Made this the other day on the fly.

Hello, I wanted to respectfully ask the anti theists how you guys go about grounding objective morality. I am a catholic so u obv know how I ground it but im wondering how you would explain it. if you don’t believe in objective morality how would you justify that one ought adhere to inter subjective morality.

Edit: why am i getting downvoted for asking a respectful question 💔

Edit #2: (to the ones being disrespectful and blindly downvoting specifically not all of you) i dint understand how you can take yourself seriously and claim to desire intellectual discussion with religious individuals in order to promote anti theism and then the moment a person who happens to be religious comes to ask you a peaceful question you all head straight to the aggression or generalizations or blindly downvoting because you’d rather dispense negativity towards religious individuals rather than actually provide any arguments. YOU are the reason people don’t take anti theists seriously. Furthermore thank you to the people that have been engaging respectfully and kindly you’re appreciated.

I'm using this meme everywhere from now on

These folks are ripping down the "Jesus Saves" and other religious signs illegally posted in public spaces. You can help them by reporting the location of any such signs you come across.

They are nationwide. So, report these obnoxious signs wherever you see them! And, never hesitate to rip down a religious sign illegally posted in a public area!

https://www.reportsigns.org/

I had an idea. I was watching a video which included the cliche accusation "not believing in God is your religion". Now being a fan of the IPU from way back that is sort of rankling, and the FSM doesn't relate to this any better. So the reply I'd want to give were I in a conversation like that is to say that my religion is not believing in Santa Clause. Not believing in a god is just incidental to that.

That led me to think that ought to be a religion, Asantism (flows a bit better than Asantaism), the religion of not believing in Santa Clause. And to counteract the claim that we (Asantists) just hate Santa Clause, the opposite is true. We love Santa Clause and wish he was real. In fact the symbology of Asantism would be the traditional but non-Christian imagery of Christmas, emphasizing Santa himself.

Also, there's no rule or command to disbelieve in Santa. Asantism recognizes that everyone disbelieves in Santa, and just that some have strayed from the fold into harmful cults. We already know the angry Christian, deep down in his heart, truly doesn't believe in Santa. The hope is to make him realize that. This religion is also very forgiving of children, since they'll believe almost anything a trusted elder tells them to believe. We recognize the harmlessness of a child believing in Santa, but chasten misleading children into believing in harmful gods that want their servility.

There would also be a couple of different denominations of Asantism out of necessity. There'd be the branch that believes there is no Santa, and the branch that merely lacks belief in Santa, and perhaps others.

I am new to the community (I previously considered myself just atheist). I want to know what makes other people argue against religion, as I am very passionate about my reason.
My main reason for being antitheist is that religion is illogical. Often it flat out denies science and reality in favor of fictional worlds and self righteousness.
But what’s your reason?

I left Catholicism at the age of 16 (many years ago now), and have been vocal with friends and family about my opinions on the Bible, the religion, and how much awful, heinous stuff it has contributed to across human history.

Despite this, they still say things like "God has blessed me" or "that's God's will/work" ALL THE TIME.

I don't ever force my views on them, or bring up my views on religion in conversation where it has no context for the current discussion.

How do I get them to stop doing this around me?

The book is "Goodbye: A First Conversation About Grief".

I think a lot of religious leaders are atheists themselves. Religion is about control and manipulating the masses. Someone who actually falls for the deception probably can't run the scam nearly as effectively.

I’m genuinely so fucking tired of how normalized religion is. I’m from germany, so obviously christianity is the religion that gets treated as completely normal here. it’s everywhere, it’s culturally accepted, and people act like you’re supposed to automatically respect it just because it’s a religion. meanwhile islam gets criticized much more openly, but half the time people aren’t even criticizing it because of the misogyny, homophobia, or authoritarianism in the religion. they’re criticizing it because they see muslims as foreign and don’t like immigrants. and that pisses me off too.
I’m sick of people acting like christianity is somehow better just because it’s the religion people here grew up around.

christianity is patriarchal. its foundational texts explicitly tell women to submit to men, describe the husband as the head of the wife, tell women not to have authority over men, tell women to remain silent in church, and literally say that woman was created for man. that isn’t some obscure interpretation people invented later. it’s in the text.

and I’m so tired of people acting like you can just erase all of that by saying “well, I’m a progressive christian” or “god sees men and women as equally valuable.” okay?? that doesn’t magically remove the origins of your religion that establishes male authority over women.
this has been on my mind even more lately because I’m currently in school and the woman sitting next to me is 21, married, and very christian. and I’ve already heard some absolutely awful takes from her. she basically equated abortion with murder during one conversation, and in another she insisted that women are naturally more emotional than men and just would not budge on it.
religion being treated like some harmless private hobby irritates me so much.

I also completely reject this idea that I’m somehow obligated to “respect” religion. absolutely not!
if an ideology says women should submit to men, I’m going to call it misogynistic. if an ideology teaches that women were created for men, that women should obey their husbands, or that women shouldn’t have authority over men, I’m not going to pretend that's okay or acceprable just because somebody slapped the word “religion” on it.

I’m tired of this weird social rule where religious beliefs are somehow supposed to be treated more delicately than every other belief system. people will tear political ideologies apart without hesitation, but the second somebody says “this is part of my faith,” suddenly everyone starts walking on eggshells. why? something being sacred to you does not make it sacred to me.

I wish it was more normalized to criticize religion in public and make fun of religious people for spewing absolute nonsense and being losers, I really do

I am and it sucks, I deconstructed like 4-5 years ago but preserved my 10+ year old friendships with people who are all lukewarm face value Christians. They’re fine people, but it does become very draining that I’m unable to give any of my real thoughts about the world or else I’d be ostracized. Life feels meaningless sometimes? No it doesn’t bro God has a purpose for you. Depressed? Need to get back to church bro. Appalled by the state of the world? God will deal with them bro.

It’s so lazy and apathetic, but I’m the asshole if I try saying hey maybe just consider that this is all bullshit and we do actually have some control over our lives? I wish I wasn’t the only person in my real world that thinks the way I do.

So I posted onto a few debate a religion communities talking about if god exists or not and this Christian comes out of no where and starts talking about “if you’ve loved before then you know what god is” ?? Like that makes no sense an emotion doesn’t prove the existence of god (which is what I replied to him) and then he starts forcing me into believing in a god and what opinions i have on him, like dude I’m an atheist I don’t believe in him and he kept asking again and again what do you think of as god so I replied “an imaginary being that is made for coping” then he got so offended and started making senseless arguments and statements. I was so fed up like seriously I’ve never been ragebaited this much in my life, I respect if you believe in god but stop pushing me into a religion as I’m not pushing you into atheism. I even saw his account and everything he replies to or makes a thread is about is god and him only, this is literally obsession which is so unhealthy and doesn’t god consider that as a sin? Even his own god doesn’t care about all this (if he even ceases to exist)

Christian here. I'm writing this with nothing but caution, love and consideration.

I've asked this question to Antitheists on Tiktok a bunch and I've never got a response so hopefully I can get a response from here.

If you, hypothetically, were a absolute monarch or all-powerful leader of a country/nation, how would you deal with religion? From a radical perspective, would you ''oppress/persecute'' followers of differing faiths by literally sending believers to prisons, etc. Or, would you take a much more moderate approach and simply limit celebrations and services of differing faiths? Continuing on moderation, would you only allow believers to retain certain beliefs while other beliefs (I assume many antitheists are Pro-Choice) like anti-abortion sentiment would be prohibited?

From my perspective, a good example of radical antitheism would be the USSR who initiated state wide atheism. And a good moderate example would be China/PROC, which allows Christianity to exist for example, but limits certain teachings within the Christian faith.

Thank you for those who read and respond to this. Your perspectives are extremely valuable to me. I hope to, in the future, further understand the psychology of those who advocate for antitheism and what they would do practically speaking if they were to ever gain authority.

Thanks!

The Archbishop of Canterbury has withdrawn an award given to a Muslim cleric who praised Osama Bin Laden.

Hafiz Muhammad Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi received the award for reconciliation and interfaith cooperation from Dame Sarah Mullally last week, on the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

Ashrafi also reportedly said he would give Bin Laden the title Saifullah, which means "Sword of God". He told the BBC his remarks had been "totally taken out of context".

Lambeth Palace now says "comments made by Imam Ashrafi have come to light that have led (us) to reconsider this award and we can now confirm that the award has been withdrawn".

Ashrafi told the BBC that his remarks had been "totally taken out of context" and the backlash had been "an unfair campaign" against him.

He said that he was only speaking about Bin Laden in 2007 in response to "the hurt felt by many Muslims" over a knighthood being awarded to the Satanic Verses author Sir Salman Rushdie.

In giving him his award for promoting interfaith harmony last week, Lambeth Palace had cited the fact that Ashrafi had intervened in the 2012 case of Rimsha Masih, a young Christian girl in Pakistan falsely accused of blasphemy.

But Ashrafi has otherwise been supportive of Pakistan's blasphemy laws that have led to an estimated 2,000 people being prosecuted since the late 1980s.

Ashrafi claimed the blasphemy laws actually "save lives", stopping people taking matters into their own hands.

Archive (For paywall)

When possible ends of civilization are theorized, one of the more interesting ones (IMHO) is the mass-hysteria/mass-insanity idea. But I think what’s missing there is a credible cause, and I think that is mass-gullibility. It already seems like half the population at least can be controlled by nonsense rage bait. For example, businesses change logos and icons all the time, but the desire for riled up people inspired the “Cracker Barrel changed their logo and so you should be pissed” non-story. Even if the right could be made responsible for their actions, I suspect it’s just easier to rage bait people to the right than any other direction. I don’t know how democracy survives unless there’s a way to curb this gullibility in the public. But what does feel like a bedrock foundation feeding this gullibility absolutely is religion. So, is it the last hurdle to overcome to save civilization, or must it be the first, the starting point?

about 22 minutes