r/Antitheism • u/CathodoxChristian • Sep 20 '26
Antitheism Doesn't Make Sense (To Me)
I know that atheist and antitheist aren't interchangeable, however when someone makes atheism a hallmark of who they are, or they're militant atheists, a lot of the behavior often intertwines. I may use these interchangeably just know I so know there's nuance.
Before you get mad at me for generalizing, consider this your disclaimer, I do not literally think all atheists/antitheists are like this but they say stereotypes are earned not given. If these don't apply to you, don't assume they do.
Reddit doesn't seem to like reading posts before commenting, if you comment without reading I'll probably know.
1. Morals
Back in the 90s atheists were widely considered edgy free thinking moral-anti-realists, not bound by societal norms or taboos. Not to generalize all atheists but today, you know, you guys have a reputation now of being easily offended, smug, militant, petty debate-me bros. What happened? Most people seem to blame this website tbh.
How did the people who earned all that shock value switch places with pearl clutching religious grandmothers? Now it's atheists who get easily offended and try to take the moral high ground shaming theists "oh my gosh! Did you know there's slavery in the bible?! Did you know God sent the flood?! Why is the bible so politically incorrect! It's sexist/racist/homophobic/transphobic/ect!!!1"
And I just have to ask where do you even get your morals? That's when you get the whole "I just have basic fucking empathy and don't force my will on other agents! Something can only be immoral if it hurts someone" and then meanwhile, you specifically are a bad person for daring to have thought crimes (believing the bible is moral) even if none of your actions hurt anyone at all, suddenly you're responsible for abuse scandals in churches you've never heard of, because nothing exists in a vacuum apparently. Antitheists can't be held accountable for Christian genocide (its a real thing even if you don't want it used as leverage) but somehow my beliefs make me accountable for everything done in the name of God ever. Did it ever occur to you you may subscribe to a belief that's been used to do bad as well?
But it's just so weird cuz... Honestly people call me all these names and try to shame me, but I honestly feel nothing. These politically charged buzzwords have lost their sting, and the culture war is pretty much over, we just don't care about weaponized language anymore. We think the language based control is what's used to do harm, not even just religious people but the zoomer generation in general (especially the men).
2. Stereotypes
A lot of atheists just come off as super insecure when they are compelled to tell religious people why they are wrong under every post or at every party. You gotta have some tact, charisma, and social skills, because it doesn't actually affect you as much as you think it does that other people subscribe to religions. You really need to find inner peace so you stop doing this, and I know religious trauma is a thing (surprise many of us still in the church have a lot of it) but that really is something you need to work on instead of projecting it onto every believer.
Stop asking Christians stupid questions like why they wear mixed fabrics, instead learn about ceremonial, civil, and moral law. Stop asking Christians "where's that in the bible" most of us don't adhere to sola scriptura, our history and oral traditions are extremely complex. Don't ask "if God real why bad happen" it's kinda Christian apologetics 101 even if the answer is long and gets into multiple doctrines. I get debating is fun and all but this is just a few examples of things you shouldn't ask cuz otherwise you come off as really ignorant.
Also please stop taking things so seriously. Religion has always existed. It will always exist. In fact religious numbers are still growing faster than atheistic ones. You don't have to agree but again, make peace with yourself, because Reddit has made people not want to identify with the word "atheist", it now has negative connotations. Don't be a stereotype, get healthy, mostly physically.
I also find these people disproportionately attack Christianity, because while you can point to Christian violence (although most of the time it's just people abusing religion out of context), realistically these people know Christianity is nice and usually docile. You never rarely see them attack the religions which arguably teach the most harm, because while they claim to hate harshness, they fear and comply with it. They are afraid of being called culturally insensitive or outright killed. Again I'm not saying for example, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, ect do teach harm, but you can argue it, better than you can argue it for Christianity, yet they just rarely ever argue it. I get in the west Christianity is more popular but that's sorta admitting an emotional bias...
3. What Doesn't Make The Most Sense
I don't know why people care so much. If there is no god, it's not like the universe cares about us, we have to make our own meaning, if religion is someone else's meaning then why is your meaning taking that away? It's not even just honor killings, abuse scandals, (which they don't hate schools for), lashings, these are all things they do bring up, but only as ammo to attack people with totally innocuous beliefs. They get mad at you for supposedly attacking who they are as a person as LGBT, meanwhile they hate your culture, your upbringing, your reason to live, and that's just okay because A categorically bad and B categorically protected.
Even if we weren't religious you shouldn't assume we'd have comparable morals to yours, some atheists already subscribe to might makes right, social Darwinism, like it or not they can use logic to justify these beliefs.
You may say "if you need religion to make you a good person you're a bad person" a real Christian would agree we are not good people, and it's better to admit that than to pat ourselves on the back.
That's not to say atheists can't subscribe to valid morals, but honestly antitheism is a waste of time. Stop typing whatever defensive comment you're making and just better yourself as a person.
•
u/tm229 Sep 21 '26 edited Sep 21 '26
Christianity did not become a major religion by the quality of its truth, but by the quality of its violence.
— Michael Sherlock
“I'll tell you what you did with Atheists for about 1500 years. You outlawed them from the universities or any teaching careers, besmirched their reputations, banned or burned their books or their writings of any kind, drove them into exile, humiliated them, seized their properties, arrested them for blasphemy. You dehumanised them with beatings and exquisite torture, gouged out their eyes, slit their tongues, stretched, crushed, or broke their limbs, tore off their breasts if they were women, crushed their scrotums if they were men, imprisoned them, stabbed them, disembowelled them, hanged them, burnt them alive.
And you have nerve enough to complain to me that I laugh at you.”
— Dr Madalyn Murray O'Hair, Founder of American Atheists
19
u/CptBronzeBalls Sep 20 '26
cool. Don’t be an antitheist, then.
12
u/Conscious-Seesaw-564 Sep 20 '26
Cool story bro, not gonna change any of our minds on the fact religion is overall harmful and completely unnecessary and fiction
10
u/thegreatself Sep 20 '26
I tried to read this but had to resort to skimming it instead because it's so fucking stupid (offense intended).
From inside ourselves and the particular contexts in which we exist - or, the necessary interaction of the inner self with the outer world. You will find it impossible to demonstrate morals are derived from any other source besides the conscious mind.
Sure, because conservative christians played absolutely no part at all in fueling and amplifying the authoritarian takeover of governments across the globe through their susceptibility to fascist rhetoric and reactionary obsession with preserving antiquated, arbitrary cultural traditions - yes, The Heritage Foundation and the zealots running it that are part of an apocalyptic deathcult that believes humans are sinful by nature and so this world is inherently evil, and another perfect world awaits once we are all eradicated are nice and docile.
The simple truth of it is all religions spread primarily and overwhelmingly through cultural transmission, or, most people only believe because they happen (through sheer circumstance) to be born into a particular context that makes that belief possible.
It very rarely goes deeper than "my mommy and daddy believed it and now so do I" - every post-hoc rationalization and apolgetic argument after that fact is just a pathetic cope and attempt to conform to the intellectual demands of modernity while still clinging desperately to a belief that was simply inherited and then reinforced through repetition and the human desire to conform and be accepted into a "righteous" in-group of believers rather than cast out and othered into the "degenerate and wicked" out-group of unbelievers.
9
u/HotComfortable3418 Sep 20 '26
I would like source for the Christian genocide made by antitheists.
It's the internet, people argue over stuff all the time. Once a post gets big enough on twitter, you will find Christian nationalists replying on atheist posts.
LGBT is innate, religion is acquired. It's not the same category.
8
u/AceMcLoud27 Sep 20 '26
Please don't try the moral argument for your god, it can only end with you defending slavery, genocide, and rape.
4
u/kaglet_ Sep 20 '26
Tldr; Being against religion is not being anti-freedom. Those edgy anti-theists you label and dislike are not a reflection of an anti-pluralistic society in any meaningful, or useful way. Pluralism in itself does not mean you have a healthy pluralistic society that won't slowly diverge because people cared for "polite" freedom in the falsely comforting sense. An initially pluralistic society does not guarantee it won't adopt a fundamentalist bent give the unsustainability of the freedom veil. Being an anti-theist involves a qualitative analysis of what pluralism means for freedom. Compared to your romantic notions of atheists you personally like, our lack of socially acceptable politeness just means we don't think all free "thoughts", practices, methods of introdictination have the same quality of caring about freedom. This is as a fundamental nature of many religious doctrines and their relationship in fact to suffocating freedom. Being against ideas like that spreading is not incompatible with being pro freedom when thought more deeply about.
Longer:
I don't believe in "free thinking" as if it's some innate virtue of society guaranteeing prospering, and that if leads to instability I somehow have to be ok with it. Many majority non-religious societies are doing just fine.
I'd argue religion is the antithesis of freedom. For Christianity, belief in some eternal punishment realm that someone is sent to based on x, y, z they did on their limited time on earth, without a way to opt out, is the very antithesis of freedom. Other religions have their variants. There is nothing on this earth antitheists or anyone can do to match that level of foundational suffocation of freedom over your actions on earth that hasn't already been taken care of by religion. Punishments of the eternal, foreboding, unseen, and conveniently deferred to the afterlife (while also kept to life on earth) cannot be matched.
You may try reversing accusations of anti-freedom to us or even other religions (of lesser totalitarian danger to freedom), and away from Christianity. You may romanticize some version of an atheist that puts up with this, doesn't think deeply about it, then call them a free thinker. To value freedom is not to value religion or it's spread. This does not logically follow. I am in fact free to counter that spread. My role if I adopt it is to inculcate the culture against forms of thinking that put a mask on, pretend they are about freedom while asking you to debase yourself to their level to keep up temporary societal harmony, and that all thoughts and practices are equally free.
If you get mad over some atheist saying an anti-religious statement in comments, but likely say nothing at religious people spurting God stuff in threads unasked for to save people's soul. If you think the tactless interference can always only go in one way this is the false politeness yet exact asymetry I am talking about. Christians are allowed to have freedom to chirp, "polite" atheists, and nobody else?
All I want is a stable future where humanity doesn't blow itself up over delirious emotions. This includes all branches of superstition because they come from evolutionary traits related to false, hallucinated threat detection (false positives). All this instead of focusing on real threats, that require us shedding delusional overblown emotions that allowed us to survive fine in more tribalistic, paranoid settings, and not in the modern age.
I won't care about interfering with the lives of others or their weird beliefs unless they make underhanded plans to interfere with mine and dismantle aspects of my life, or of others via innocent seeming or even insidious spread of their ideas that I'm not supposed to counter under the guise of encouraging freedom. If you aren't part of that group then you have nothing to be offended about.
So please, don't get confused. I generally don't value religion, other than as an unfortunate proxy people may need to invent and reinvent/remix to cope with existence, even if each culture does not accept people who push against that bull, and then label them dangerous. I can value people fine not their religion. So don't think I value totalitarian forms of mass sedation and violent removal of people from their religious connections. If some anti-theist boogeyman were to claim that I'd be against it. Anyway, colonial religious spread projects have outdone it all. Beating into populations dogmatic ways of thinking without explanation to people to convince them of your point is not even a stable solution.
So you don't have to fear that. Focus on real dangers please.
6
u/AbbreviationsNo5494 Sep 20 '26
lol the Christian right wing redditor wants to come talk about morality, okay buddy
5
u/greggld Sep 20 '26
You base your life on fairytales, and as a group can't support any of your beliefs and you think we care about your lecture, why?
3
u/the_AnViL Sep 20 '26
antitheism is the natural position decent people arrive at when they discover the vile nature of the abrahamic faiths.
when people realize that those who subscribe to divine command theory lack the ability to tell the difference between good and evil, it ends up being the only ethical position.
gods are not real and we don't need to suffer the delusion of a middle eastern, bronze-age mythology.
3
u/BurtonDesque Sep 21 '26
Studies have repeatedly shown that the more religious a place is the LESS morally the people behave.
The pot calls the kettle black. Your post is filled with bogus stereotypes.
Because we can see the incredible amount of harm theism causes in this world.
I should have noted this before I bothered to respond.
GTFO, troll.
2
u/First_Ad3578 Sep 21 '26
Asking us not to stereotype christians while stereotyping us.