these dumbass MAGAs think they're Christians... well, I would suggest this for all of us atheists that hate these dumb shits: let's read the Bible, arm ourselves with knowledge of the book and slap them with verses to own them. I am sick and tired of these dumb fucks savagely defending orange turd like he's a good representative of Christianity. That asshole is the COMPLETE opposite of the "better" teachings. He is literally everything Jesus faught against.

So I will go to my local library and arming myself with the Bible. If I learned something good from the movie Dune 2 is that religion is fucking powerful and it's true in our own society. I will spew bullshit from the book to control and win battles over the swine that the MAGAs are.

One major example, Jesus was a socialist. Yet these dumb fucks pretend Jesus would be a gun toting capitalist. Here are a few verses of the socialist Jesus:

Isaiah 29:19 The meek shall obtain fresh joy in the Lord, and the poor among mankind shall exult in the Holy One of Israel.

Isaiah 41:17 When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue is parched with thirst, I the Lord will answer them; I the God of Israel will not forsake them.

Matthew 5:3 Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Mark 10:21 And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”

Social media is (not) shockingly a dump. And when pride month begins, it's no different. The amount of "Christians" who suddenly show up to give every company/sports league shit for changing their profile picture/logo is ridiculous. You never hear these people say it when Memorial Day happens or Veteran's Day happens, those are the good things to post about for them. It's just so hypocritical.

All the Bible verses these losers post, and yet the ignore the Bible verses that say let someone without sin be the first to judge. It's actually insane how religion is just a platform to hate those in the LGBTQ community without much pushback. Those asshats are the reason pride month exists.

And I know not all Christians are hateful losers, but why would you still choose to be in some religion that has a strong majority of hateful bigots. Makes no sense.

Happy pride month to everyone, don't let anyone tell you pride month is bad or anything!

“They devoted the city to the Lord and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys.” Joshua 6:21

Very humane indeed

I think that there is a lot of misconceptions when it comes to what it means to be a modern day atheist, but the one that bothers me most of all is the lack of nuance of the spectrum of Atheism

A lot of people commonly associate it with the belief that a god does not exist. While that's not entirely false, I feel like there is a wider spectrum to be talked about. Merriam Webster classifies atheism as "a lack of belief or a strong disbelief in the existence of a god or any gods". I think that even though this is the textbook definition, there is some nuance we could add to it. There are a lot of people on this subreddit that don't denounce the existence of a god/gods but simply refuse to put their faith in them.

And to address this, I feel like we also need to address the difference in what it means to believe and what it means to have faith. Belief is something we accept to be true while faith requires us to put our alliance and trust. Not having faith in a God is where I currently stand, but it feels weird to call myself an Atheist because of the lack of nuance that lies in Atheism. I am aware that there is a spectrum that people use for Atheism, but a lot of that still addresses the idea of not believing in a god/gods, not the idea of not having faith in any.

Perhaps it requires a new category and doesn't even belong in atheism, but I only bring up the topic that it should be more nuance because of the amount of people like me choosing to call themselves atheist, when the textbook definition states that there actually isn't a spot where their belief is represented.

I have been wondering if anybody else has any opinions on this, since I might plan to do an essay topic about this for a competition. Before I start writing though, I want to make sure I have perspectives beyond myself and to know if there is something I am just not seeing.

Anyways, those are my current thoughts on atheism. There are more misconceptions that bother me that I simply didn't get around to talking about, like how people believe that atheist have a strong belief in science, that atheist hate religious people, and etc. What are misconceptions that bother you?

I had a high school friend who got into commercial real estate along with oil and gas. He ended up moving to Oklahoma from a liberal college town in the Midwest. I asked him when did he start attending church and his reply was simple it had nothing to do with religious convictions but rather to network, do business, and not be treated like an outsider. He remains an atheist but is in church every Sunday.

“If I need him, then why hasn’t he come to help me?”

Edit: Y’all, it was just a random thought at the time I thought was big brain comeback😭I know it’s better to walk away

When going through Greek and Norse mythology and other religions, I notice that while these Gods and deities do things such as smite and punish mortals, most of them are better than Yahweh. Firstly, from a mythological perspective, they're much more interesting than Biblical stories. Second, since they're not all powerful and all knowing, there's not as many "contradictions" compared to the Biblical God. And thirdly with polytheistic Gods and deities, they aren't perfect. They mess up and make mistakes all the time, and how many times has Zeus sleep with mortal women?

Also, with the example of Prometheus giving fire to humanity, rather than punishing the mortal humans, Zeus and the other Gods punished Prometheus. I mean, it's still dumb that Prometheus got punished because he didn't do anything wrong as he wanted to help humanity, but it was Prometheus who got punished and not humanity.

Of course, all religion is fiction/mythology and these Gods still do terrible things, but no one can beat Yahweh when it comes to war crimes and autrocities. And while I'm not the most knowledgable with Greek mythology, with my limited understanding, the Greek gods seem much better than Yahweh.

To protect my identity, I’m going to be a little vague with my job details. Both my coworker (therapist) and I (also therapist) are licensed mental health professionals who do group therapy in the US. I apologize in advance for any typos (on my phone).

My coworker used to be a Catholic priest for 10-15 years. One of the ideas he espouses in group therapy with his clients is the power of positive thinking. Upon hearing this, I was delighted because practicing positive thinking can be beneficial to many people. But then I learned that his positive thinking is not based in psychology (or any evidence for that matter) but rather some form of magical thinking, which I suspect relates to his history as a priest—but possibly not.

His version of positive thinking is that positive thoughts send out some sort of particle (he calls them “vibrations”) that affect our environment without influencing our behavior. This is what I have a problem with. He teaches that simply having a negative thought sends out vibrations that can promote sickness in others, kill house plants, make food start to rot, etc. He’s even said that positive thinking with help food stay fresh longer. Now, if he were saying that having chronic negative thinking has some connection to depression or something, which can lead to a deficit in health behaviors that somehow causes negative effects on one’s environment, that’s different. By that I mean not watering plants because “What’s the point? It’s just going to die anyway.” But no, he believes that negative thoughts, independent of our behavior, cause “negative things” to happen.

The reason I even being this up is because one group member was talking about their OCD with me and how they are afraid that their mother will become sick and die because they are having horrific negative intrusive thoughts about her. This way of thinking is common in OCD. This persons OCD is the root of why they need treatment in the first place. Anyway, I told them that thoughts by themselves cannot make someone else sick and that such information would likely be shared with them if they were to go to an individual therapist who specializes in OCD. Well, they said that’s what they used to believe until my therapist coworker told them that thoughts themselves can affect reality independent of their influence of our behavior, so effectively, my coworker made this persons mental illness worse. Their anxiety was amplified by their newfound knowledge that they indeed could make their mom sick and die just from their thoughts.

I went to my supervisor, and they said that that was just my coworker’s approach and need to respect how spirituality informs his practice. I’ve run through ways I could intervene in him doing this, but I don’t see any of those interventions actually resulting in him no longer teaching that. Will it harm most people? Probably not, but he’s literally teaching a cognitive distortion (thinking error) that has the ability to harm certain people. So I’ve come here to vent. Let me know what you think. Thanks.

"All" is not an acceptable answer.

Interested to hear your thoughts. Goooooo!

How can I say to my parents that I'm an atheist, and now i can't believe in Allah. I've got a lot of arguments that I can say to them, but I need most poweful arguments. I was praying(doing namaz) for 3 years since 2021, now I'm just pretending. (Sorry for my bad english, its my third language)

I moved to the west coast from Indiana, definitely one of the top 4 reasons I moved was to get away from the crazy conspiratorial Jesus-trumpers that surrounded my house in Indiana.

Just had the missfortion of meeting a new neighbor, and I need to vent.

My dog ran off so I went to get him and met my neighbor 2 houses down. We start shooting the shit. Seems like a cool older dude, until he starts bragging excesively about his career and all the cool shit he did when he was younger (red flag number 1). It gets a little uncomfortable because he starts sounding like a little brat bragging about himself for far too long than is socially acceptable, but I smile and nod because this guy is my neighbor and I know from experience that its best to be respectful to these people.

Suddenly he starts talking about religion. Oh gawd. And I am just trying to be as respectful as I can and try to endure, think of an excuse to get away, but the guy wont. stop. talking. at a hundred miles an hour about his limited worldview. I have 0 chance to butt in and Its clear he cant function until he has vomited his religious opinions all over me and gotten it out of his system. I listen patiently.... but too much time passes and now I am feeling sick, like physically sick listening to his complete BS. I start getting a headache, start figiting, my heart starts racing, my vision starts getting blurry and thats when I start realizing I CANNOT take much more of this anti-intellectual bullshit. (Its science that got us this far, not the worship of a homophobic violent biggoted god)

Meanwhile, this guy keeps blabbing about his bizzare worldview. He is waiting for the ressurection which was bound to happen soon and then his wife was going to get ressurected, and then they would live together in Jesus`s kingdom in the same house they live in now. He was going to be milions and millions of years old someday and cheat death because of the rapture. And he would also get to see his wife again because of gods plan for him.

I gave they guy a look like he was completely nuts. He deserved it, you cant go up to strangers and tell them things like this. I try to be respectful but this guy was getting to me.

Then he asked me `Do you know about the bible`? ........ After all the shit I had to endure with my family falling into Trumpism and conviniently forgetting about half the bible just to justify their biggoted views and choosing only the parts that fit into their worldview? No thank you!

So I told him that something happened between me and the church and I just didnt want to talk about religion anymore. He starts apologizing but doesnt really stop, and instead starts pivoting to `Well what happened`?

Dude.... how dumb can you be? Jesus mustve really rotted the poor guys brain, he seemed so sad and lonely and empassioned as he told me his resurrection story/plans, I was actually starting to feel really sorry for the guy, but now he was just being rude.

I just gave him a stare like `bro, are you being serious right now??`. He paused, and then he asked me if I was molested. Just point blank asked it. Doesnt look good for christianity if thats the first thing people assume when you tell them you do not want to talk religion.

I pause and thout about it. Was I physically molested? No. But when I think of all the naive guillible christian teachings that destroyed the first half of my life and made me miserable, that I had no power to stop because of all the heavy indoctrination I recieved, I found that I could not refute the guy and instead just paused as I recollected my extreme hatred for what christianity has done to the world.

He seemed to take the long mental pause as an affirmation, and honestly, the idea of getting him to just stop talking to me seemed like bliss. So I did not bother correcting him.

Then he started pittying me! It was so surreal, this guy was so incompetent and the encounter was so unpleasent, even he seemed like he wanted to go, which was good because a few more seconds of his rambling and I would have gotten nasty probably. next time I meet the guy I am not going to be afraid to tell him back the fuck off if he talks religion because he doesnt know boundries. These days you shouldnt just start off talking about religion to people you do not know, but I suppose I cant expect any critical thinking from someone as mentally restricted as that guy was.

For context i (22m) ex christian now an atheist. One of the many reasons that helped me realize that i’m an atheist is the bible.

Anywasy we were debating and he literally told me

“ you’re an atheist because you didn’t understand the bible. I’m convinced that either you’re a christian because you understand the bible or you’re an atheist because you didn’t.”

Like what?? That doesn’t make any fucking sense. It’s precisely because i read the bible as it is that i came to such conclusion.

Anyways, at that point i realized that it was useless to debate with christians over anything

It hurts so bad. We were best friends since childhood and because I was an only child with no family in the United States her friendship meant so much to me. For background I grew up in an Independent Fundamental Baptist (IFB) church. The environment for me as a Black girl was terrible. Absolutely terrible. I would hear racist jokes and slurs every day but the only friend that I had through that whole experience was her. Since she isn't Black, she was able to fit in the IFB world and she still has friends in that world today.

Yesterday we had brunch and I mentioned that she doesn't initiate our hangouts and I felt like the friendship has been one sided for a while. She assured me that she had not been initiating since she had so much going on in her life. This was mentioned after things got a little awkward during the brunch since I was not really talking all that much. What also triggered me during the brunch was that she had mentioned that was going to the wedding of a person who had said a lot of racist things to me growing up and as much as I didn't want it to hurt me it did hurt that she is still friends with people that gave me so much grief.

I mentioned this during our brunch and of course told her that I am by no means saying who she should be friends with but of course it still hurt that she was friends with these people. I felt so much sadness during our brunch since I had a foreboding feeling that our friendship was done. I couldn't bounce back from that sadness and the brunch could not be saved. I texted her to apologize and I told her that I hoped that we could still be friends as I thought that based off of what she said that she cared about our friendship and this was all a big miscommunication.

However, today she texts me back saying that she has thought about everything and that there actually is a big disconnect between us due to our differences (aka my unbelief) and she ended it with there's no point holding on to something that isn't there.

I am honestly so heart broken and I feel so hurt as I really loved her a lot. I feel rejected and honestly kind of worthless that someone doesn't care to continue a friendship with me. It really just sucks and I wanted to share this with you all.

Allow me to address an argument you will hear from theists all the time, and as a historian I find it somewhat irritating, as it accidentally or deliberately misrepresents historical consensus. The argument is about the historicity of Jesus.

As a response to various statements, referencing the lack of any contemporary evidence the Jesus existed at all, you will inevitably see some form of this theist argument:

“Pretty much every historian agrees that Jesus existed.”

I hate this statement, because while it is technically true, it is entirely misleading.

Before I go into the points, let me just clarify: I, like most historians, believe a man Yeshua, or an amalgam of men one named Yeshua, upon whom the Jesus tales are based, did likely exist. I am not arguing that he didn't, I'm just clarifying the scholarship on the subject. Nor am I speaking to his miracles and magic powers, nor his divine parentage: only to his existence at all.

Firstly, there is absolutely no contemporary historical evidence that Jesus ever existed. We have not a single testimony in the bible from anyone who ever met him or saw his works. There isn't a single eyewitness who wrote about meeting him or witnessing the events of his life, not one. The first mention of Jesus in the historical record is Josephus and Tacitus, who you all are probably familiar with. Both are almost a century later, and both arguably testify to the existence of Christians more than they do the truth of their belief system. Josphus, for example, also wrote at length about the Roman gods, and no Christian uses Josephus as evidence the Roman gods existed.

So apart from those two, long after, we have no contemporary references in the historical account of Jesus whatsoever.

But despite this, it is true that the overwhelming majority of historians of the period agree that a man Jesus probably existed. Why is that?

Note that there is signifiant historical consensus that Jesus PROBABLY existed, which is a subtle but significant difference from historical consensus that he DID exist. That is because no historian will take an absolute stance considering the aforementioned lack of any contemporary evidence.

So, why do Historians almost uniformly say Jesus probably existed if there is no contemporary evidence?

Please note the response ‘but none of these prove Jesus existed’ shows everyone you have not read a word of what I said above.

So, what are the main arguments?

1: It’s is an unremarkable claim. Essentially the Jesus claim states that there was a wandering Jewish preacher or rabbi walking the area and making speeches. We know from the historical record this was commonplace. If Jesus was a wandering Jewish rebel/preacher, then he was one of Many (Simon of Peraea, Athronges, Simon ben Koseba, Dositheos the Samaritan, among others). We do have references and mentions in the Roman records to other wandering preachers and doomsayers, they were pretty common at the time and place. So claiming there was one with the name Yeshua, a reasonably common name, is hardly unusual or remarkable. So there is no reason to presume it’s not true.

2: There is textual evidence in the Bible that it is based on a real person. Ironically, it is Christopher Hitchens who best made this old argument (Despite being a loud anti-theist, he stated there almost certainly was a man Jesus). The Bible refers to Jesus constantly and consistently as a carpenter from Galilee, in particular in the two books which were written first. Then there is the birth fable, likely inserted into the text afterwards. Why do we say this? Firstly, none of the events in the birth fable are ever referred to or mentioned again in the two gospels in which they are found. Common evidence of post-writing addition. Also, the birth fable contains a great concentration of historical errors: the Quirinius/Herod contradiction, the falsity of the mass census, the falsity of the claim that Roman census required people to return to their homeland, all known to be false. That density of clear historical errors is not found elsewhere in the bible, further evidence it was invented after the fact. it was invented to take a Galilean carpenter and try and shoehorn him retroactively into the Messiah story: making him actually born in Bethlehem.

None of this forgery would have been necessary if the character of Jesus were a complete invention they could have written him to be an easy for with the Messiah prophecies. This awkward addition is evidence that there was an attempt to make a real person with a real story retroactively fit the myth.

3: Historians know that character myths usually begin with a real person. Almost every ancient myth historians have been able to trace to their origins always end up with a real person, about whom fantastic stories were since spun (sometime starting with the person themselves spreading those stories). It is the same reason that Historians assume there really was a famous Greek warrior(s) upon whom Achilles and Ajax were based. Stories and myths almost always form around a core event or person, it is exceedingly rare for them to be entirely made up out of nothing. But we also know those stories take on a life of their own, that it is common for stories about one myth to be (accidentally or deliberately) ascribed to a new and different person, we know stories about multiple people can be combined, details changed and altered for political reasons or just through the vague rise of oral history. We know men who carried these stories and oral history drew their living from entertainment, and so it was in their best interest to embellish, and tell a new, more exciting version if the audience had already heard the old version. Stories were also altered and personalised, and frequently combined so versions could be traced back to certain tellers.

4: We don't know much about the early critics of Christianity because they were mostly deliberately erased. Celsus, for example, we know was an early critic of the faith, but we only know some of his comments through a Christian rebuttal. Clesus is the one who published that Mary was not pregnant of a virgin, but of a Syrian soldier stationed there at the time. This claim was later bolstered by the discovery of the tomb of a soldier of the same name, who WAS stationed in that area. Celsus also claimed that there were only five original disciples, not twelve, and that every single one of them recanted their claims about Jesus under torment and threat of death. However, what we can see is that while early critics attacked many elements of the faith and the associated stories, none seem to have believed Jesus didn't exist. It seems an obvious point of attack if there had been any doubt at the time. Again, not conclusive, but if even the very early critics believed Jesus had been real, then it adds yet more to the credibility of the claim.

So these are the reasons historians almost universally believe there was a Jewish preacher by the name of Yeshua wandering Palestine at the time, despite the absolute lack of any contemporary evidence for his existence.

Lastly, as an aside, there is the 'Socrates problem'. This is frequently badly misstated, but the Socrates problem is a rebuttal to the statement that there is no contemporary evidence Jesus existed at all, and that is that there is also no contemporary evidence Socrates ever existed. That is partially true. We DO have some contemporaries of Socrates writing about him, which is far bnetter evidence than we have for Jesus, but little else, and those contemporaries differ on some details. It is true there is very little contemporary evidence Socrates existed, as his writings are all transcriptions of other authors passing on his works as oral tales, and contain divergences - just as we expect they would.

The POINT of the Socrates problem is that there isnt much contemporary evidence for numerous historical figures, and people still believe they existed.

This argument is frequently badly misstated by thesists who falsely claim: there is more evidence for Jesus than Alexander the Great (extremely false), or there is more evidence for Jesus than Julius Caesar (spectacularly and laughably false).

But though many theists mess up the argument in such ways, the foundational point remains: absence of evidence of an ancient figure is not evidence of absence.

But please, thesis and atheists, be aware of the scholarship when you make your claims about the Historicity of Jesus. Because this board and others are littered with falsehoods on the topic.