this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2026
1048 points (98.3% liked)
Atheism
6461 readers
88 users here now
Community Guide
Archive Today will help you look at paywalled content the way search engines see it.
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.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
That's a good rule of thumb, but it runs into difficulty when you map it to the marco scale.
Whether we're talking individual human capacity (Dunbar's Number) or a question of public policy (for instance, in the Trolley Problem scenario) or even just common accounting and logistics principles, people become indistinguishable from things in significantly large numbers and anonymous contexts.
Bureaucracy has a de-humanizing effect on individuals. But bureaucracy is fundamental to administration of large populations. I don't know how you square this circle without committing some degree of "sin".
I'm not sure I agree. A person doesn't need to be in your Dunbar group to still be treated as a person, and bureaucracy doesn't have to be dehumanizing; though I'll grant that doing so is an easy trap to slide into. But you can plan for the needs and behaviors of large groups of people without treating them as anything less - just look at something like event planning!
In response to the trolley problem - It does get tricky with something like triage, where you have to evaluate who gets saved on the basis of their injuries. In this case, taking a cue from Weatherwax again, I think the key would be making sure that even those who don't get saved still get treated humanely - pain relief, comfort, etc.
Not incidentally, sure. But they need to be in your Dunbar group to be seen as a person.
As soon as "treating another person" carries a price, people charged with delivering treatment are going to start falling off of it.
Again, not incidentally. But the impulse in a bureaucracy is towards expediency. You have a large volume of people to manage and a limited amount of time / manpower / resources. So you cut corners in order to mitigate shortfalls or appease overworked staff, because you don't see the consequences of your actions or experience guilt over it.
I don't argue that this is the strictly moral path. But it ignores the biases, the capacities, and the temperaments of the people doing the triage. At some point you need people to do the things. And people routinely put their own comfort ahead of others' health and well-being, because personal comfort is immediate and real while the experiences of others are remote and abstract.