- People who make useless, generic comments, like "religion is a cancer." It doesn't really add anything to the conversation, it's just upvote bait. Also, I want secular communities to be more thoughtful and articulate than that.
- Overuse of phrases like "reason" and "free-thinking" in our group names. I'm a little torn on this one, because I think those words do generally apply here, and I want the atheist community to be associated with those things. But it sometimes comes off as the atheist version of how Christians bolt the words "family" and "values" onto everything they do.
- Thinking Jesus wasn't real. The overwhelming consensus among experts is that Jesus was a real person. (Not walk-on-water Jesus, but some kind of religious leader did exist.) If you think it looks bad when an Evangelical argues with a biologist about evolution, then it also looks bad when an atheist argues with a historian about whether Jesus existed. Atheists who think Jesus wasn't real are often saying that because so many other things mentioned in the Bible aren't real; however, this is falling into the trap of treating the Bible as one consistent work, which it is not. In fact, we should be helping to counter that idea.
this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2026
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Honestly talking about atheism.
I went to a local atheist group in my area.
It made me realize how pointless it was to actually get together and talk about how we don't believe in something.
Second this. After my 20s I had no desire to discuss it at length with anyone, including other atheists/agnostics. It is what it is.
It's like if you meet someone and they quickly tell you "Barney wasn't a real dinosaur! He was just some guy in a suit" And you go "yep", and that's it, you two know where you each stand on it. The fact is obvious and that's all that needs to be said on the subject. Except for shit talking people who believe Barney was real, which is just petty, there's no where else for the conversation to go.
I live in a fairly religious area and occasionally get cornered for a discussion. I just listen, spout some vaguely affirming non-committal thing and exit the conversation. Nobody needs to know.
I love the Barney remark!
This describes my experience at the atheist group.
So... You all don't believe in God either hey. Okay... Well good night.
(Clearly most of the people were there because they had some shit to get off their chest, and we had nothing in common, and I'm not a free therapist and I don't give a fuck how traumatized someone else was by religion, not my job to deal with it)
This reminds me of this comment about atheism:
Getting atheists together to get a common goal done is like trying to herd cats. Everybody has their own opinion
Totally. The other thing people do not realize is that the only thing we have in common is one thing, other than that it's just the same collection of random idiots you've met anywhere else.
Would you be friends with a group of people you met in the grocery aisle? Because we all share the idea that we like groceries. Yeah no.
-
When people bring up Christianity they are sharing their experience as a way to show they also understand your frustration because we have similar problems with Christians in the U.S.
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Fanatic religious people are actually kind of the same everywhere. They all think it's their way only. And if not, they will hope bad things happen to you, to teach you a lesson. And many actively engage in activities to harm others who don't conform.
This is the same all over the world.
It's true we don't have a lot of suicide bombers. But we do have extremist doing a lot of things that harm many people. They do so in ways that get less press attention.
- Most religions are bad. Because they have the same end game. Control and subjugate. Which makes them bad.
Spirituality and community can be achieved without religious doctrine. Religion uses people's desire for these things to control them.
I honestly do not understand your complaints.
If you don't want to hear responses about American/Western atheist experiences, why post on this community ?
What do you want people to say to you ?
What kind of responses are you wanting ?
Have you asked yourself what you want people to say back. ?
I don't know what else , mostly Western atheists, are going to say.
Except
"Yeah Christian fundamentalist are really awful here in the U.S, UK, and Australia (English speaking countries). And make the country unsafe and fascist"
We do have all sorts of religions here in the U.S, but it's mostly the Christian evangelical /nationalist that are causing big problems.
And many atheists believe :
"Religion promotes adherence to made-up rules that people in power use to control and impoverish the general public".
I think that's a common opinion. It's sort of part of being an atheist.
If you have a favorable opinion of religion, then you probably are religious and thus not an atheist.
The most common impediment to clear thinking that a non-believer must confront is the idea that the burden of proof can be fairly placed on his shoulders: "How do you know there is no God? Can you prove it? You atheists are just as dogmatic as the fundamentalists you criticize." This is nonsense: even the devout tacitly reject thousands of gods, along with the cherished doctrines of every religion but their own. Every Christian can confidently judge the God of Zoroaster to be a creature of fiction, without first scouring the universe for evidence of his absence. Absence of evidence is all one ever needs to banish false knowledge. And bad evidence, proffered in a swoon of wishful thinking, is just as damning. But honest reasoning can lead us further into the fields of unbelief, for we can prove that books such as the Bible and the Quran bear no trace of divine authorship. We know far too much about the history of these texts to accept what they say about their own origins. And just imagine how good a book would be if an omniscient Being had written it.
The burden of proof should be on the person making claims in a god. Not on the people who question someone's statement based on subjective opinion.
If I say, the tooth fairy exists. And you don't believe me.
And then I say. I shouldn't have to prove to you the tooth fairy exists. You should have to prove they don't!
It's not up to me to disprove something someone invented. Me telling you I found money under my pillow as a kid and I felt the presence of the tooth fairy on multiple occasions should not be enough to convince you they exist.
There is no objective evidence for the existence of a god or God- like creator. Nor that of the tooth fairy.
Why are you on an atheist community?
You won't convince us that your God is real. Or any other.
I don't care if other people believe in the existence of a god or not. It's a personal choice. You go ahead and believe whatever you like. It has zero impact on my life.
Most atheists feel this way. We just don't care to force our religious beliefs on others.
Why do you have such a problem with others not believing what you believe ?
Do you feel insecure about your beliefs when confronted with people who reject them ?
I never understood this belief-insecurity that so many religious people have.
Why is it so important to you that others believe in your opinion on this ?
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There's always a subset that have very clearly just replaced religion with atheism as their new faith. And they kept the arsehole pious framework too.
Romanticising Jesus.
You'd think Jesus had invented game theory the way some people talk about him!
He wasn't some kind of renegade politician with a practical and coherent vision for a more just society that he wanted to put into place. If he existed at all, he was just another poor shmuck dealing with untreated mental illness. Who knows what childhood trauma he was dealing with?
Nothing he said was particularly ground-breaking. People at Jesus's time and before already understood the concept of good neighborliness. When he said things like, "the meek shall inherit the earth", that was just the psychosis talking. He wasn't using clever metaphor, he was projecting and fantasizing out loud.
When I see people do this, eg comments like "if they actually followed Jesus's teachings" I think such people must still be in love with the "Children's bible stories" they were read as a kid, and are only upset at the church because the fantastical happy and conflict-free life of their young imaginations doesn't actually exist.
I just have one. People who want to talk about religion when its all just fairy tales. ok this is sarcasm to some degree. Fact is we should not really have much to talk about except we all have to live with the religious people in our area and we will tend to view things in how annoying it is for us day to day. Its kinda tough to think in terms of how someone explaining how annoying it is to have someone knock on their door and want to talk about the importance of vishnu.
I'm an atheist but I cringe in some comments I read:
People thinking that religious people are enslaved or brainwashed. For most people it's either cultural or a psychological reaction to events in life.
Most priests don't have a duty to brainwash others. They believe what they preach, but most believers are still free to ignore what is said. Atheists would know that if they spent some time with real people.
It feels like atheists have never had an interaction with people who believe in something.
Children are not really free to ignore what is said by priests. And when the belief persists in adults it is usually because the person is unwilling or unable to reconsider the false beliefs imparted to them as a child. Which looks a lot like brainwashing. I really don't follow what you are criticizing.
I saw on the news this morning that in Kenya a man has been charged for causing over one hundred children's deaths by convincing them to starve themselves in order to be with Jesus!, "A doomsday cult leader Paul Nthenge Mackenzie accused of orchestrating the starvation and murder of 191 children (and hundreds of adults) so they could "meet Jesus".The Shakahola Forest massacre, and a final High Court verdict on the mass murder charges is scheduled for delivery today, October 19, 2026, at the Mombasa Law Courts in Kenya. "when one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion."
At least for point #1, I think people are generally pointing to Christianity having a far larger blood trail than Islam, at least in modern days.
The genocidal and imperial actions of the US (including its support of Israel) are generally executed by Christian nationalists who believe all non-Christians are heretical heathens who must be destroyed.
They genuinely are an Apocalypse cult who think stuffing every last Jew into Jerusalem will initiate the Apocalypse and bring Jesus back. That is unironically the reason the US supports Israel.
Even ISIS's rise, like you brought up, can be traced back to Christian Nationalists. The war with and subsequent destabilization of Iraq that lead to ISIS rising was justified by those leading it on the right as a Christian crusade against violent Muslims.
If you have a chance to ever listen to Christian Nationalists talk about climate change, and they aren't denying it, they'll justify it to claim "that's the Apocalypse God promised us so we're doing things right".
Or if you listen to them about nuclear war, they unironically will tell you they want it, and a nuclear war is the Apocalypse that'll bring Jesus back, and then they'll admit that support of Israel is partially to meet that end.
So I believe it isn't generally people trying to dismiss your experience. I believe its people pointing to the biggest evil crowd, who are Christian Nationalists in the USA.
They singlehandedly exploded the anti-feminist movement in 2010, mostly because YouTube monetisation was more lucrative back then. I do not really blame them, it's a very "they know not what they do" situation, but it led to gamergate and eventually trump but a lot of things led to those. learning that you can't trust God went hand-in-hand with 'idiot women love astrology and crystals' and i don't think they predicted how much better their anti women stuff would do compared to the 2009 debating creationists content. Nonetheless I do crave accountability from new atheists, they need to stop rebelling from their Christian upbringing and instead either contextualise or uproot it.
Atheists now, they seem all right. Most of them my age seem pretty mature.
That is a good thing to point out.
I jokingly refer to this moment as "Post New Atheism_v2_final.docx." But whatever we call it, I do think think it's in a much better place than it was 10-15 years ago.
When atheists try to convince others that there is no god. Let people have their faith, as long as they let you have your lack thereof, and as long as they don't hurt anyone.
I'm an atheist, I do not believe in god. But scientifically speaking, we just don't know.
Science gives us models that allow us to describe the world. These models don't necessarily have to be correct, they need to be the simplest explanation of our observations. These models also only describe the 'what', not the 'why'.
So anyone claiming to stand on the side of science, while confidently exclaiming "There is no god" without any scientific evidence, is just an idiot. And mocking religion on top of that just makes you an asshole.
Most of the atheists I know do not say "there is no god" but there is no compelling evidence for a god or gods.
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Yeah, no shit all religions are bad.
Are all religions bad? I'm not religious myself. I don't believe in any gods. But I think religion can sometimes inspire people to do good things (e.g. charity), although of course it can also inspire people to do bad things (war, honour killings, etc).
I think the current Pope has a better moral compass than a lot of non-religious people. For example, see these comments from the Pope earlier this year:
Woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic and political gain... They turn a blind eye to the fact that billions of dollars are spent on killing and devastation, yet the resources needed for healing, education and restoration are nowhere to be found... The world is being ravaged by a handful of tyrants
All religions are bad. A worldview eg a religion is not "good" just because it sometimes produces results which are beneficial.
They are all based on magical thinking - essentially the belief that you can tap into some secret pure source of knowledge just by wishing it to be true and thinking.
People's inability to come to rational conclusions by themselves is IMO the biggest threat to world peace today.
The first step towards rational thinking is being comfortable saying, "I don't know what that is", and "I don't know how to achieve that outcome". Then you can slowly and carefully explore the options, always ready to step back into the harsh light of your own ignorance.
Compare that with religious thinking, where the adherent jumps wildly to conclusions, and doggedly sticks to them simply because they have been conditioned by religion to think faith without evidence is in itself worthy of reward.
I prefer non-religion which is why I'm non-religious, but I've known decent people in real life who were religious. I try to respect their right to believe what they like, because I'd like them to also respect my right to believe what I like.
Yeah I agree with you that sometimes it's best to admit that you don't know something. There are many questions we don't know the answers to, such as the question of whether life exists in other galaxies, just as one example.
sometimes it’s best to admit that you don’t know something
Well if you follow scientific principles, you *always* (not just sometimes) accept that you start from a position of ignorance.
Nothing is known for sure - at any time, new evidence could emerge that would, for instance, completely change our understanding of electricity, or of the origins of the universe.
More to the point, there is no need to take a firm position on anything. Why do you need someone to respect your right to believe what you want? Are you unable to justify your position?
There is no "right to believe what you want". That would be like having a right to have diarrhoea. Nothing is stopping you believing what you want, you don't need anyone's permission.
You can believe that the world is flat and exists on the surface of an enormous elephant's ear if you want. Go ahead. No one will stop you. They might call you stupid or deranged, but they aren't going to stop you. Well, except by convincing you of your error.
If you do understand the principles of science, then you should understand that there are things we can agree on. Everyone - even the stupidest most evangelical idiot, even the most psychotic mental patient - everyone believes in evidence.
Have you ever talked to a religious person about why they think what they do? They will cite evidence, and they will explain the conclusions they derive from that evidence.
What is different between a religious idiot and a rational actor is what evidence they trust, and the size of the leaps they will make when making conclusions from that.
Needless to say, a religious person will consider things such as a vague feeling to be evidence, or some arbitrary coincidence, and they will make huge leaps of faith based on very little evidence indeed. While a rational thinker will try to consider a whole range of evidence before drawing careful conclusions, and even then they should remain open to all possibilities.
From this acceptance of our absolute ignorance, and a willingness to question accepted wisdom, science has slowly and increasingly carefully built up a worldview which reliably and reproducibly produces useful results. In just a few centuries. This is considerably more than religion has done in millennia of make-believe and fart-worship.
I've not been convinced of religious thinking which is why I'm non-religious, but I think it's fair for me to respect people believing in religion, so that they will also respect me not believing in religion. In some cultures in history, people have been persecuted for being atheists. I'm more in favour of people being able to believe what they want without facing discrimination due to their beliefs.
What are you talking about, challenging beliefs and assumptions is not persecution or discrimination.
You should welcome such challenges and have the courage to deal with them head on, as learning experiences, rather than some kind of lame-ass desperation to appease those with opposing views, in the hope they won't ask you awkward questions that challenge your cozy conceits.
I wonder if you even are irreligious, you sound more like a bible basher with this kind of intellectual cowardice and dishonesty.
I'm saying there have been cultures in history where atheists faced discrimination. I think atheists in western countries used to face discrimination and ostracisation. And in some Muslim countries even today, if a Muslim leaves their religion, they can face harsh penalties.
some kind of lame-ass desperation to appease those with opposing views, in the hope they won’t ask you awkward questions that challenge your cozy conceits
I'm not desperate to appease people with opposing views. I just know that I have met some religious people in my life who I got on well with. I didn't agree with their views, but I could still get on with them. If I come across someone and I think they're a decent person who I can get on well with, then I won't mind what their religious views are, as long as they are respectful of my lack of religious belief.
Don't you think it's important that people are able to think critically and make sensible conclusions?
I get on best with people who think outside the box and don't accept the norm. People who reject tradition, the traditional roles and hierarchies of society. So I don't really meet people on a friendly basis who are religious. Religion is tradition, literally the same thing. I've worked with people who I've later found out believe some religion or other, and from then on I can't look at them the same way, as I can't shake the feeling that they must be at least a bit stupid.
However what I do find is that the kinds of people that I do mix with can often be a bit conspiratorially minded. I meet too many anti-vaxxers. 911 deniers even.
It is IMO the same inability to think critically at play. It's one thing to speculate, and say "this might be true, or alternatively this could be true, or even this". There's nothing wrong with that, I think it's healthy in fact to challenge assumptions. The problem is that people pick one of many possible options - often one of the least likely ones - and then commit to that one position. These people have a faith much like religious faith in the daft ideas they choose to pin their egos to.
This kind of faulty thinking is IMO what leads to MAGA. It leads people to support authoritarian regimes such as Russia's or Iran's.
So I do push back on it when I encounter it, which as I say is far too often. Obviously you have to do so intelligently, and to pick your battles. No one has ever genuinely changed someone's mind through nagging or insults.
I genuinely believe it is important for people like you and me to spread the skill of critical thinking. To encourage people not to pin their loyalties so easily to some daft idea and then doggedly stick to that regardless of the other possibilities.
Maybe I'd prefer a world where nobody is religious. Maybe I'd also prefer a world where everyone shares my taste in music, and my political views, and so on. But people do have differences.
I definitely understand the frustration with some religious people, particularly if they use religion to try to justify hateful views. Then again, there are non-religious people who hold hateful views. I think I'd rather spend time with a non-hateful religious person than a non-religious hateful person. To each their own though.
ah you don't get it. it's not about personal preferences, which of course people are free to have.
It's about being rational. If you don't understand that being rational is objectively a superior way to think about the world, then you are also vulnerable.
I guess I was working on the faulty assumption that people who've explicitly rejected religion are rational thinkers. There are many reasons people have for rejecting religion though.
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.
what made you give up your religion?
I've never been religious. My parents aren't religious, so religion was something our family was never into.
not talking to ghosts/aliens/etc, but I can’t rule it out 100%
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?
Someone who claims to be talking to Spider-Man telepathically might be doing so. I think it's unlikely, but I don't think I can rule it out 100%. Personally I don't think Thor or Yoda or Gandalf are different in this context because I think they're all fictional, but one day maybe it will be proven that at least one of them actually exists, although I think that's unlikely.
Anyway, originally I was just saying my view about religion. I don't think I'd label every religion as "bad". I think religion can inspire some people to do bad things, but it also seems to inspire some people to do good things. That's just the way I see it really.
Sure. I made an assumption that people who call themselves atheist would also not believe in magical thinking. But you're not atheist and you do believe in magical thinking. You just haven't been sucked into a religion yet. You're ripe pickings for one though - if you are ever feeling low and get love-bombed by members of any particular religion, you'll probably throw yourself right in with them.
I probably can't reach you. You do seem to agree that as human beings, none of us know anything for sure. There's no certainty in life. Science understands this and is built upon that as its very foundation. Religion however does not understand this and tries to invent certainty where none exists.
So if there was one thing I'd like you to keep in mind and remember, it's that anyone who does claim to know something for sure is wrong.
Maybe we just look at it in different ways and I think that's fine. People can have different perspectives.
oh dear. you really are a lost cause. Nothing I said got through did it?
edit: thank you for the discussion. Sorry for upsetting you! I genuinely didn't mean to do that, but I admit my approach was abrasive. Something for me to work on! I truly did find chatting with you useful, and I'll take on board what I've learnt from this next time I have a similar debate.
Okay I'm going to block you now. I've been polite in every response I've given. What I'm saying is "let's agree to disagree" but apparently you aren't happy with that.
Protip: it's not polite in any way to describe a person you're talking to as "a lost cause", and that's why I'm blocking you.
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