I mean in the US at least, it could become VERY dangerous to not be an evangelical Christian cultist. (Much less a atheist)
If the Orange Man becomes dictator in November, shit is going to get bad quickly.
If the Orange Man becomes dictator in November, shit is going to get bad quickly.
I’m ethnically Jewish. My daughter is half-Jewish and queer. My wife is a librarian. We’re all atheists.
Needless to say, we’re making contingency plans.
My wife is a librarian.
I’m sorry but that gave me a chuckle.
Holy cow!
“If” 😪
Which is quite fascinating since he’s made it very obvious that he himself doesn’t know jack shit about Christianity and that he’s not a believer. I’m an atheist myself and I’ve never seen a person more lost and uninterested when speaking about Christianity than him.
I’d argue that most people in government feel very similarly to Trump in regards to religion, they just know its a powerful tool to use.
Really reminds me of the Association of German National Jews and their sad decision to endorse Adolf Hitler. We’re frequently presented with the assertion that people, in-general, are rational when they evidentially are not.
Christians know and do not care. All that matters is that they have more control.
You are describing any fundamentalist regardless of their religion
He’s describing the ones that are currently trying to bring us back to the middle age
deleted by creator
The US is a wild wild place. So backwards in many ways.
Yes. Meanwhile in SOVIET RUSSIA… Even Soviet Russia was not so backwards as USSA.
yeah, I’d pick the US over Russia (at any point in history) every single time.
What if you’re black?
Russia is a lot more racist than the US lol
LOL
What is it with people like you that can’t see the difference between valid criticisms of a good country and an actual shit hole dictatorship?
And forward in others, a extremely dynamic mix of cultures.
America as a whole needs to ensure following secular ideals for its public policies and laws.
I don’t mind people using religion in their personal lives for whatever reason, but it does seem like there’s a delusion driven community level effect that leaks out from temples, churches, mosques etc. It seems most of these people “mean well” but they don’t realize how much unintentional harm they’re doing. The Satanic temple type people adding fuel to the fire of religious zealots are making things worse.
In general, I hope it becomes taboo and outlawed to base rules or laws around mythology-based scripture. Where is this social movement? I get fuck cars and all, but secular humanism is seriously needed as a mainstream social movement everywhere, locally and globally.
As a quasi-religious person I do agree that public policy and moral imperatives should have a secular basis. For example, when people look back at this point in history they’re going to see a particularly nasty stain in the way that 99% of the human population is responsible for a sort of perpetual holocaust of many other species of animal, all for nothing more than a little gluttonous sensory pleasure. That kind of morality is easily argued on a secular basis for all the substantial harms those lifestyles cause, and the sheer amount of tangible benefits for choosing a better way.
But secular policy is dangerous if it does not also support religious plurality. When one or two belief systems dominate, they invariably oppress smaller groups. Diversity of belief is a natural buffer against that.
That said, a religion does not necessarily need to base its exegesis on interpretation of arbitrarily chosen writings. One of the best things religious groups can do for themselves now days, if they want to adapt to the times and survive into the future, is embrace the scientific method in their own ways. Evolution shows us that the things that aren’t willing to change and adapt die.
The issue is core tenants of basically all major religions are incompatible with the scientific method.
That’s only true of institutions that are unwilling to change. Every major religion has sub-branches and other variant communities that have entirely different sets of doctrines, some more progressive than others.
your yearly PSA on the TST and COS:
some clarification here. The satanic temple, or the TST as it’s known is actually really based, while it is “satanic” that’s mostly a funny haha thing, the majority of it is mostly based around being a religion that isn’t awful. I.E. being nice to people, because you should do that.
A lot of flak they’ve gotten is for things like putting a satanic club into a school (that school had a bible study club) and various other shenanigans, notably the one satan con thing they had, where people protested, but inside it was pretty chill. It’s performance art and statement pieces primarily, which are perfectly apt, i feel. Freedom of religion and all. It seems perfectly reasonable to me.
Anyway, the point i came here to make was that the TST is the good one, and the church of satan, or COS, is the less based one, for instance, they believe that consuming blue cheese makes you gay. That’s like the religion religion one. Nobody likes that one.
Thanks for the clarification. Tbh, I just don’t like anything that markets itself as a religion
as a staunch believer in many a thing related to freedom, this is always something that irks me whenever it crops up. So i make this a habit from time to time.
That’s totally fair though, TST is kind of like the modern anti-religion. it’s only considered a religion because it would need to be in order to be an anti-religion. Personally that’s why i really like it, it’s primary purpose is respecting people, and it’s secondary purpose is to make a statement in regards to religion. Which i think is productive.
Maybe that’s just because i enjoy sociology and this is particularly involved in that sphere. But it is what is.
Their whole point is to show the negative sides of allowing religion exceptions or rules. The marketing is a tool.
secular humanism is seriously needed as a mainstream social movement everywhere, locally and globally.
Don’t you realise you basically sound the same as someone saying
Chrisrian Nationalism is seriously needed as a mainstream social movement everywhere, locally and globally.
Islamic Sharia is seriously needed as a mainstream social movement everywhere, locally and globally.
In general, I hope it becomes taboo and outlawed to base rules or laws around mythology-based scripture.
In a democracy, if there is a sizable Christian population, it makes sense for them to base laws around Christian values. Same if there was a sizable amount of Muslims, Hindus, etc. It doesn’t make sense to give Atheism a special status above all of them as some form of “arbiter of morality”
The reason it’s even a normalized idea that government should be secular is bc it is a better arbiter of morality. For one it is not dogmatic. More bluntly science and mathematics have validity beyond what any religion can offer.
Secularists have gotten pretty dogmatic about things, claiming that some ideas they disagree with is “religious interference” despite the ideas also having secular justification as well.
Secular just means not structured around religion. It makes sense for a democracy to be secular as its constituents come from different religions
Humanism just means finding morality and ethics based on humanitarian ideals instead of from religious doctrine
I am not sure how you think Atheism has anything to do with the above, but yes atheists would be the most likely ones to invoke ideas of secular humanism
Maybe if atheists didn’t abrasively proselytize so much, and denigrate every other faith, they’d feel more comfortable being in the open with their religion.
¯_(ツ)_/¯
Maybe if the (blacks/gays/women/etc) weren’t so loud and in your face, we could accept them as equals.
Go fuck yourself with the horse you rode in on. This some high level ignorant shit for someone that claims to be so spiritually enlightened. You need to reexamine your biases.
It’s pretty cringe to compare the circumstances of atheism to the kinds of oppression black people, women, and lgbtq+ have. Atheism has been a source of oppression as much as atheists have been oppressed.
It is ‘cringe’ to blame any oppressed group of people for being oppressed, that’s the whole point.
Does South African persecution of whites suddenly undo what black people in America have suffered through? Of fucking course not, that’s idiocy.
The fact that a very few atheist states were established in the last century, and a few of them have been oppressive to the religious in that state, does not magically undo thousands of years of persecution. Especially when Atheists are still persecuted and put to death. There are nearly as many countries today that still criminalize atheism (13 total) as there have been atheist states throughout all of recorded history (~20 depending on how picky you want to be).
Eat shit
U dropped this lol \
I sincerely hope this is a troll or sarcasm.
If you believe that your religion is the only valid one, and that the others need to go away, then you are as bad as an evangelical. Anti-theists are just the hypocritical mirror image of evangelicals.
Atheism isn’t a religion bud.
It’s becoming one.
No it isn’t. It has no tenets, no holy books, no authority figures. By definition it is a lack of a religion.
You’re talking about how it SHOULD be. Not how it it’s becoming. And besides- I’m talking about internet “atheism,” not atheism. On the Internet, a truism is basically just hatred as smugness. And it’s evolving into a full-on religion.
You’re talking about how it SHOULD be. Not how it it’s becoming.
No, I am talking about both.
Atheism has no tenets, holy books, authority figures, etc. Nor is it developing those things. That applies in person and on the internet. It is in no way a religion. Not playing golf isn’t a sport.
Yes it is.
It’s a religion in the same way that having no favorite sports team is itself someone’s favorite team.
I get what you’re saying, but it’s not. It’s an ideology. However- with the blind hatred of others who chose to believe differently, they may as well rebrand and become Christianity minus a god.
There is a difference between a belief system and a religion. Beleg in the scientific method, for instance, is not a religion. In fact it is the only belief system that seeks out to falsify it’s tenets. Also it presupposes no overbearing creator or idea.
However not all atheists have the same belief system, however non believers in a god, hence a-theos. One you get those involved you’re becoming a religion.
Yeah to be honest I just didn’t feel like digging into the nuances. There is atheism (nonreligious), and there is Atheism (religious). And to be clear, that’s totally fine. I have nothing against a/Atheism, only anti-theism or any other form of religious exclusivism.
Fair enough. It is a bit of nuance your should consider sharing, as some people in this sub feel antagonized by the idea of being labeled religious. I know that might be the exact self-identifying and group type dynamic that you may equate with religion (I would disagree, but that’s another thing).
However putting it as bluntly as you did might not help in getting your point across, and that’s a shame as it is actually an interesting area for discussion.
Atheists just “don’t believe in your thing”. Do you not believe in some things? Do you believe in the Norse gods? There are thousands of gods you probably don’t believe in.
Not true. As a panentheistic polytheist I feel entirely comfortable affirming (or at least being open to) the existence of literally any noncorporeal entity you can talk about. I just might not have any interest in engaging with that entity.
The irony
Aaaaand there we have yet another religious projectionist.
“Maybe if those atheists would stop giving valid criticisms and became religious instead, they’d feel more comfortable being in the open”
Maybe ask atheists in the middle east why they don’t come out? Nah, they don’t want to die
Maybe ask atheists in southern and mid wesrern US states why they don’t come out? Nah, they don’t want to be ostracized by their families and friends for “being an evil baby eater”
Somebody else already posted the Wikipedia link here about state atheism. Atheists are no more innocent than other people.
Maybe it’s radical, even unfathomable; but it’s almost as if the only pathway with any chance of peace is one where enough people can come to recognize that every. single. person. has their own set of beliefs, and the only kind of accord that has any chance of working for everyone, is one that actively supports diversity of belief.
Atheists are no more innocent than other people.
This is true (and I am an atheist). Our disability is that we have to own our shittiness instead of saying “God told me to do it”, which in the eyes in a lot of theists, is a get-out-of-jail-free card.
No, it’s not true, see my other comment to the same post you replied to. Atheist can be antagonistic at times for sure, but with a good reason. We don’t want religious people dead just because some atheist rule says so.
Bullshit.
Show me the atheist that murdered religious people because of atheism. Show me the atheist that committed countless crimes because of atheism.
Show me the atheist that hates other religions to the point where they will harass funerals because the dead one was religious.
It doesn’t happen. You know what does happen though?
I see no more need to announce I don’t believe in the Christian god than there I see need to announce I don’t believe in Zeus. Both questions are completely irrelevant to my life
Not many Polytheistic Greeks trying to outlaw medicine in my neck of the world tho.
While they’re both similarly lacking evidence and therefore irrelevant, christianity is unfortunately still relevant, as it is being used as a justification for religious based laws nonstop.
Whether you like it or not, your reproductive rights (regardless of sex/gender) are on the line thanks in large part to christianity. Therefore it’s almodt certainly relevant to you. Same goes for a myriad of other social issues.
If I ever say it I specifically say “I don’t believe in any gods.” It’s not that I don’t believe in theirs specifically. They don’t believe in any others, so what’s the difference?
poor default country problem.
I stopped mentioning my atheism because it’s so common among my sociodemographic environment that it’s not anything interesting.
If anything, when casually cracking another “religion bad” joke at work, I’d better check if someone is maybe religious, and I really don’t want to insult them.
– millennial yurobro
We’re not afraid to come out, we just don’t talk about it because religion isn’t important to us and we don’t feel compelled to have everyone believe in the same thing as us.
Now may you be touched by thy noodley appendage
One of the things that makes people dislike atheists is the tendency of atheists to mock other people’s beliefs. Things like the flying spaghetti monster, noodley appendages, etc, are atheist inventions designed to make fun of other people’s beliefs.
You have the right to make these kinds of jokes, but other people have the right to not like you for making jokes that are mocking them. But without the mean spirited memes, there’s nothing else that atheists have going on and communities like this wouldn’t exist.
Someone needs a hug, our noodley overlord gives the best hugs!
Right, it’s not like there aren’t billions and billions of religious nutters out there. I mean I don’t see aethiests killing people for believing in a fairy god monster and yet if you said you’re an atheist in Saudia Araiba etc you’d be killed. The fuck sort of tolerating intolerace is that?
Aethiets are pushing up not down, mocking people for believing in fairy tales seems a very sensible reaction ? especially when they inevitably double down on their nonsense.
“One of the things that makes people dislike religious folk is the tendency of believers to destroy entire relationships over violating dogma, breaking families and refusing to support children.”
…which is to say, let’s not clutch our pearls over jokes, especially those made by communities that are often very scarred by religious abuse. “Punching up” isn’t the problem here.
And their right to tell people that their immoral and going to hell gives atheists the right to mock them.
And you’re also entirely wrong about atheist groups only existing for making memes. I’ve seen many conversations in atheist communities that are people discussing religion, the motivation to hold a belief, metaphysics and epistemological theories, history, biology, physics, anthropology and so on. People in other atheist communities (eg ex-Christian, ex-Muslim) do that as well.
I have to think you know little to nothing about the topic.
Have you ever heard how religionists talk about atheists? I respect the right of people to believe whatever they believe, but I don’t have to respect their actual ridiculous beliefs. Bringing up the FSM, which is specifically aimed at dismantling the absurdism of creationism, is pretty funny. Are you a creationist? My dad was a real Christian minister, and while I don’t believe as he did, I would never mock his actual Christian beliefs. But I’ll mock the idiotic beliefs of fake-Christian creationists any time I tell like it.
It’s like disliking avocado and telling everyone you meet that you don’t like avocado. Telling someone something you’re not isn’t a character trait, so there’s no reason to bring it up.
Unless of course it’s a defense against people pushing their beliefs on you.
“You should eat this avocado”
“No thanks, I don’t like avocado”
“You’re going to go to hell for that.”
Furthermore, even if it were, people will cringe if you announce your “character traits”
there are totally people who dont want to be found out, cause of familial or work repercussions.
Its not uncommon for people to have to hide things like lack of faith, sexuality, “wrong” thought, etc for a variety of reasons.
Both things can be true at the same time.
I remember reading somewhere that if you poll Christians anonymously, almost 20% of them are atheists or agnostics, but if you poll them publicly 100% of them are Christians.
Sounds about right
Religions actively encourage harassing “questioning” family members
I’m a bit surprised with the number of religious people I know irl tbh. I’ve only met maybe one other atheist at school. These people realized that their ancestors believed in another religion and were probably killed and forced to convert right? Probably about half are actually just agnostic and the remaining full believers.
I mean I’m not trying to convert anybody I’m just tryna understand why.
When you grow up in the church, it’s all you know. Not believing isn’t even a thought. Sure, the Bible/church might mention non-believers, but either in a “convert them” sense or a “they will be punished” sense.
No stigma. I assume all such questions have an alternate agenda.
Like I know better than to talk about my stance with any religious nutter. Their beliefs are not grounded in facts and no amount of logic can overcome their emotional outlook. All you can do is make yourself an (enemy) outsider. Anyone that asks me to brand myself on some survey or upon questioning has an agenda, in my opinion. Why should I put my name on some witch hunting list. Witch hunts have always been attacks on academics and abject thinking.
Becoming a first generation atheist is a class in skepticism, misdirection, and manipulation. It is not easy rejecting your entire friends network and questioning foundational ideas learned when we were gullible little children. I’m not about to shoot myself in the foot by feeding the sky wizard monsters with no fundamental logic skills. It’s as stupid as walking into a maximum security prison and opening all the doors. I’ll always defer to answer such a question, select other, or nondenominational.
One cannot reason a person out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into.
personally, i like branding myself as nothing, or one of the various flavors that i feel like partaking in for my own amusement. Sometimes i want people to understand me as little as possible, other times i want to fuck with people. It’s about the optics.
I’m from an arguably secular country but people still put Catholic or Anglican or whatever on the census even though they are “non-practising” and haven’t been to church in years.
Probably better to ask how often people go to church in this type of questionnaire and ignore what people “identify” as.
There isn’t much benefit to doing it.
You get to join the atheist parade every year and can go to atheist club every Sunday!
While I was in the angry atheist online camp when I was the only atheist I knew and needed a community, I’ve since evolved into an apathetic view of individual belief.
Screaming at the thumpers won’t do any good. Eye-rolls are more effective. And explaining religion to the young is as simple as saying it’s just something some people do, like sports.
Or like believing in Santa clause when you’re 73
explaining doesn’t do anything, screaming won’t do anything, but i have a suspicion that heavy satire and performance art might just get something across. At the very least it will provide amusement.
duh. conservatives control both parties.
bOtH SiDeS?!
Well which one is the party of…? Corporations? War? Prisons? Prohibition?
It’s all controlled opposition.
And corruption. You forgot corruption.
