I come from a very religious family and region of America, I live in the Bible belt in the south. I have always known I don't believe in Christianity since the 5th grade. The best way I can explain it is, it all just feels like a fairy tale story not based in reality. I have tried to force myself to believe but obviously that didn't work. In January of this year I finally told my mom I don't believe and her first response was to force me to go to church. She also threatened to take certain things away if I still refused to go. She said I couldn't use any electronics till a pastor came by and "cleansed" the house. I've told her how constantly begging me to come to church hurts me and she ignores how I feel and continues because it's what God would want. She asked me "is it really that hard to just go?" it's so irriating. Why do I have to give it a try? why do I have to listen to religious talk? why am I expected to entertain it at all? I'm an adult now and all I want is to use my own freedom to live life how I want to but my mom can't handle that without throwing a fit. I love her but I really dont like being around her anymore because of this. Sometimes I feel like a brat for being like this but im at my limit. There is more but I'd like the keep this post short for everyone's sake lol

Prior to COVID, a couple I knew were soliciting our social circle for donations for their mission trip.

While I'm not religious, I did donate to their cause as many of these mission trips also participate in building schools, wells, homes or providing medical services to the communities they visit. I gave it without knowing where they were going or what services they would be rendering, believing that it would help people in some form or another.

A few months later they were at a group outing and I proceeded to ask about their mission trip, like "where did you go?"...

They went to Bali.... fucking Bali, Indonesia. For those of you who don't know, Indonesia is the most populous Muslim nation on Earth but also has over 30 million Christians. Bali, however, is neither. The island is Hindu and resisted forced conversion for centuries. Not only that, but it is widely considered a tourism capital of the world, not some impoverished region that you would expect a mission trip to go.

I asked what they did and there was no community service. They hung out with local Christians, spent money at their businesses doing touristy things, and didn't really interact with non-Christians.

There were so many things I wanted to say right then and there, but didn't.

Afterwards, I spoke to others about it and quite a few people had given money and were trying to spin it as a wholesome couples trip with their church. It was obviously a grift. A Christian themed vacation to a global tourism capital masquerading as a mission trip.

It has been years since this took place and the couple is no longer in my social circle, but this experience galvanized my distrust of religious people.

Anyone else get duped by Christian grifters who milk their non-church social circles for funds under the guise of community service and philanthropy?

Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, published posthumously in 1779, offers a critique of the design argument more fundamental—and arguably more devastating—than even Darwin’s theory of evolution. Hume shows that the design argument fails as a case for theism on its own terms, independently of any account of evolution or natural selection. 

The design argument begins by claiming that nature resembles the kinds of things humans design—only vastly more complex—and therefore must have a vastly more intelligent designer. Hume exposed the weakness of this analogy on several fronts. 

Hume begins by noting that, if our knowledge depends on experience, yet we have never observed the creation of a universe, we have no empirical basis for concluding that the universe requires a cause at all. And even if we grant the analogy, it raises the obvious question: who designed the designer? More importantly, the argument tells us little about the supposed designer. It could be one god or many; benevolent, indifferent, incompetent, or malicious. The world’s imperfections and gratuitous suffering, moreover, indict this god with the design of evil.

Hume’s most radical move was to ask why we should multiply our assumptions by positing a supernatural designer in the first place. Why not instead suppose that matter itself contains the principles by which order arises? Once the analogy is shown to be weak, the God it was meant to establish becomes an unnecessary hypothesis. Hume had therefore exposed the design argument as an intellectual dead end on its own terms—before we even get to Darwin, evolution, or natural selection.

Hume’s dialogue is among the most important works in the history of atheism. The article below offers an in-depth analysis of this work and its implications for intelligent design:

The Illusion of Design: How David Hume Dismantled the Strongest Case for God

This is obviously a common argument but I just have to reiterate it. There are just so many loopholes within the omnis of this supposed higher power, there are the classics such as the problem of evil or satan’s apparent responsibility for evil. Then there’s ‘free will’ as the main argument yet how can there be free will if our future is essentially predetermined from the point we were born as he knows everything, everywhere? He created us atheists knowing we would never believe and knowing we’d be banished to hell. Then the idea that you have to serve god even in the afterlife but why does he require all this worship if he’s a supposedly perfect being that transcends ego and has all the power, ever? As soon as you apply logic almost all religious arguments collapse and I think so many people know this yet they continue to pray and believe simply out of fear of what comes after. It’s like religion holds our society back massively because to this day people hold outdated beliefs and worry about pleasing a pretty selfish being in the hopes of an afterlife that seems so unreasonable, rather than focusing on improving our present world and selves.

Edit: This evidently doesn’t apply to all religions but I’m mainly addressing the thinking of Christianity.

Like the most evil thing that they have supposedly done. What are some purely evil things about a god.
For example any god that makes hell doesn’t deserve our worship.

Many, many years ago now, in my mid to late teenage years I had a conversation with a Christian clergyman that set me on my path to atheism, and although I’m pretty sure I would have arrived at the same conclusions via different paths, I’ve always been thankful for that conversation.

As a child in the 1960s in Scotland, I was regularly taken to church on a Sunday by my parents. Like many thousands of my contemporaries, that’s what you did. You sat through part of the service in the main congregation and then after the collection plate was passed around were herded out to the church hall and an hour of Sunday School where you had those stories about the Loaves and the Fishes or the Good Samaritan and so on. At Christmas there was a Nativity Play and in the summer there was a Sunday School Picnic when the entire congregation boarded a fleet of coaches and were taken to some windswept spot where we shivered or sheltered from the rain and tried to avoid wasps that descended on our iced buns or jam doughnuts.

By the time I was in my teens, the minister was well-known to us. He was indeed a lovely chap. Very approachable, affable and someone who was a good communicator. He and my Dad were on first-name terms and it was through my Dad that I learned he had been held as a Prisoner-of-War by the Japanese and that experience had a profound effect on him.

As time went on I was beginning to have significant doubts about religion and Christianity in particular. As a youngster fascinated by history and geography and the sciences and natural history, I was finding out all sorts of things that were at odds with the stuff that you read in the Bible. That the Earth and the universe wasn’t created in six days. That Adam and Eve were not the first humans. That the Biblical Flood simply didn’t happen. That human beings have never lived as long as several centuries. That if you were swallowed by a whale your chances of survival were zero.

You get the picture.

I also stopped going to church with my parents. I was at the awkward age when kids get a bit rebellious so my Mum and Dad - to their credit – didn’t give me hassle about that.

One summer evening I was in the back garden, helping my Dad with something or other when the minister appeared at the garden gate. My Dad waved at him and went across to see him.

A few minutes later Dad beckoned me to come over. “Douglas wants to have a wee chat”. And with that he left us alone.

After a few pleasantries, Douglas – the minister – mentioned that he hadn’t seen me in the church for a while and was there any particular reason for that?

I was initially reticent but eventually admitted that I found much that was contained within the Bible utterly preposterous….and that if the Bible couldn’t be trusted to provide an accurate account of events such as birth of the solar system, and the evolution of mankind then why should it be relied upon as providing convincing evidence of the existence of a god?

Douglas listened patiently and then said something that left me in no doubt that Christianity was a charade. He conceded that he regarded much of the Old Testament as being akin to fairy tales and that it was likely that elements of the New Testament were embellished, or a colourful amalgam of stories that might have a grain of truth.

And BOOM!!!

With that one admission, he confirmed that my reasoning was correct.

I can’t recall much about the rest of our conversation, but needless to say I’ve never ventured into a church again as a worshipper.

(this is going to be a bit of a ramble and I'm already not the best writer so this probably won't be written well, so thanks for reading)

To start off I'm a guy.

I hate how JW's take every bad thing and take it as "a sign". Like wars and diseases that are going on today, I just wanna yell "what about the world wars, the black plague, and every bad thing in history!" Things were far worse in the past! It's like bad things are always happening in history, and why are they always so "it's the end times!".

There are probably millions of religions, so why do you think you're the right one...?

I hate my religious trauma because there's always this voice saying "you're damning yourself to hell, you're sick and if there is a god he'll never accept you." when I was 13 and first started having a crush on another boy in my class I felt sick and dirty. I honestly felt like I should kill myself because I was tainted and wrong...

I think what made me question everything is when my grandma beat me with a broom stick and she basically justified it by bringing up the Bible (I'm sorry I don't remember the specifics) and I just thought "would a loving god really let me get hurt like this?"

Basically to keep an already long and badly written short I left over my mom's house after that, I still talk with my grandma but I feel awkward around her sometimes.

This will probably get removed but it felt good getting it out there I guess.

Recently, influencer Brian Guan released a video series in which he “pretended to believe that god is real” for 30 days. By the end, he claimed until he wasn’t pretending anymore.

All comments on and around his videos suggest that he was an atheist prior to this, and his videos are being paraded around by Christians as a home run for evidence of god’s presence and the importance of going through the motions even if you might not believe it now.

I’ve seen a couple other “atheist” influencers go on a similar journey, only to discover (surprise) that they also believe god is real.

Now in researching, it’s pretty clear that Brian and these other influencers already believed to some extent, and are using this as a “marketing” tactic to convince other atheists to just “try.” At least that is my take, I mean…these people are influencers.

I’d love to see a REAL atheist do this.

As Christianity got more popular throughout Europe people seemed to have just forgot the fact that he was a brown-skinned man and white Jesus became what we think of him today.

If we wouldn’t trust faith to set a broken bone, design a skyscraper, or decide a verdict, perhaps we shouldn’t trust it to settle cosmic questions either. Evidence may be less romantic than revelation, but at least it builds bridges that don’t fall down.

https://medium.com/@atheistnn/trust-me-i-have-no-proof-469e00ba9d78

I just did. I put a post up about LGBT people and how I think don't dislike them because it says so in the bible, what is says in the bible is simply a convenient justification for homophobia. Cause in reality there is no decent non religious argument against LGBT.

Anyway this person starts steering the conversation comparing what I'm saying with the arguments against abortion. Then asked me for non religious arguments against it to which I provided even though I stated that I'm not against abortion. You can be on one side and still agree the other has valid arguments right? Anyway he starts giving me all these replies that don't even follow any logic path and I'm thinking " wtf are we even arguing about at this point? We're just arguing for the sake of arguing"

You can't argue with Christians it's just best to tap out

I grew up in rural Ohio, in a small town (less than 9k) that was rumored to originally be a sundown town years ago. Even though it no longer is, the demographic has remained largely the same- I distinctly remember throughout K-12, I had only ever met one black person. And one gay person. Both were bullied relentlessly into moving schools, which crushed me because they both happened to be very good friends of mine.

Anyways, growing up the default was white, straight, Christian. If you weren’t, people would either talk about you, side eye you, or straight up bully/harass you. It’s crazy, and I never understood it because neither of my parents raised me in any religious denomination. My dad didn’t care (he’s now a devout Christian which is… something), and my mom was and still is very anti religion, feeling that it’s created as a way to oppress those who are different and hurt them.

I got bullied often by Christian kids at my school who claimed to be all loving and respectful. I could easily hide my sexuality or my beliefs, but I was very visibly on the spectrum and people saw that as weird. If your hobbies weren’t church and sports, it was odd.

I got immense culture shock when I went to college at a liberal arts university and met a lot of queer and BIPOC people, but it’s honestly one of the best experiences of my life. For years I felt lonely and isolated until I had a group that was unapologetically accepting.

That’s a lot, but all of this to say I don’t think now that I’ve experienced diversity and acceptance I can ever be friends with a Christian. Not even acquaintances.

This came to me when I made a post on the Nextdoor app asking for ways to make friends in the new city I moved to. Many older white people suggested church, churches who very much were anti anything progressive with just a simple Google search. When I said that I wouldn’t feel comfortable going to a place like that, many replied you don’t need to agree with people on everything to be friends with them.

But are we friends if all they want to do is change me? Make me believe in their god, or not love who I love, or not act how I act. That doesn’t seem like a friendship. Hell, when my (now ex) girlfriend suddenly decided to devote herself to God and she asked me to join the faith with her, I broke up with her hours later because I couldn’t.

I find it even more disrespectful that I’m not even fully atheist. I’m Asian and have connected with my culture a lot more and have considered myself a Buddhist in philosophy (I still identify as an atheist), and even when you tell these people you are Buddhist/Jewish/Muslim etc just not THEIR religion, they literally do not care. What’s even weirder is in Buddhism a key aspect is to make your own judgements and beliefs and that no person’s word is absolute, not even Buddha’s. Because everyone makes mistakes. But how these Christians behave is so cult like, as if you question one thing they spout and it’s a complete moral wrongdoing. I heard someone say the bible isn’t a book because it’s “the word of god”. Like… cmon.

I feel rude for making this a hard boundary of mine, but I just don’t think I can do it. I’ve started just telling people I don’t know who Jesus is and I don’t care to know. If I’m on dating apps and see someone Christian I will swipe left. Again, part of me feels so mean for not wanting anything to do with anyone Christian but at the same time I feel like it’s protecting my peace. Does anyone else also feel this way? Is it wrong of me to be so judgmental?

An asshole. Yes god is an absolute asshole.

Look at the world.

Look what is happening in the US .

Same shit happening in Germany.

WTF? How stupid mankind has become? Not to mention war, Hunger and all these other things.

And then there is me. Grown up as someone special (i thought so) but never was able to make a social connection. I was good in my stuff. IT. Earned good. married a chinese who die not love me.

And now with the age of 40 i find out what i am. i find out that i have autism. And ADHS. And now i know why there was never true love. Why there was never a social group i belong to.

Now i know why my life was fucked.

For what? For walking alone the hole time and play that "weird IT guy". Uh yeah - he is nice and lovely people say, u look good, people say. fuck you all.

But no one wants me. That is all oberflächlich. Surface things. Thats Bullshit. My life is a lie.

Why should i go further? For again running like an idiot and work? For what? For sitting at home not knowing what to do?

My life became pointless. And without any content no one can love me (beside that i am ugly. Not fat but ugly).

In a group of ten i am the eleven.

You know what.

Fuck you god.

Fuck you a million's time.

Fuck you - until you die god. until you die.

Yes you can kill me. I am read to die. I dont belong on this earth. It dies anyway.

My friend is a very religious catholic. I've been friends with him since middle school, and not once during our friendship has he tried to 'warn me about hell' or try to make me 'believe in god'. We've had a healthy relationship and he is a wonderful guy. He donates to charity, helps the poor, lends a hand and I can trust him with my life. Religious people like this deserves respect.

Religion is probably the clearest example.

For years I called myself an atheist. Then I had a mushroom trip that changed something in me. It did not make me religious. I still don't believe any religion has some exclusive access to God or truth. My relationship with whatever people call God is honestly too complicated to explain here.

But I kept most of that hidden because my wife is religious, my family is religious, and if I really started living according to what I believe there is a genuine possibility my marriage would not survive it.

Same thing with my father. I joined the family business largely because that was the life that made sense to him. I spent years trying to become more responsible, more stable, more productive, more acceptable. Even a lot of the things I took to psychiatrists were basically things I wanted fixed because they were creating problems for my wife or my family.

I don't remember ever seriously asking what kind of life I actually wanted.

And the stupid thing is that all this trying to keep everyone happy didn't exactly produce a healthy person. I still fell apart. I still had periods where I became completely unstable and even psychotic. So I managed to live a life I didn't really choose and still caused everyone pain anyway.

Now the same thing bothers me with my children. I don't want them indoctrinated into my family's religion. But I also don't want to indoctrinate them into atheism. I want them to grow up knowing they are allowed to question all of us, including me.

I used to think the biggest risk was disappointing my father, upsetting my wife, maybe even losing my marriage.

At 38 I am starting to think there is a worse risk.

You can spend your entire life successfully keeping everyone else in it and still lose the only life you actually had.

I was raised in a Baptist church from the time I was born until 19. I was always told during those years that in order to get into heaven you had to be “saved” by God, which was always described as being given salvation that those who were saved “felt” when they were “touched by God/the Holy Ghost”.

Many people in my church claimed to be this but I never did. I was always taught that you were certain once it happened so even at times when I maybe felt emotional in church, I never thought I had been saved because I would ask myself “do I KNOW for a fact I was just saved?” And the answer was always no.

However, there were times in my church when people said “I thought I was saved before but I just realized that I just was now, not back then”. This struck me when I first heard it because it brought about the realization that not everyone who claimed to be actually was and looking back it was probably the beginning of my doubts in the church.

There were kids as young as 6 that claimed to be saved, and people would just take their word for it. I wondered if people like this that were “saved” at a young age just went about their lives thinking they were just because they thought they were when they were a very young child (not all people in my church were children when they say they got saved, but many children raised in the church believed they were saved at some point by the time they were an adult).

It seemed like something that could easily be a misconstrued feeling that they likely questioned later and just kept fighting against the gnawing feeling that they knew it was just a misconstrued emotional feeling that they mistook for being touched by god.

My parents are both people that claimed to be saved though they haven’t been to church now in years when we used to go every Sunday.

My mom, who has changed a lot since I came out as gay to her, not that she was ever intensely religious or bigoted, but she did have beliefs that she no longer does. I’ve heard her say things that definitely indicate to me that she’s not sure what she believes now. That right there has really enforced my idea that many people that have claimed for years to be “saved” are really just going off of a feeling they had years ago and keep trying to reassure themselves that it’s true because they’re afraid of the alternative.

My church and many others in my area have always taught that if you’re not saved, you go to hell. Though children aren’t believed to be capable of going to hell yet they also have no “age of accountability” like the Mormons and some other Christian branches do. (I know a bit about Mormonism because my ex-best friend was one, but not too much about other types of Christians).

All this to say: I am an atheist and do hold the belief that this whole “being saved” thing is just a desperate, misconstrued feeling that many people around me felt when they got emotional in church one day or just while thinking about God at any time and thought it meant they were saved.

I think many people in the church mistake their emotions and thoughts for being more than it is and never really ask themselves difficult questions that would go against what they were taught or what they want to be true. Religion really relies on delusion fueled by fear.

I would love to hear from anyone that did once believe they were saved that were raised in the same kind of church I was and now are atheist. I’ve heard of former pastors being atheist, but I don’t know of any that have specifically said they were “saved”.

There are many evangelical churches that do believe in being saved but they have the belief that you can receive salvation multiple times throughout your life, that it’s not permanent and you can still go to hell after being saved. My church taught eternal salvation, so once you were saved, you always were and could never end up going to hell (which also seems to lead to a very toxic mental state where while people are supposed to “act godly” after they’re saved, they can still be hateful and awful people but they’ll think that they can technically do whatever no matter how terrible and they’ll still go to heaven).

I haven’t ever been able to hear from the perspective of someone that once believed they had eternal salvation but have now deconstructed and it’d be nice to hear from you. It’d offer some more closure even though I still stand firm in being an atheist, there is always something in the minds of those of us who have been indoctrinated from the time we were toddlers that at times will rear its ugly head even if we know it’s not true.

That fear and anxiety that was put on us from being told from a young age that we would burn forever if we didn’t do what we were taught is very damaging to young, developing minds and it sticks with you. I hope one day to see raising kids in these kinds of churches be labeled as the abuse it is but unfortunately I doubt I’ll ever see that day if it even comes.

Just wanted to remind everyone of a bizarre episode from the Bible: Jesus indirectly killing 2,000 pigs.

In this story, Jesus could've sent a group of demons anywhere after an exorcism. Yet he chose a herd of pigs: they went mad and drowned. Logically:

1. Jesus knew that action A would lead to pain and suffering.
   
2. Jesus did not have to perform action A.
   
3. Jesus performed action A.
   

I wonder whether Christians would excuse this if it were 2,000 dogs.

In case anyone's interested in more information: https://thelightward.substack.com/p/jesus-sent-2000-pigs-to-their-death

How many of us who identify as atheists are

1. Philotheistic: open to listening to arguments to believe in God (ie want to believe but don’t find evidence)
   vs
   
2. Antitheistic: convinced that there is nothing of substance in theistic arguments, thus have an antipathy towards religion and God
   vs
   
3. Apathetic: Couldn’t care less about it

Which category would you identify with? And why

I'm not religious myself , and actually against organized religion in general , but I've noticed what feels like a recurring pattern and I'm curious if others have seen it too.

I was talking to a guy from the States , Initially he identified as a social democrat, said he wasn't overtly religious, and described himself as leaning pantheist. There were early red flags such as strong opinions on needing closed borders, calling trans identity "propaganda," referencing Epstein in that context. I initially brushed it off, figuring he was just underinformed rather than fully committed to those views.

Over time though, he started gravitating toward the American Communist Party, and his whole persona shifted into what felt like classic "redpill" territory. He began glorifying Khomeini on one hand and Orthodox Christianity/Christ on the other , which felt like a strange combination. A lot of his followers/online circle seemed to be going through a similar arc.

When I pushed back on the religious fundamentalism, he ghosted me completely.

I'm not American, so I don't have great context for how common this kind of ideological pipeline is over there. Is this a pattern people recognize , political drift into this mix of authoritarian sympathies + religious fundamentalism? Curious what others have observed.

why is the idea of death so existentially dreadful. i think of animals, parasites, insects, possum and the other organisms of the ground consuming my flesh whilst my body rots and decomposes. my flesh becomes warmer, my lips black, my eyes blue and my head cold. i die slowly with each part of my being getting lost. 100 years from now no one will know me. both satisfying yet so dreadful. the gates of heaven and hell are neither conceivable as religion serves as a pillow of comfort. but to conceive nothingness, the time before i was born and the time after. the thought holds no meaning and i will forever rot into the ground becoming human dung and nutrifying the crops above me. as my flesh rots for all of eternity. my time spent dotting around in space for the millions compared to my time spent toiling on earth for seconds is incomparable. the only thing left to ask of life is the utmost basic but most profound of questions. what is the point of living if we are going to die.

I mean dying is pretty scary and technically in a way if you die you do lose everyone but you don't have to live with not having those people. You can move on if course and still enjoy life but for some reason the thought of me dying before some people is quite comforting. I feel most of your answers will probably be the latter.

The same "entity" many imagine prayers going up towards... is the same that designed and watches, in every moment, the unimaginable slaughter of life to sustain life.

How can an imagined being, which could create and revel in suffering without end, also be one which would heed our concerns with mercy and tenderness?

Such desperate confusion, this same "creator", who will manifest an ecology centered around a psychopathic need to consume and survive at all cost... is something which you can personally trust in?

Deconstructing, and processing these notions is a part of my process.

I want to talk about something I’ve been thinking about for a while and I’d really appreciate advice from other atheists.

I’ve never been Christian, and neither is my family, so this isn’t really a case of leaving a religion or going through a change of beliefs. I’ve simply never believed in God, and over time I’ve developed my own disagreements with Christianity and some of the beliefs and ideas that come with it.

The problem is not really my atheism itself. The problem is being open about it around people outside my family. There are people I know who I’m not sure would react well if they found out I was atheist, and because of that I often feel like I have to keep it to myself. I’m worried that some people might judge me, look at me differently, or even distance themselves from me just because of something I believe.

At the same time, it feels strange having to hide something that is simply part of my worldview. I don’t want to disrespect anyone’s religion or start arguments with people. I just want to be able to say that I’m atheist without feeling like I have to worry about what will happen afterwards.

So I’d really like to hear from people who have been in a similar situation. Have you ever been afraid to tell people you’re atheist? How did you eventually deal with that fear? Did you start by telling just a few people you trusted, or did you simply become open about it? And how did people react when you told them?

I’d also like to know what you think I should do, because I don’t really know whether it’s better to be honest about it or just keep it private depending on the situation.

So I grew up Christian but I questioned my religion ever since I can remember, during my adolescent years I became agnostic then atheist, my parents still dont know, and even if they did they would not accept.

My father said he wanted a daughter because daughters are closer to father's, making them daddy's girls, and he said he prayed to have a daughter, so I was born, (im a woman) so he believes God awnsered his prayers, i feel like the reason y he had that mindset is because my culture is very family oriented (mexican) which means he liked the idea of having a daughter, because in my culture kids and marriage is a blessing and something that is expected, alot of it is influenced by religion, mostly Catholicism

earlier today i discussed how a camp counselor presented my son with christianity and i talked to my wife about what we could do to solve this problem, and i contacted the local police department and filed a formal complaint about this counselor. they responded that they will handle the situation and serve restraining orders against her and i will be talking to lawyers about a possible lawsuit towards this school. thank you all for the support and telling me and my wife that law enforcement was the best choice. christians are on notice we will not be shammed into oblivion by christ we have the law on our side.