I answer honestly and say no, I do not believe in any gods. Technically by definition that makes me an atheist and I am more than happy to accept that label, but by all means use whatever word you want it is the lack of belief that matters not which term you use to describe it.

There is very little extrabiblical evidence that he ever even existed and absolutely nothing outside of the stories in the gospels themselves suggesting a resurrection.

Josephus has one passing reference to "James the brother of Jesus" But since the actual name was Yeshua, the equivalent of modern name Joshua, saying there was a person named James who had a brother named Josh is not necessarily the most compelling argument.

All Tacitus had to say about it is that there are a group of people calling themselves Christians who believed in a story about a character called Christos who was executed by crucifixion. So that is not evidence that Jesus existed, just that there were people claiming he did.

There is also one bit of archaeological evidence in that there is an inscription of the name Yeshua bar Yosef which people assume refers to Jesus. But Joshua and Joseph were common names, so it does not necessarily refer to a biblical Jesus.

It depends on whether or not you believe in any gods. If you believe that one or more gods exist that makes you a theist, otherwise you are an atheist.

You can be irreligious and still believe in a god, you can be Catholic and still not interested in going to church. There are plenty of people who believe in a god and only go to church on holidays or sometimes not even that frequently. Catholics would probably refer to you as a "lapsed Catholic."

If courtrooms that are formal enough to have you place your hand on a bible you have the option of choosing any book you want. So Jews can swear on the Torah, Muslims on the Qur'an, etc... For secular and irreligious people one of the more popular ones seems to be swearing on a copy of the Constitution (assuming you mean a US courtroom of course).

But you also don't even have to swear. Some religions prohibit swearing an oath, so there has already been a statute in place in which one can solemnly affirm their intention to tell the truth.

Define "alien."

Most people when they use that term are thinking about the Hollywood view of aliens. Intelligent extraterrestrials which are capable of interstellar travel and come to interact with humans on Earth.

No, I most definitely do not believe in that type of alien.

Humans account for roughly 0.01% of all life on Earth, and 2.5% if we only consider animals. So intelligence most certainly does not appear to be the norm. The most common lifeforms of the planet are single celled bacteria and archae. So I imagine if we ever do encounter and prove the existence of an extraterrestrial life form it would likely be rather similar to a bacterium.

Yes, that would be atheism. Atheism is "not theism." Theists do believe in one or more gods, atheists do not believe in any gods. So your example of a person who does not believe in any gods because they were never taught to believe in gods and did not grow up in a culture which believed in gods is an atheist. Also based on your description of yourself you appear to also not believe in any gods and thus are also an atheist.

"Just this once, everybody lives!" - The Doctor Dances

Oh wait, no, that is my favourite Doctor Who quote... I don't memorize bible passages and am unable to point out any by chapter and verse, so I will just go ahead and look up one that sounds good:

Luke 11:52

“How horrible it will be for you experts in Moses’ Teachings! You have taken away the key that unlocks knowledge. You haven’t gained entrance into knowledge yourselves, and you’ve kept out those who wanted to enter.”

Yeshua chastising people for being gatekeepers of knowledge. Berating them for saying only their interpretation is the correct one and everybody must believe as they believe. Calling them out for hiding the knowledge and keeping it to themselves rather than letter the common man examine it themselves. And of course pointing out that they gave up seeking knowledge and instead just rely on the interpretation they were told to believe.

I couldn't stand the show... its like a stereotypical portrayal of how high school jocks view intelligent geeks.

No, the only way to "become an atheist" is if you do not believe in any gods. If you believe in the Holy Spirit and that it is a thing which you can blaspheme against then most likely that means you also believe that Yahweh and Yeshua are real. If that is the case, then no you are not an atheist.

You literally stated the primary reason Pascal's Wager doesn't work... "Everyone risks having the wrong religion." Everybody includes Pascal himself.

Pascal's Wager assumes a false dichotomy where the only two options are that Yahweh exists or that no gods exist. But there have been thousands of gods claimed throughout history, some of which are still believed today. For Pascal's Wager to be valid you would have to also take the safe bet in believing that Zeus, Thor, Ahura Mazda, Vishnu, etc.. exist, because "What if you're wrong?!" And I personally think that a god would be even more upset with anybody who is worshiping the wrong god than they would be with anybody who just doesn't believe in any.

But even if Yahweh exists you still have the problem of who is right about it... Jews, Christians, and Muslims all believe in him but all think the others are blasphemous and teaching incorrect things about him. Even withing Christianity there is no agreement... obviously this is a Catholic subreddit, so we know which denomination you choose, but amongst Christianity as a whole people can't even agree whether Yeshua was divine or mortal, whether he was always divine or just adopted by Yahweh thus becoming divine, and whether he is a unique figure or just a manifestation of the one true god. So which version of Yahweh/Yeshua is right? What if you picked the wrong one?

And of course the different denominations don't even agree on their concepts of the afterlife. Some teach that everybody gets into heaven, because a loving god would accept all of his children. Some teach that anybody who is good gets into heaven, it doesn't matter if you are atheist or Christian or some other religion as long as you live a good life you are rewarded. And even amongst the ones who believe that non-Christians are not allowed into heaven, some of them don't believe that hell is a place or torment but rather just a separation from the holy presence. The oldest biblical traditions used the terms Sheol and Hades, which was much different than the modern understand of hell, it was the underworld a place of silence and darkness where the dead resided rather than the fire and brimstone we got from Dante and Milton.

So why make a choice when we don't know which god could be real? You can't really believe in them all, especially since some of them describe themselves as being jealous and that worshiping other gods is a sin. So why risk making some potential god angry by accidentally picking the wrong one? Why worry about the afterlife at all if we don't even know which if any type of afterlife exists?

I have never heard anybody claim Joseph was 90, that would have been quite unlikely as that is old even by today's standards and average life expectancy was much lower back then. The general consensus is middle aged, so considering life expectancy at the time probably in his 30s. I found this on the wiki for Joseph, "In the original Greek the words used to describe Joseph describe him as middle-aged. This fits with Joseph's duties and aligns with the saints who said he was 33 when he married Mary."

Although in looking on Google I did find the source of the 90 year claim...

"The History of Joseph the Carpenter, which was composed in Egypt between the 6th and 7th centuries, Christ himself tells the story of his step-father, claiming Joseph was 90 years old when he married Mary and died at 111."

The blurb about it says that this was made to explain how Mary was able to remain a perpetual virgin, since obviously she could not consummate her marriage with such an old man... this source also states that Mary was 12 when they were betrothed and 14 1/2 when they got married (meaning Jesus was born some time in between the betrothal and the marriage).

I have heard that the general consensus is that Mary was young, somewhere from 12 to 14, because that was what was normal in the culture at the time. It was standard practice to get betrothed at around the age of 12 and then married after your first menses. Some people of course experience this earlier and others later, but since the point of marriage was procreation the age a woman got married was when she was old enough to birth children. And if she had Jesus then she was obviously of age to conceive a child. But her age is never stated in canonical sources, only in apocryphal texts and speculations from some of the early church fathers.

I agree, some atheist do not want there to be any deities. But quite a lot of atheists desperately wish there was and spent years of their life trying to convince themselves that their religion was right until they came to the conclusion that they could no longer believe. And then of course there are those of us who just don't really care one way or the other and would rather just go about our lives.

I was actually just learning about some of the different versions the other day and I found one that described it as being written with the intent of ease of reading. Bonus: it includes the Apocrypha if you want to read the additional books that Catholics include in their cannon.

The Common English Bible

"It's an ambitious new translation designed to read smoothly and naturally without compromising the accuracy of the Bible text. A key goal of the translation team is to make the Bible accessible to a broad range of people; it's written at a comfortable level for nearly all English readers."

Although I personally prefer translations that are more literal to show me the exact word used in the original languages, and I rather enjoy the Names of God Bible as it keeps all the different names in their original forms (e.g. Yahweh, Elohim, etc...).

Not being associated with a religion doesn't really help us figure out who is and is not an atheist though. Plenty of the religious nones express a belief in gods and there are a lot of religious people who are atheists.

2023 Pew survey, 54% of Americans expressed a belief in the god of their holy book and 10% said they do not believe in any gods nor spiritual higher powers. The issue is that the 34% believe in a higher power or spiritual force... that can include people who believe in some sort of god not just one described by the holy books but also those who are atheists that just believe in some weird supernatural woo that is not a god or even though he refer to the universe as a god even though they don't believe it is actually a deity. So somewhere between 10 and 44% of the US are atheists (most estimated say roughly 1/4).

I hate to break it to you, but in the US at least the majority believe in some sort of god. 2017 NIH report says that 65.2% of all US physicians believe in god. It is declining, it was 76% about 20 years ago. I can't find a breakdown by specialty, so I don't know if surgeons have higher religiosity than other types of doctors.

No, I do not find that offensive at all and I think you were overreacting. The congregation didn't seem to mind and they were satisfied enough to have paid him to do it (probably on more than one occasion if they were familiar enough to offer him the job for something as important to the church as Easter services). He obviously knew what he was talking about and covered all the major talking points to their satisfaction. And it sounds as if he is an ordained clergyman, because they tend to not let random people show up off the street to do it, so if he was qualified enough to get ordained then he is qualified enough to lead services.

No, wear anything you want, fashion is a personal choice. And honestly I would rather be comfortable in the heat that worry about what anybody else thinks about my fashion choices.

An avowed atheist, yes. Not the average atheist who goes about their daily lives with religion never coming up. But if the interviewer or admission committee knows you are an atheist it tends to be a knock against you for "negative character traits."

In general concubines had almost all of the same rights as wives. Which means not much at all, since women were viewed as property, but they were not just considered trash.

Its only in modern times that we try to make it seem like they are lesser, because our modern values presume the bible looked down upon polygamy. But some stories show they were treated the same, like how children you had with your concubine were still treated as legitimate children. Or in Judges 19...

He took a woman from Bethlehem in Judah to be his concubine. ... She took her husband into her father’s house ... the woman’s father told his son-in-law ... his father-in-law urged him to stay ... His wife (that is, his concubine) was lying at the door

So a story about the Levite's concubine she is referred to as his wife, he is referred to as her husband. Her father is referred to as his father in law, he is referred to as the man's son in law. So a concubine is treated the same way a wife is. Here is a line from 1 Kings which spells it out more clearly, "He had 700 wives who were princesses and 300 wives who were concubines." So the concubines were still considered wives, they were just a different type of wife. So not trash, just of lower social standing than a "proper" wife.

Even prostitutes didn't necessarily have to be considered trash, they had temple prostitutes and that was a respected position.

Don't forget the bit where if an unmarried woman is raped then her rapist must pay a fine to the girl's father for damaging her property and then is forced to marry her. So the rape victim is now the wife of her rapist and must submit to his desires for sex because it is her wifely duty.

Or how you can sell your own daughters as sex slaves...

You most likely won't have issue visiting America as an atheist, although living here is a different matter. Kids get bullied at school for it, if you live in a fundamentalist family kids have even been kicked out of their house over it, and while it is illegal to take it into consideration for things like hiring and college admissions they have been known to judge it as negative "moral character." And don't even get me started on how difficult it is to get into politics if you don't express belief in a god, particularly the Christian one.

Most people won't care if a random stranger visiting is an atheist, and it is very unlikely to come up in casual conversation. I wouldn't recommend going around announcing that you don't believe in gods or publicly criticizing Christianity. You most likely wouldn't be harmed physically for such behaviour, but you will likely find that you are less welcome and face more rude interactions, if not outright yelling and arguments. It is best just to keep religion private, why would the topic even come up? But yes, it will differ based on what part of the country you are in, there are more fundamentalist/Evangelicals in the South but amongst the moderate to liberal Mainline Protestant denominations you will find things are more similar to the way religious Christians are in Europe.

No, it would not be offensive. It is very common to have wedding in churches because it is a cultural thing. Look at England where the majority of citizens don't believe in any gods yet they still have a national religion, religious schools, and regularly hold christenings and weddings in churches.

Yeah, there are a lot of people who are unaware that the bull was the symbol of Yahweh/El, so the statue they made was not meant to represent a false god but rather was made in honour of the being they worshiped.

I think people are more than capable of not worshiping anything. Even if their is an evolutionary instinct towards religious belief, we are modern humans who (mostly) have control over our animal instincts. There is an evolutionary urge to procreate and spread our genes to the next generation, but people are capable of choosing to be celibate. So why would we not be able to resist the urge to worship?

I think people are more than capable of not worshiping anything. Even if there is an evolutionary instinct towards religious belief, we are modern humans who (mostly) have control over our animal instincts. There is an evolutionary urge to procreate and spread our genes to the next generation, but people are capable of choosing to be celibate. So why would we not be able to resist the urge to worship?