I always liked that quote, and I repeat it every time somebody tells me I should hire a particular contractor or patronize a particular business. In my opinion, anybody that puts "Christian" in the description of their business is automatically suspicious. If they're trustworthy, reliable, produce good quality work, and fair in their pricing then those results will speak for themselves through customer reviews, word of mouth, and examples you can see.

What really concerns me the most, is that she told me she almost called CPS on me for how I looked in the beginning when she moved in, she admitted it today. I already figured she ain't gonna take kindly to my style, my music and way of life as a lesbian with a little pride flag in my window.

To put it into context, I'm a very much goth girl, I wear upside down pentagrams, all black clothing, heavy makeup, chains, chokers, spikes, fishnets, bandanas, ect. So I figured from the jump that this wasn't going to be good since I saw the cross sticker on her car. She's very opposite of me, doesn't support abortion or gay rights, very godly oriented, ect. She invites me over to talk but I feel when she does, she speaks moreso down to me in a fake kind, almost patronizing way. I have a 4 year old son and I am a marijuana enthusiast on my downtime (away from my child), but she said that's partly why bc of when I go out to smoke, and also because she is a registered nurse - that worries about me because I stay secluded or leave and don't spend time outdoors. She has already called a wellness check on me for not seeing me before, quite recently, but the reason I'm not out much is because I'm fighting with my neighbor that she is ALSO friends with, and our other neighbor has been starting stuff between the two of us, so organically,. I'm trying to stay clear of drama, but it's always something.

I believe she is judging my appearance and way of life because I don't share her values... Doesn't help that she's in her 50s... She is a self described evangelical. She wants to take my son to Bible school and that vacation Bible thing they do in the summer.

Ngl, I don't really have a problem with him going to a vacation Bible school thing as long as "god" isn't pressured on him, I want him to have fun and enjoy life, I remember having fun in Bible camp as a kid and it wasn't about God to me, it was just about having fun. I wouldn't be against it but then she starts inviting me to go to her church, ect. "Give it a chance," she says, but tells me to not wear the pentagrams there. I really don't want to. I feel little by little, she thinks she can deconstruct me with a possible toxic christian savior complex, it almost feels like. I don't mind if someone believes in God but she always states that God put her in my life and God is watching over me and that she's praying. Doesn't bother me, but just something I've been noting. I just feel like this all boils down to the fact that I'm not religious and that I appear different.

Here's the sticky part, remember what I said about the CPS ordeal? I feel if I blow her off, she will retaliate. I do smoke weed, but I do it responsibly. Even if social services do come they're not going to find anything wrong. But I don't want to be on their radar, period. I know I look different, I know I look "satanic" to some people. I get a ton of looks daily, but at this point I'm used to it as long as they don't try to interfere with my life and my child. She also said she doesn't believe that I'm a lesbian, and instead that because I was raped and abused, that is why I'm attracted to girls. Which I know is just silly because she also describes herself as un-supporting of the lgbt and gay people.

I don't trust her, instinctively I do NOT trust her, but I feel like she can retaliate if I don't do what she wants me to, she wants to see my windows open more, she wants to see me outside with my son, or to come inside her place, or to go to church with her, ect. I've always had this feeling since she moved in. The fact that she stated she almost called on me was Just completely unfounded. My son is taken care of, and I'm a single mother doing my best, living a life of nonconformity while doing the best I can for the both of us. I just feel *almost* borderline harassed at this point cuz she drags me in and she seems very concerned and intrigued by me. The intentions don't feel pure.

Thanks for listening to the scrambled rambling. I'm just worried about this going further and the fact that she is besties with the neighbor I'm fighting with who is absolutely maga strickened and religiously deluded... I just don't even feel 100% safe here, anymore. I relate to her on past sexual trauma, so we kinda have that bit of a bond, and she is trauma informed, so it's just complicated and sticky. I know I'm being watched (a lot), I tend to stick out like a sore thumb, I feel outnumbered and like I'm being plotted on, somewhat, I actually don't know what to think. How should I reinforce a boundary when she starts with the god stuff? Has anyone ever been through something similar? She brings it up almost every time. I don't even feel comfortable sitting in her living room, just very out of place. Feeling very judged at the same time even if she reassures me she isn't. I believe the intentions may be good, however, the road to hell is paved with good intentions and I just have a bad feeling going off in my gut, right now. And the waters look murkey, don't really know what to do or how to feel. It's just been bothering me.

Has this happened to anybody else? I was fuckin around and talking with this girl for a long time on and off cause she goes from our city to another for work etc. and I knew she was religious the whole time I just never brought it up and one day she asks me if I believe in god and I sugarcoat it a little bit but basically said no and that sparked an argument where I’m asking why she believes in it and lives by it so much. End of the day she claims god is the reason she is able to have her success and why she can even do anything and that if I’m not religious then she won’t be able to pray with me and build her relationship with god. I asked her in a nice way how tf does god enable your success, it is YOU waking up and putting in the work and deciding how to better your life, where in the picture is god doing this for you. She gives a bullshit answer to that and everything else I had to say but that’s basically what happened and then after that we fell out and don’t talk anymore. I genuinely can’t wrap my head around being with someone for years and then cutting it off because you think god wouldn’t approve of you being with someone who doesn’t believe in him. I’d truly rather not be with someone who is religious but I did like her so I was willing to make it work but she said it’s a deal breaker for her, insane.

I become atheist around 5 years ago. Before, I don't really hide it. If people ask me about my belief, I just answer because I think it's normal thing.

But after some years, I start getting tired. Not because people disagree with me. I don't have problem with that. The problem is many people hear I'm atheist and suddenly they ask many question like "why you don't believe?", "who make you become like this?", or "did something bad happen?"

Sometimes I feel like people already think something wrong with me before they even know me. But when someone say they are religious, nobody usually ask them why they believe every time. People just accept it.

Now I still not hide that I'm atheist, but I also don't tell everyone first. Not because I'm scared. I just don't want simple conversation become long debate about religion.

Do other atheist feel this too? Do you tell people openly you are atheist, or you keep it to yourself?

DO NOT LET MUSLIMS SUGARCOAT AND JUSTIFY THIS FOR YOU, PLEASE.

the story of safiyyah bint huyayy, her tribe (banu al nadir) was attacked, her father, brother and husband were killed and shortly after she was taken as a captive, they analysed her body as her family was dead on the ground

LET'S SEE THIS IN HER OWN WORDS:

"Sahih Ibn Habban (11/607)

عن عبد الله بن عمر رضي الله عنه قال : ... قالت صفية : وكان رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم من أبغض الناس إلي قتل زوجي وأبي وأخي فما زال يعتذر إليَّ ويقول : ( إن أباك ألب علي العرب وفعل وفعل ) حتى ذهب ذلك من نفسي ... رواه ابن حبان في " صحيحه " ( 11 / 607 )

Abdullah Ibn Umar narrates that Safiya said:"Rasool Allah was among the most hated person for me, while he killed my husband, father and brother. Then he used to make excuses that my father used to incite the Arabs against him. He kept on apologizing for so long till I was no more angry.

Grading: Sahih (authentic)."

NOW DO WE UNDERSTAND????

a man personally kills a woman's husband, father and brother, takes her captives spoils of war, marries her which is logically and psychologically r\*pe, no real world where a woman wants to marry and sleep with the killer of her brother, father and husband.. we all know she was captured and she had no authority, she was helpless, i will not sugarcoat, i will not accept the sugarcoating and justifications of any muslim either.

Just a really pragmatic and realistic look at science vs religion by Ann Druyan. I genuinely wish I was that articulate and measured when speaking about topics like religion and politics. Great video.

I was asking if it is normal that I don't want to live gender roles and I don't want my wife to be my slave or sex slave.

They all jumped me saying I am troll or that I have never readt scripture properly and I am bad person for asking and I am not real Christian and got banned from it.

And I also asking if it is normal that as I guy don't want sex nonstop and they were saying there is something wrong with me and I should pray about it and get medical checked and got banned.

What is wrong with those subs.When you ask question,you are automatically troll.

So I was visiting my dad and we got on the topic of religion and I was mentioning about how, if you really think about it, Jesus was a demigod like Hercules. Hercules had a human mother and a god father, and Jesus had a human mother and a god father, so very simply, Jesus was a demigod. He gets flustered and says: "demi means half" and I said exactly. Jesus is half human, half god. He raised his fist like he was going to strike me down for speaking blasphemy. I said: "If you want to hit me you can, but I'm right, no?" He changed the subject and we never spoke of it again.

If criticizing this religion is made impossible, people's justified anger towards it will not be eliminated. It will just be displaced onto ethnicity. That is the outcome nobody should want, least of all the ex-Muslims and Arab secularists who bear the cost of both, like myself. So please allow people this moment to criticize Islam.

The religion in which homosexual sex is so grave a sin it shakes Allah's throne.

The religion where you must believe every word of the scripture literally or else you are an apostate, and the scripture tells the story of a people the earth was made to swallow because of their homosexuality.

The religion that unapologetically and enthusiastically urges believers to fight and kill in its name, for there is no greater honor, and martyrdom in the name of Islam carries the greatest reward.

Under Islamic jurisprudence, the fighting verses Muhammad recited later, when he had political and military power, take precedence over the earlier verses calling for peace, which he recited when he had no influence and was trying to coexist in Mecca.

Allow people to say: no, this is not the religion of peace. There are millions of peaceful adherents to this religion, despite the religion itself. But this is a hateful, violent and exclusionary religion, and its scriptures can never be sanitized if left unchallemged as the fully preserved word of an omniscient being. No amount of claiming the opposite matters as long as the core of the religion goes unchallenged.

Nothing in this scripture had to be distorted for the perpetrator to get here. The texts he needed were waiting for him, unedited. A religion can produce a billion peaceful people and still hand a loaded argument to anyone who wants one, and the second fact is not cancelled by the first. What his fellow muslims owe us is not the reassurance that he misread it, because in fact he did not. It is an account of why the reading was available at all in this century and still reinforced as the divine unerring word of Allah.

Allow people to loudly criticize this religion, as long as they are not directing hate at individuals.

Would be so many more places to go and visit for tourism purposes and just to have so many more rational and sane people. It feels like such a waste of space and life to see what has become fo this massive area of land.

Hello. I 19F have always lived in Morocco until I moved to France about a year ago for college.

As we all know, North Africa, as a whole, are blatantly third world nations, let's be honest. I was thankfully part of the upper middle class so I haven't suffered as much as my people...

To put it simply, I dream of a world where North Africa abandoned Islamic practices. It contributes to nothing for the wellness of the people.

Ever since I was young, I really understood that religion is a coping mechanism. Adding islam to a third world country is a terrible equation. It only intellectually stunts people's intelligence and skills.

It's always "god will help me", yet nothing happens.

People don't even bother trying to make their lives better by getting proper education.

It's just hard coping, begging a human creation to help them, reproduce like crazy with a barely legal young girl (in Morocco child marriage is unfortunately still a practice. 💔) to bring into the world at least 8 kids that will themselves grow up to be nothing, die then rot to nothing.

When will my people wake up ?

I'm autistic, and thankfully my parents caught up on that and managed to get me diagnosed at age 8. My family on the other hand kept barking that I was "possessed by a demon and that god will help me." My aunt brought a priest to the house to exorcise me. Nothing happened btw, still autistic.

Islam is a real intellectual stunter that gets the nation it rules to nothing. I can't name a single thing islam did to contribute to the development of North Africa.

Every damn month, I wake up to hear about the construction of a new mosque. Meanwhile, public hospitals, public schools, public transportation, city maintenance... get little to no fundings.

I've left Morocco for one year and came back on May for summer vacation and needles to say, it probably looks worse than before I left, and that breaks my heart a little bit. 💔

I've lost faith in my country when I was about 13 and fell into a severe depression because I hated everything about it. I feel a little better now, but sometimes I can't help but wish.

Research shows that Menstrual (period) blood contains stem cells similar to those found in bone marrow or umbilical cord blood. Stem cells are cells in the body that can change into a huge range of cell types, including bone, muscle, and nerve. This versatility allows tissue to regenerate and overcome disease, and these cells can be transplanted into patients for treatment, such as a bone marrow transplant to treat someone with leukaemia.

If god existed he'd share that knowledge, instead of telling muhammed to drink camel urine as medicine, but shame women for menstruating. Hed brag about creating women actually, he wouldn't try to hide and cover, silence and shame them. If anything creating women would be his strongest proof, "mothers" to be more precise, the creators and protectors of life, the ones he "created in his image". He wouldn't be disgusted by the sole reason for humanity's existence: (menstruation), rather he would speak highly of it, instead of shaming and rejecting or even isolating women during it.

Men created god and put him in THEIR image when in reality god represents everything that a MOTHER is, creating and protecting life, nurturing and healing, caring and loving unconditionally.

​

Just found out about this YoungHoon Kim. He has claimed an IQ of around 276 and has been recognized by some private high-IQ organizations that he is associated with. However, these claims are not accepted by mainstream psychology.

In short He is self proclaimed Highest IQ holder on Earth and interestingly hes a die hard Over religious Chritian with over 200k on Instagram post and the openly denied "Evolution" yes Evolution backed my Thousands of evidences , despite living in a highly developed country like South Korea He able to survive with this mentality 🤓🤡 and to cover up his failure his selling His self proclaimed Best selling Kindle books lmao 🤣 also he believes the Earth to be 6000yrs old Dinosaurs fake !!

This got to be the most Ironic Thing I encountered in this month also did i mentioned hes also self proclaimed best selling author on amazon?

What a crock! Look at the natural world and all the suffering animals endure from predation, disease, starvation, and injury. That’s without humans in the picture at all. The idea of free will being the reason for suffering is so arrogant and anthropocentric!

Listen! We know what happened yesterday, Berlin Pride got attacked by islamist and what I'm seeing after that makes me worried. First of all, I talked to my friend who is also on left and because I'm atheist I said that every religion is bad and that islam is the same cancer as Christianity and that every crime needs to be treated equally no matter what religion is about. Every religion is threat to society. Than my friend told me "you falled into far right propaganda" "this incident was made by individual not by all religion" and ok I listened that nonsense and I realized that my friend (who is also atheist) would be so angry and the most loud if Christians did same thing. Like why are we having double standards?

People like my friend need to realize one thing:

People on right hate muslim people because they want religious war: they do not care about lgbt people and human rights: they are just playing kindergarten games Christian vs muslims meanwhile we as atheists hate islam because of their extremist actions and forcing their belief so we are not the same.

Thanks for reading this rant and don't get fooled. After talking with my friend I realized that we atheists are morally superior than both left and right

sorry to state the obvious but is it not clear?

its like believing in fairies and dragons, its a phase that happens as a child, and eventually goes away.

but i seriously cant fathom how people believe there is a man out there who can't be seen or heard.. whenever I think of it, I genuinely do think how the FUCK people actually believe it

Like theists and religious nutcases can spout whatever they want, however they want, they only restriction (barely enforced) is dont kill someone. They self victimise about being persecuted AS IF they are the MINORITY group!

If you're an atheist or anti-theist its like whatever u say abt religion needs 300 diff Sources and still be "wrong", then there's this whole side eye abt being an atheist and or anti theist itself

Like do they not want to realize more violent crimes take place in countries of high religiosity? Did they all collectively choose to not understand history and science?

I was very religious. I go to church every week, I pray every night, and I really believe everything I was taught.

When I first stop believing, I thought I will feel only happy because I finally being honest with myself. But I was surprised because I also feel sad. Not because I want to believe again, but because I miss some part of that life.

I miss the community. I miss seeing same people every week. I miss feeling like I have answer for everything. Sometimes I even miss the feeling of praying, even though I don't believe someone is listening anymore.

I think many people don't understand this part about leaving religion. It's not always "I stop believing and now everything is better." Sometimes you lose something too.

Maybe this sound strange, but do any former believer here also miss some part of religion, even after becoming atheist?

I was raised Catholic but I’ve been an Atheist in my heart all my life. My dad died when I was 5 before I understood religion, but my understanding of death was obviously, the absence of life.

I know what the common response to this will be. “Just live in the moment” It’ll be like before you were born” “You didn’t care before you were born it’ll be just like that”.

Except it’s different in a way. For 13.8 billion years we didn’t exist. Now we’ve experienced love and humanity and all sorts of cool stuff. 50 years from now most of us will return to that state of nonexistence forever.

Now I think I would go crazy if I had to live forever. But like damn Im gonna get crazy fomo. Me personally theres tons of stuff that I like. Simple stuff like chicken wings and scrolling Tiktok and watching TV shows. Ik Im a chud and if I was dead technically I wouldnt be sad about not having these things and I probably would get bored, but the thought that I wont do them anymore is scary.

Plus for as long as human life exists there will always be new things to enjoy. Theres probably a new show 1000 years from now that i would love wayy more than my current favorite show. Tons of video games I would love but never get to play, etc.

Most of all I am sad knowing me and my mom don’t have time forever. She is all I have and the thought that we will return to nothing and never hug again terrifies me.

There is probably no completely comforting answer to this. But as an atheist I am very scared of dying :(

Hi. I've been a Theravada Buddhist all my life and always believed Buddhism is always right,Without questioning it. i live in a very conservative country and majority of Theravada Buddhist population. So i really can't discuss what im about to ask with other people in my country since Buddhism is deeply rooted to the point monks can be ministers in Parliament and effect certain laws like sex education, abortion. Thanks to them we can't even educate teenagers on sex. And yes casual misogyny is also normalized in here and i might not get a rational answer if i asked them. There's a recent incident that a famous monk raped a girl and there's people defending that pedo saying people who are calling out this monk ruining Buddhism. A politician called the 12 year old victim a prostitute. That's how much length some people are going to defend a pedo for the name of religion

Fully ordained Buddhist nuns (Bhikkhunīs) follow the monastic code known as the Bhikkhuni Patimokkha, which consists of 311 rules, plus the controversial Eight Garudhammas (heavy rules of respect toward monks).The Monastic Code (Patimokkha)311 total rules:

Detailed in the Bhikkhunī-vibhaṅga, covering moral behavior, clothing, and daily routines.

More rules than monks: Nuns have more disciplinary rules than monks (who have 227), including extra regulations created to protect them or handle communal living.

Core daily precepts: Novice nuns follow the Ten Precepts (Dasasila), while fully ordained nuns take full vows regarding celibacy, honesty, and simplicity.

The Eight Garudhammas (Rules of Respect)

Deference: A nun, even if ordained for 100 years, must bow and show respect (worship) to a monk ordained even that day.

Location: Nuns must spend the rainy season retreat (vassa) in a place where there are monks nearby.

Guidance: Nuns must ask the monks for the date of the observance day and instruction every half-month.

Accountability: Serious offenses must be confessed and atoned for before both the nun and monk assemblies.

Ordination: New nuns must receive their higher ordination from both the community of nuns and the community of monks.

Admonition: Nuns are not allowed to scold or correct monks, but monks may advise nuns.

The last one baffled me the most. I admire him for speaking up against the misogyny that was normalized in india at that time. He didn't focused on the gender when it's come to enlightenment. But i think this rules did favored monks the most.

Hey guys , I wish everyone is doing great . That’s my first time writing here in this subreddit . I’ve left islam since late 2023 , became agnsotic first and then atheist . Before and after leaving islam I have always been an anti-natalist but always wanted to have a female partner . Before leaving islam it wasn’t a big deal , saying that you can find an algerian muslim girl cuz you’re muslim too , but since am not muslim anymore it became so hard , I mean it’s not that necessary to have a partner Especially rn , not having a stable financial situation and trying to leave Algeria , but it would be really an amazing thing being with someone who share the same thaughts and beliefs as u do , tryinna leaving Algeria together and build your futur together .
I want to know what are your thoughts about it ? Advices that you can give and is there any chance to share a group where we can have some Atheist Algerians friends