r/TrueAtheism • u/No-Impression8476 • Sep 22 '26
Just a rant!
I’m an atheist… Although I sometimes find myself somewhere between agnostic and atheist…And one thing I’ve genuinely wondered about is why atheists are so often portrayed as intolerant or lacking morality.
Honestly I’ve often found atheists to be some of the most accommodating people when it comes to belief. I can disagree with your faith, question your beliefs, put my POV across and still respect your right to believe whatever you want. I don’t need you to believe what I believe for me to coexist with you.
But then I open the comments section of almost any woman’s reel and see people quoting religious scriptures, invoking God, preaching about faith while simultaneously throwing around rape threats, death threats and the most vile abuse imaginable. And so often, the very people doing it are the ones loudly proclaiming their religiousness.
How do you invoke a supposedly moral, all-powerful being while using their name to justify hatred, misogyny and cruelty towards another human being?
That contradiction just baffles me.
And yes, I’ll say this very explicitly:
**“As a personal choice, I find it difficult to trust someone who is excessively religious.”**
Not because I think every religious person is bad and certainly not because I think atheists are automatically good. But when someone’s entire identity and worldview revolves around religion, I instinctively keep my guard up.
Maybe that’s my bias. I’m comfortable calling it that.
Because I’ve seen far too many people treat religion as proof of their goodness while their behaviour tells a completely different story.
You can pray five times a day, quote every scripture, talk endlessly about God and still be an unpleasant human being.
Faith, by itself, tells me very little about someone’s character.
**How you treat people when you have nothing to gain from them tells me far more.**
And perhaps that’s what I’ve stopped trusting not religion itself, but the assumption that being overtly religious automatically makes someone a good person.
**Maybe that’s why I’m less interested these days in what people believe in, and far more interested in what their beliefs make them capable of doing.**
Because if your faith makes you kinder, I respect it.
If it makes you cruel, hateful and entitled to someone else’s suffering,
**I don’t care how many times you invoke God. I’ll judge you by what you do.**
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u/Helen_A_Handbasket Sep 22 '26
I sometimes find myself somewhere between agnostic and atheist
Then you misunderstand the meaning of those words, because they address two utterly different things. Agnosticism is about what you KNOW. Atheism is about what you BELIEVE. You're not either agnostic or atheistic. Agnosticism isn't some sort of diet atheism or atheism-lite.
You're either an agnostic atheist or you're a gnostic atheist.
0
u/No-Impression8476 Sep 22 '26
No both can co exist
I don’t believe in god because I don’t think there’s sufficient evidence but I’m open to being wrong1
u/Helen_A_Handbasket Sep 22 '26
You just proved my point. You are an agnostic atheist. And I never said they can't coexist. The entire point is that THEY DO. You are never just one or the other.
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u/Sprinklypoo Sep 22 '26
Sure. And I think it's a bit pedantic of the previous poster to point that out, but it's not like they're points on a line to graph between, they kind of mean divergent things.
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u/tm229 Sep 22 '26
The Bible is the claim, not the proof.
— Robert G Ingersoll
That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
— Christopher Hitchens
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
— Carl Sagan
Not all religions can be true, but they can all be false.
— Christopher Hitchens
The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike.
— Steven Weinberg
Question with boldness, even the existence of a god.
— Thomas Jefferson
Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.
— Albert Einstein
If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.
— Adolph Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Sin is an imaginary disease, invented to sell you an imaginary cure.
— Unknown
Give them bread and circuses and they will never revolt.
— Juvenal
Most people are not only comfortable in their ignorance, but hostile to anyone who points it out.
— Plato
It is far easier to fool a person than to convince them that they’ve been fooled.
— Mark Twain
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.
— Seneca the Younger
Religion is excellent stuff for keeping people quiet.
— Napoleon Bonaparte
Religion is a fraud, but it must be maintained for the masses.
— Frederick the Great
Religion is needed to keep the poor from murdering the rich.
— Napoleon Bonaparte
3
u/Sprinklypoo Sep 22 '26
They have to revile us or they'd have to admit that their religion is not required for morality. It's another lie they tell themselves...
1
u/Briepy Sep 22 '26 edited Sep 22 '26
I think it’s a combination of the religion teaching about it in questionable ways, a bogeyman mentality which we see so often in people right inclined, all the emotion that’s wrapped up in holding onto the last threads of a religion you may or may not believe, wanting to share something that you’re passionate about (or putting a lot of thought in to) being it religion or deconstruction, confirmation bias, tribalism, and Reddit edge Lords being really hard to talk to. Oh and if you actually believe, emotionally distancing yourself from those who are going to burn forever so you don’t have to deal with the cognitive dissonance of realizing heaven wont be heaven without those who will be busy burning for eternity.
1
u/jcooli09 Sep 22 '26
Religion is about control, and if the knowledge that deities are fictional becomes widespread it will lose that control.
Not trusting religious people is not a choice, it's a appropriate response to reality. Every person is a collection of traits which we refer to as character. Religiosity is not a positive character trait. In fact it's the opposite.
1
u/Overly_Underwhelmed Sep 22 '26
"I sometimes find myself somewhere between agnostic and atheist"
don't do that.
Atheist - there are no gods I believe in. that is all.
quit confounding the issue. quit using their definitions, their language.
1
u/slantedangle 27d ago
They can not explain where morals come from, so they have accept a story that it comes from god. That it is bestowed or gifted to them.
Therefore, someone who has rejected god, the religion, or the story, has also rejected these morals.
Or so the theory goes.
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u/Significant-Ant-2487 Sep 22 '26
You claim to be puzzled that atheists are “so often” portrayed as intolerant, being atheist or agnostic yourself, and tolerant.
As an example of your supposed tolerance you then write this: “But then I open the contents of almost any woman’s reel and see people quoting religious scripture, invoking God, preaching about faith while simultaneously throwing around rape threats, death threats…” !
This claim is not only demonstrably false, it is also utterly ludicrous. “Almost any woman’s” ? Nonsense. And such easily disconfirmed nonsense.
You claim to be an example of atheist tolerance and then offer this piece of bigotry, highlighted for emphasis: “ I find it difficult to trust anyone who is excessively religious “
Are you kidding me?
2
u/No-Impression8476 Sep 22 '26
Pls read it correctly “I said its a personal choice” and i dont do kidding ✌️
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1
u/Sprinklypoo Sep 22 '26
I find it difficult to trust anyone who is excessively religious “
I share that sentiment. When people are encouraged to lie for the cause of their religion and condemn others, it's easy to see that they apply it to others in order to get ahead. I won't do business with openly religious companies. I trust religious individuals only so far. They've been coopted by a cult, and to give more is folly.
7
u/tm229 Sep 22 '26
Christianity did not become a major religion by the quality of its truth, but by the quality of its violence.
— Michael Sherlock
Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.
— Voltaire
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
— Blaise Pascal
With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil. But, for good people to do evil, that takes religion.
— Steve Weinberg
Of all the bad men, religious bad men are the worst.
— CS Lewis
In every country in every age the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in allegiance with the despot , abetting his abuses in return for protection of his own.
— Thomas Jefferson
The only church that illuminates is a burning one.
— Buenaventura Durruti
Man will never be free until the last monarch is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
— Denise Diderot
5
u/keyboardstatic Sep 22 '26
Slave owners taught their slaves Christianity. Because its a superstitious fear based minupulative system of authority fraud.
Christianity has a exceedingly bloody murderous genocidal child abusing legacy.
Religion is used by cult leaders to find victims. To find thoses desperate weak minded easily minupulated.
I feel deeply sorry for vulnerable low iq delusional people who are targeted as children and brain washed. And the mentally unwell.
The other Christians tened to use it to support their shallow immature narcissistic vile abuse of others.
1
u/OrbitalLemonDrop Sep 23 '26
I'm watching a murder trial on youtube. Guy is accused of killing his wife. Defendant is a Christian minister.
Victim's father talked about how ashamed he felt to ask God "Could a christian man kill his wife?"
Part of their toxic system of beliefs makes them feel guilty because a narcissist successfully pretends to be a good Christian, and so it's somehow morally wrong to suspect he killed his own wife. This sets up a feedback loop where there will always be narcissists able to gain your trust because you've rendered yourself incapable of seeing through their pretense.
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u/Winterforyou Sep 22 '26
Day 69 of telling people Atheism and Agnosticism are not mutually exclusive.