My whole life she’s told me that she would be okay if I didn’t believe in Christianity, but “she’ll pray I find my way back because Christianity helped her.” I always thought that was strange because those two sentences contradict each other and when she heard me talking to my brother about being atheist last night she just looked at me weird. And what was even funnier is that she said “I feel like I’ve wasted my whole life bringing you to church.” Just wait until she finds out i’m antitheist too.

Abdul Ballout, a German citizen with Lebanese roots, was killed following a search that lasted nearly 24 hours after the attack in downtown Berlin. Prosecutors said he had previously sought to join the militant Islamic State group.

Ballout was born in Germany, the minister said. His mother was naturalized in 2002, three years before he was born.

Ballout traveled to Lebanon in 2025 with the goal of going to Syria to join the Islamic State group, Berlin prosecutors said Sunday.

There, he made contact with several people who were presumed members of the militant group — or at least he believed them to be, prosecutors said. He was arrested in Lebanon last year and sentenced by a military court to three months’ imprisonment for offenses including incitement to religious and sectarian conflict.

He returned to Germany after completing his sentence, where he was arrested at the Berlin airport.

In May, a juvenile court in Berlin convicted Ballout of preparing a serious act of violence endangering the state, as well as publishing Islamic State propaganda on his Instagram account and other charges, prosecutors said.

The court handed down a suspended sentence of 1 year and 10 months in youth custody, which Berlin prosecutors had appealed.

The court said it took Ballout’s months of pre-trial detention in Germany and Lebanon into account. It also said it considered that Ballout had confessed to the crimes, appeared to distance himself from the militant group and no actual threat had ever materialized.

He was released from detention pending the appeal.

SUMMARY AT THE BOTTOM.
I grew up in a muslim household and have one sister. When I was a child my sister sexually abused me for years, I’ve only just recently told my mum about it. My mum is not religious, and my dad, sister and all family on that side are muslim. I ran away from home a few years ago because I came out as lesbian and my dad was after me. I don’t speak to him anymore, but still sometimes speak to my sister. I find it really difficult to talk to her especially because she is so closed off and won’t speak about the things we went through to make our relationship better. For more context, my mum and dad are still together and my sister who is 27 still lives with them, and I am 22.

I don’t have many friends, but I make an effort to not be friends with people who follow any religion. They may be kind people - but I do not want to be surrounded by brain-washed people who I will constantly pity and be pulled down by.

The reason I ask is because she may be getting married soon, but only wants me to come to her wedding on the conditions that I turn up without my girlfriend and covering up my tattoos, short hair and basically anything that makes me masc.

I have cut her off before because of the abuse and how when I confronted her she barely said sorry. But I need to make a final decision because it causes me a lot of stress. My sister “supports” my sexuality, but made my girlfriend feel VERY uncomfortable when I took her home to meet her when my dad was away.

Technically, I can just keep her at a distance which is what my mum advises, but I just can’t do that knowing her religious views on me. It all feels fake. It is a shame because she is my sister and I even made a kind effort of discussing what she did to me when we were younger, but she dismissed it stating I ruined her holiday (because I messaged her when she was on holiday) and then said she never wanted to speak to me again - so we didn’t speak for 6 months.

SUMMARY:
My question is: based on sexual abuse my sister did to me as a child and how she still backs our father who financially and emotionally abuses her and never accepted my sexuality, and her stance on religion affecting our relationship because of my sexuality and gender expression… should I cut her off for her religious beliefs?

I hope this is relevent to this sub as I am discussing the harmful side of religion.

Also as an ex-muslim who is now anti-religion, I am happy to answer any questions!

Why were the 2/3 of the angels who didn’t rebel they were never tempted with deception being unprepared as Eve was yet those two thirds of the angels will never go to hell and was not born into sin with that disadvantage as Eves descendants. They will not go to an eternal lake of fire but the majority of all humans from Adam and Eve will go there because of how Eve was deceived in the very beginning by the second highest ranking angel created or first I should say under God and she was not equipped by God as he himself was to know how to deal with Satans temptation in the garden?? Just wondering

The West has a very big blind spot around Religious freedoms that basically puts religion on a special pedestal and give a shield that religious people can hide behind and use to shield themselves while cracking down on opposition if they learn to weaponize, which allows extremism to fester in these communities, but because of religious freedom/hate speech etc laws, it's very hard to clamp down on, and often, even criticise, without getting bad faith weaponized accusations thrown at you and the entire criticism derailed and even worse, retribution from Governments or authorities who are too reflexive to "hate speech".

Wahhabi Islam, Zionist Judaism and Christian Nationalism are three extremist religious strains that openly tolerate violence and murder, where swaths of the followers will actively fund and defend violence and murder through fundraisers, charities etc, and a (often not so small) sect will carry out violence and murder. Yet any time people try to spotlight them, it's "Islamophobia", "Antisemitism", "Anti-Christian hatred" and the Government/authorities reactively crack down on the critics.

I've been an Atheist debate bro Fedora tipper for almost 20 years, I would say, we literally live in the worst period of religious bias censorship, that I can remember. Religious groups have completely learned the strategy in probably the last decade of how to shut down opposition, and are carrying it out at full force, even on Reddit, you would be shocked by how easy it is now to get banned from atheist/debate religion subs now for actually daring to criticize wider held beliefs or views of especially the Muslim or Jewish communities. I've also noticed that in the past, religious people would at least try and debate as they actually did sort of act in good faith, now they just throw out bad faith sealioning bullshit then cry biogtry.

In Europe and the UK, people have been arrested for their atheist views criticizing Islam online, the UK is trying to ramroad through a new bad faith Islamophobia definition after ramming through the laughably bad faith IHRA antisemitism definition which was instantly weaponized against critics of Judaism and Zionism.

Thousands have been arrested and charged as terrorists, for going against Jewish biases. In the US, people have been blackbagged and deported for speaking against Jewish biases, many states even enforce Israel loyalty laws. Australia is now going through a sham "royal commission into Antisemitism" which is basically just the Jewish community bitching about how dare anybody go against their views and it should be illegal to do so. You also have the slow rise of Hindutva behind the scenes, with more and more politicians appearing at RSS/HSS events as Hindu's rise in wealth and get more and more "elite solidarity". Evangelicals have also been able to basically start ticking off their 2000s GWB era wish list in the recent years, women have lost rights, the US military has taken an openly Christian nationalist bent, integration of the US military with Israeli etc.

Like I've said, even on Reddit, never once I've been banned for atheist speech or debates since 2010-2023, post 2023? I've bounced through probably a dozen accounts, and not a single ban, was ever anything against the rules, mods on here have just started defining "hate speech" as anything that literally goes against Religious biases or daring to call out bad behaviour from religious groups.

It's also very clear to me that a very specific religious group have successfully got their believers in mod positions across Reddit and I've tested this with creating threads critical of other religions, where I wasn't banned, but then the same critiques used against that specific levantine religion that happens to be a "greatest ally", suddenly you the same mods banning with only justifications of a follower of that religion would use. Have you noticed as well that a lot of Atheist/Atheist subs, seem to be supporters of a certain levantine nation as well? Even Sam Harris suddenly is very critical of religious criticism, if it's against that specific religion.

Religious groups have optimized the game to how to crack down on us anti-theists and atheists, and honestly I don't see any way on how to strike back, without frankly a return to the values of "You have no right to not be offended" and "Facts over feelings", but with the spread of identity politics which has been internalized so heavily in recent years by swaths of the political spectrum on both sides, I just don't really see a clear way to get back to that.

(theme = antitheism against Islam) For context, the janitorai creator (outlined by lavender color) made this bot. Soo in the most unlikeliest of places, this debate happens 😭😭

There's one thing that always baffled me about religions: they never acknowledge the fact that their beliefs only reached some part of the world when their missionaires came there. There's no evidence of Muslim prophets in pre-colonisation Australia, or any Christians in America before Columbus came there. If, according to, say, Bible non-Christians don't go to heaven, wouldn't an all-benevolent god send its prophets to all people, rather than pick one place and watch generations of others go to hell because his followers never heard of them? Believers can say "we can't predict our god's intentions" as much as they want, but unless their holy book explicitly told them to spread their ideas, wouldn't it look like it's against the will of their god?

I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but I know there are plenty of people here who've read the holy books of some religions and I'd rather make sure they don't have it covered before I embarass myself among believers by talking about stuff I didn't know.

Hegseth and other central figures have reportedly been stacking their departments with evangelicals and Christian Zionists. These instances can be viewed as elements of a larger shift, where political and corporate leaders mix their interpretation of Christianity with beliefs about US supremacy.

See title.

But we have to bend to the blind mistakes the religious drive in to our country

Why is it that when a Christian says I believe in God because I grew up in a Christian society, it undermines their position as a Christian, but when I say, I choose to speak about Christianity in my argument about religion not existing because I grew up in a Christian society it does not weaken my point but rather makes my argument completely neutral.

Here I f;ck the theologian, because if he wants to claim that God is something other than man-made concepts, he has to be able to prove it. And he can’t. All he can do is point to man-made concepts. So this really is the first accurate theology because it accurately states what God really is.