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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How do you know? Everything you've shown so far is natural phenomena and humans making shit up.
Why do you pretend there is a god?
People are dying for your mistakes.
who created the natural phenomena?
Why are you assuming it was created by someone? There is no evidence to suggest that.
If god doesn't need a first cause, why does the universe?
If the universe needs a first cause, why doesn't god?
All you have is special pleading and god of the gaps.
Those are fallacies, not evidence.
Because God and the universe are not equal. They are of different natures entirely. I mean omnipotence IS hard to comprehend for us since we're human
We have evidence for the universe. We have no evidence for god.
Based on your arbitrary, inconsistent definition of "nature".
It's pretty easy: if an omnipotent being existed, they could do anything. They would need nothing. So if an omnipotent being exists, and suffering exists, it is because that omnipotent being wants that suffering to exist.
It's not love. It's a death cult.
You keep going backwards. You assert things about god and then you pretend there are reasons to believe it. If we go ground-up from what we can sense, no god ever enters the picture. There is no reason to assume his existence.
How many genes must be different for two beings to have different natures? Or how is it defined, how is it measured? You're drawing lines arbitrarily and pretending to know things no person can know.
Why did god write such a shitty book? Why are none of his miracles clearly documented? He must not be trying very hard to convince anyone that he is actually there. All evidence suggests that humans invented god.
We do
https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/dictionary/index.cfm?id=35071 Here is the definition.
It was written by humans, inspired by God. They are. Show me the evidence.
Stop telling deadly lies. There is absolutely no evidence for god. You have not provided any, you only have fallacies.
"The essence of a being considered as the principle of activity." So you and I have different natures.
"Also the substance of a thing as distinguished from its properties, considered as the source of its operations." This is nonsense. Do you have an example?
"In contrast with God, it is the created universe. In contrast to the life and operations of divine grace, it is that to which a human person has claim, as creature, as distinct from a share in God's own life, which is the supernatural."
This makes no sense. Nothing is supernatural. How do you determine what the opposite of a nature is? What is the opposite of human nature, if we pretend that exists for a moment?
If you are pretending the bible was written by god, then why does it contain mistakes?
If you are admitting that it was written by humans, why should we believe any of it?
Humans wrote the bible. You even admitted that. But then you added the completey unproven and ridiculous claim that it was inspired by god.
It contains blatant contradictions with itself and our reality. Example: what year was Jesus born?
Do rabbits chew cud?
Do you actually believe the world was made in 6-7 days? If so, in what order? Genesis 2 contradicts Genesis 1. Why did god write such an unbelievable book if we're supposed to believe it? He's not all powerful, clearly. Your bullshit about "humans can't understand omnipotence"... Humans can understand language. Humans can understand what we can sense. So why is god unable to communicate with no errors?
Do you believe that I am going to hell for being honest, for having intellectual integrity? Your god is an abuser.
You are defending a death cult.
People are dying for you.
Please. Think.
Stop making bullshit excuses and start relying on the reality we share. Anything less makes you a murderer.
He was 33 when he died and rose again, so 0 AD
No one goes to hell for being honest
Can I havr the contradictions in Genesis?
And a day for God isnt a day for us. God is above time itself.
How do you know he was 33 when he died? How do you know he died in 33 AD?
The book of Luke suggests that Jesus was about thirty years old when he began his ministry. We can use biblical clues to estimate that he started his ministry between 27-29 AD. By calculating historical passover dates and comparing with lunar motion, most scholars estimate that Jesus died in either 30 or 33 AD.
However, the gospels offer different accounts of his birth year. Matthew associates Jesus's birth with the reign of Herod, who died in 4 BC. Luke associates Jesus's birth with the census of Quirinius, which took place ten years later.
So if Matthew is correct, Jesus could not have been born later than 4 BC. If he died in 30 AD, he may have been 33, if his birthday was after his crucifixion. If he died in 33 AD, he would actually have been 36 or so.
If Luke is correct, he would have been born no later than 6 AD, making him either 24 or 27 when he died.
How do we know which is correct, and why did god allow contradictions like this? It casts doubt on the entire bible. All of it could be human error.
That's not what your theology says. According to the bible, god gave me this brain in this world, a brain that honestly concludes "humans invented god" based on everything I can possibly sense. Due to my non-belief, I will be punished in some vague yet terrible manner, depending on which parts of the bible you cherry pick. Maybe I'll be annihilated. Maybe I'll burn forever, maybe there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. All because I didn't want to lie, to pretend I sense a god when I do not.
Have you glanced at chapters 1 and 2? They are not long. I was specifically referring to the order of creation; were plants created before humans as it says in chapter 1, or were humans created before plants as it says in chapter 2?
Did god make animals before humans (chapter 1), or did he make animals as companions to Adam (chapter 2)?
Those are some easy ones from the first two chapters. It gets worse when we consider the rest of the bible. In Genesis, god encourages humans to be fruitful and multiply. He says it to Adam and Eve, he says it to Noah, he says it to Jacob. But in Leviticus, god insists that women who give birth must also provide a sin offering. Does god command us to sin?
Where does it say that? Why wouldn't god include these clarifications in the text at the time? We understand what a "year" is, he could have provided it in human time instead of god time. I would be very impressed if the bible gave a detailed account about natural events that formed our universe and world that modern science can verify. But instead we have a contradictory fairy tale about making existence in "eh whatever amount of time sounds believable to you".
The question remains: why would an all-powerful being who loves us do such a poor job of convincing us of his existence?
You have chosen to pretend that false things are true. I am unwilling to lie. Humans wrote the bible, and god seemingly did nothing to prevent errors from getting through. What sense does that make?
Please continue to think critically about the contents of the bible and the flimsy excuses that come from outside of the bible.
Almost nothing will convince you if you are not willing to be convinced
Being convinced has nothing to do with what I want to be true.
We do not choose our beliefs.
I aim to be as honest as possible: I believe what is most likely true given all available evidence.
Stop killing kids.
You refuse to accept certain evidence contradictory to your own views
You have provided absolutely no evidence for any of your claims.
Your cult is killing us all.
Fuck you for choosing death instead of being honest.
I have?
You have not. You have one guy who says, with no evidence, that a miracle happened.
You have provided no evidence of god, souls, free will, magic, etc. You have rejected evidence that your claims may not be true.
I want to be convinced of whatever is true. That is why I rely on evidence and reason. As humans, that is all we have. Divine revelation is, evidently, a dangerous myth.
You want to be convinced that god is real because you've already bought the lie. You work backwards, distorting evidence of our real world and inventing fiction, treating your assumptions like facts so you can pretend your false beliefs are just as good as real ones.
Stop lying. All life is at stake.
Fuck you for choosing death.
and you yourself decide what is true. Thus, you believe what you want to believe
Dead wrong.
Again. And really think about it this time:
HONEST PEOPLE DO NOT CHOOSE THEIR BELIEFS.
We believe what is most likely true whether it is what we want or not. We do not decide truth. We attempt to describe it as accurately as possible.
you willingly ignore all of the evidence being provided to you
We went over it. I was as receptive as my brain allows. You did not provide anything remotely convincing, you have fallacies and baseless claims. That is not evidence.
Can I have the Leviticus verse?
All of chapter 12. I was specifically thinking of verses 6-7:
What sin did she commit? The lord told her to bear children, why would he make any part of that process sinful?
But it's also worth noting the blatant sexism of verse 5 compared to verse 1, where bearing a female child makes a woman "unclean" for twice as long.
The sin offering is for the original sin of the child, I believe.
What sin could a baby possibly commit?
Why does god command us to have children if it brings more sin and suffering into the world?
Why does god give children cancer?
What sense does it make to punish the children of someone who did something wrong?
Your baby-killing god is fucking sick. We're all lucky he's not real. Now please stop spreading deadly lies.
the original sin, adam and eve eating the apple.
and just because we cant understand his plan doesnt mean its bad
Needless suffering is bad. Grow up. Stop letting apologists think for you. You think backwards and it's killing us all.
Fuck you for choosing death.
Luke's date is independently confirmed by John's reference in John 2:20 to the Temple being in its 46th year of construction when Jesus began his ministry during Passover, which corresponds to around AD 27–29 according to scholarly estimates.[32]
from Wikipedia. We dont have a year-for-year 100% accurate account of ancient history.
Relying only on your physical senses? God gave you free will and your rational soul along with your intellect. God did not make you disbelieve.
You know you can plan things right? God intended for animals to be companions to us and then created them, then us.
Maybe the ancient Hebrews used a different way of calculating time than we do? And God performs a lot of miracles when he sees fit.
Because all-powerful god failed to convey a simple timeline?
That is our only means of acquiring data, yes.
No, he didn't. We evolved what we call consciousness over many generations. There is no evidence of god, free will, or souls.
If you believe he made my brain and this world, yes yes he did.
That's not what the bible says. Why is the bible wrong?
Or maybe it's all bullshit and you are an intellectual and moral coward. Why couldn't god make it more clear if he meant what you interpret him to mean? How do you know your interpretation is correct when other common interpretations contradict yours?
Kids are dying for your false beliefs. More each day.
No, because historians arent God
It isn't
He did
Genesis 2:19 Therefore, the Lord God, having formed from the soil all the animals of the earth and all the flying creatures of the air, brought them to Adam, in order to see what he would call them. For whatever Adam would call any living creature, that would be its name.
How do you know your interpretation of the Earth itself is correct when the flat earth theory exists?
Nor did I say that, dipshit. Focus.
If god is all-powerful, why couldn't he convey simple facts clearly through the bible he supposedly influenced? Why does it contradict itself and our reality at all?
Saying things doesn't make them true. Even if you are correct (which you are not), you have done nothing to demonstrate that.
Saying things doesn't make them true. That's all the bible is, by the way. People saying things.
You skipped the contradiction. Genesis 1 and 2 disagree about whether animals or humans were created first.
Also, the idea that animals were created for us to eat and exploit is deeply fucked. STOP DEFENDING ABUSE.
Evidence. Have you never ridden on an airplane or used a telescope? Are you seriously comparing your own beliefs to the flat earth theory? This is suicidal stupidity, and you're taking us down with you. Do better.