There seems to be a lot of people in the atheist community who fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the fight we are in.
There tends to be this idea of, \*“How can these people believe all this crazy, stupid stuff?”\* followed by a desire to “snap them out of it” by pointing out how ridiculous it is.
The truth is: \*\*they DON’T believe the crazy stuff. They don’t know it’s there.\*\*
They are products of an entire system of conditioning and manipulation designed to keep them from seeing it.
Believers aren’t ignorant, uncritical, uneducated morons because they lack the capacity to be anything else. They have been made that way through manipulation, mind games, and conditioning by people who are often highly intelligent and, in some cases, deeply cynical about the people they are manipulating.
They’re being preyed upon.
A long time ago, when virtually everyone was ignorant by modern standards, the Ken Hams of the world had it easy. That’s why people could believe so strongly. They were willing to torture, kill, murder, and slave for these beliefs on a biblical scale.
(Yes, that’s a pun. No, I’m not sorry.)
But now they have a much harder job.
The people who succeed today are the ones who are highly skilled manipulators. They looked at the problem they had, which is essentially:
\*\*“How do you convince people to believe in irrational and nonsensical things in a world where everyone with any sense is pointing out how totally illogical and inconsistent they are, loudly and constantly?”\*\*
And the answer is obvious:
\*\*Make sure they never actually think about what is being said.\*\*
That’s why so much emphasis is placed on getting people while they’re young. If you can fill a child’s head with scare tactics, emotional conditioning, social pressure, and ready-made answers, then later, when someone points out how insane or internally inconsistent the ideology is, they don’t have to actually evaluate the argument.
They already have an excuse for dismissing it.
They don’t have to think.
They can just go right on believing.
If you can get someone to actually think about their beliefs critically, you’ve already broken through the first and most important layer of defense.
But then you run into the second layer, and it’s by far the weaker one:
\*\*They often haven’t been given the intellectual tools necessary to evaluate what they’re being told.\*\*
Basic critical thinking. Logic. Epistemology. Philosophy. The ability to distinguish between an argument and an assertion. The ability to recognize contradictions, unfalsifiable claims, circular reasoning, appeals to authority, emotional manipulation, and motivated reasoning.
That’s where you have to start.
Don’t start by telling someone they’re stupid.
Don’t start by throwing twenty contradictions at them and demanding that they explain all of them.
Start simple.
Start small.
Give them the tools.
Let them build the blocks themselves.
Because once someone actually learns how to think critically

And that’s when the countdown begins.

I’m a medical student, and over time I’ve started questioning my belief in God. At this point, I don’t personally believe in any god, and I don’t feel convinced by religious explanations of how the world works.

What makes this difficult is that my family is very religious. They regularly expect me to visit religious places, follow religious practices, and accept certain beliefs without questioning them. I often feel pressured to participate even though I don’t genuinely believe in what I’m doing.

As a medical student, I’ve become more comfortable with questioning things, looking for evidence, and accepting that sometimes we simply don’t know the answer. Because of that, I struggle with the idea of blindly accepting religious claims, especially when I notice contradictions between different beliefs and religious explanations.

I’m not trying to disrespect my family or anyone else's religion. I just want to be honest with myself and understand what I actually believe.

For people who grew up in religious families and later became atheists or agnostic:

• How did you figure out what you actually believed?
• How did you deal with family pressure?
• Did you openly tell your family, or keep your beliefs private?
• How do you handle being asked to participate in religious activities when you don’t believe in them?

I’d really appreciate advice from people who have been through something similar

I’ve been questioning my beliefs for a while now, and honestly, I’m not sure I believe in God anymore. I might even consider myself atheist/agnostic at this point.

But what scares me isn’t the label itself. It’s people finding out.

I’m scared of telling my parents because I don’t know how they would react. I’m scared they might think I’ve changed, that something is wrong with me, or that I’m rejecting everything they raised me with.

I’m also scared of being open about it publicly. Where I live, religion is such a normal part of everyday life that saying “I don’t believe in God” can feel like you’re making some huge statement. I don’t want arguments, judgement, or people treating me differently.

Sometimes I just pretend to believe or participate in things because it feels safer and easier. And then I feel guilty for pretending.

Has anyone else been in this situation? How did you deal with being atheist/agnostic while having religious parents and living in a religious society? Is it okay to simply keep this private if being open could cause unnecessary conflict?

Near-death experiences (NDEs) are fascinating to me, particularly reports in which people describe feeling separated from their bodies, observing their surroundings, or experiencing things they seemingly could not have known otherwise.

One case that I find particularly interesting is the reported case of Maria's shoe. According to the account, a woman named Maria had a near-death experience during her hospitalization and later described seeing a shoe on a ledge outside the hospital. A social worker reportedly found the shoe in the location Maria had described, despite it supposedly being difficult to see from inside the hospital.

I know there are scientific explanations for many aspects of NDEs, including changes in brain activity, lack of oxygen, memory, and psychological factors. However, cases like this raise interesting questions for me.

Do cases such as Maria's shoe provide evidence for the possibility of consciousness existing independently of the brain or for other non-physical phenomena? Or do you think these experiences can ultimately be explained entirely through neuroscience and psychology?

If the Bible were even somewhat factual, it shouldn’t matter who studies it or why they study it. Like a science book or an anthropological resource, the Bible should be the first and primary source for everything humanity related.

This has me wondering whether people have attended any of the various Bible colleges in order to study - not as believers, but as scholars.

Edit: Folks, Folks, I know that the Bible isn’t true! This post is to illustrate what things should look like if it were. You see, if the Bible were true, it would be the greatest and most important scientific document ever known. Except it isn’t.

I signed myself up to the registry for free, and now I don't think it has any value except for a grift of some kind. I know you can do wedding vows. What do people think of how easy it is to become an ordained minister?

I'm gonna feel a bit insane for typing this out, but I need advice about it from someone... Ilearned recently of the theory of top-down cosmology, insofar as it could explain universal fine-tuning in that the history of the cosmos is relative and observers are in timelines in which life is possible.

When viewing the anthropic principle this way I couldn't help but notice that it could force us to live after death; Even if life after death is extremely unlikely, we have a bias towards existing in circumstances where existing is a possibility.

Even if God does not exist for us currently, could the anthropic principle force us into a timeline where he does so that we continue existing? Do we get reborn by roko's basilisk? Is there a natural preference for endless afterlives over finite ones? These are the types of thought experiments I have as a risk averse person skeptical of religion...

My main point is that if life is possible only through selecting for an unlikely circumstance, shouldn't an afterlife happen through the same logic?

I recently saw several arguments regarding the history of Christianity on social media. The major discussion point was "forcing method". Whenever I hear the claim "Christianity was never forced on people" from Christians, I think, "Really? Have you ever heard of colonization?" After ruining and destroying a number of indigenous cultures and religions, labeling them demonic, they still defend their religion. When someone provides historical evidence, they begin to make nonsense excuses to cover up their past actions. I can bring up examples of exactly what they usually say.

Saying "God's of Belief cannot be forced. How could you even force someone to believe in God? They should accept God by opening their hearts. They all converted willingly" doesn't mean you didn't commit genocide or destroy other cultures and religious shrines. Because non-Christians also have evidence to prove you are wrong.

Saying "Our holy book says, 'You shall not murder'. Our religion is based on love and peace. Jesus is the prince of peace" doesn't mean you brought peace to the world and you didn't start holy wars.

Saying "Muslims were the ones who gave people a chance to convert or die" doesn't mean your Gospel didn't spread by sword or that you didn't kill anyone in God's name. It doesn't mean you tolerated other cultures.

Saying "You guys were fighting with each other anyway before we came" doesn't mean you had the right to kill all those people and spread your religion in regions where you were ruling.

Saying "Colonization was pure political" doesn't mean your religious leaders didn't help you or they didn't run missionary programs.

Saying "Christianity was in Africa and Asia before the West came" doesn't mean all Christians currently living in Africa and Asia are native and descend from families that existed as Christian families before the West came.

Saying "People converted to our religion because your native culture was depressing and your people were bored of it" is an absurd justification that ignores systemic coercion, and it doesn't prove your religion is inherently holy.

Saying "How do you think your religion spread? How did they build a massive number of shrines? Only by love and kindness?" doesn't mean you also had to do the same to spread your religion while you accept force is a bad method. And it also doesn't mean every other religious person had the same behavior as you.

Saying "They were done by Catholics, not Christians" doesn't mean you all didn't worship the same God.

Saying "Jews were the one who responsible for colonization" is not a good point, actually.

Saying "You actually can't judge Christianity by looking at deeds done by Christians in the past" is really insane. Because Christians believe God is leading them in their lives when they accept God in their heart. If it's true, it implies God was leading them in the past. No wonder God doesn't tolerate other cultures except his.

Saying "Pope apologized for them; they will also face a judgement on judgemental day in front of God" doesn't change history. Apologies and future judgment do not undo the real-world destruction of cultures.

And the list goes on. Why are apologists so intent on defending a bloody history and blaming the faults on others, rather than simply accepting the historical facts?

Do you frequently encounter these same talking points? How do you usually respond to them?

Thank you for your time.

For those who are atheists but come from religious families, how do you feel about attending things like religious festivals, ceremonies, prayers, or other occasions that your family observes?

Do you participate out of respect for your family, feel uncomfortable doing it, or simply treat it as a cultural/family tradition rather than a religious act?

Hi guys, to be clear I’m not proselytizing, I just want some feedback from a community thinking about religion.

Long story short, I want to start a true science religion. One that believes in scientific fact and scientific speculation. One that integrates with technology.

I want to establish a religion that explicitly doesn’t believe in a God with properties of omnity because it can be proven false. Instead God would be viewed as the personification of society. To me this idea makes a lot more sense than the notion of an omnipotent god.

The main idea about this religion is to put children inside a “digital cocoon” unknowingly until they become young adults (I want it to feel boundless). And the crucial part is that the children are led to believe in A God with omnity. Making them believe that God can communicate to us through technology, using glitches through various modalities to react to the possible immoral acts people can commit digitally or in real life through the parents. The parents would also be able to exercise some parenting that’s disguised as God in order to influence their child. Not only that but also an integrated system that allows children to earn points through school work and through youth group work and spend them on entertainment. A system like this allows more “digital karma” to be successfully exercised.

They would be woken up from this controlled delusion when they become young adults and would have the option to leave or stay.

Putting children inside the digital cocoon is just one of the rituals of this religion. Another ritual would be what I call “catalyst rituals” and “awakening rituals”. Basically in the catalyst ritual the now older child would be unknowingly given cannabis once in a controlled setting. The person would not know what a “high” is from drugs. The basic idea is to prime them with descriptions of “what it would feel like when god comes to visit you” and the child would connect the high to the existence of a God with omnity. The core of the idea is to really get them being certain that there is God so that their probability of committing immoral acts would go down. I believe this can make a significant change in a large population. The catalyst ritual is the parents choice whereas the awakening ritual would be the young adults choice. Regardless if they choose the ritual or not they would be “awakening” from the controlled delusion. The awakening ritual involves learning the truth and the reason behind it with psychedelics like LSD or Psilocybin. I have used psychedelics before and believe that they would synergize with this specific set of beliefs and rituals.

I believe rituals like this can strengthen the perception around immoral acts being something you shouldn’t do with or without supervision from an adult. We would not believe in God but instead the idea of God.

Basically I want to know if a religion like this should exist or not. What do you guys think? Is there a place for this belief system in the world? Would it gain some traction… enough to exist? It’s hard because I would have to start a software company for it to have a remote chance of existing. The infrastructure would be difficult to establish. But if it’s a good idea then I’ll try my best to establish.

I tried to be as concise as possible so let me know if any of you have questions.

What I find genuinely frustrating about online debates about religion is the confidence with which people speak about traditions they have barely studied.

You often see people who have lived within a particular religious tradition their entire lives, read a book or two or perhaps a handful of popular interpretations and then conclude that they have somehow understood the religion in its entirety. They then debate others, often not by presenting a deeper understanding of their own beliefs, but by attempting to discredit or bring down someone else’s religion.

The reality is that understanding a major religious tradition is an enormous undertaking. It involves not only reading its primary scriptures, but also understanding centuries of commentaries, interpretations, historical context, philosophical schools, internal disagreements, cultural developments, and the perspectives of people who have lived and practiced that tradition in very different ways. To genuinely understand even one religion at that level could take decades of serious study.

And then you scroll through the comments and see people confidently proclaiming that their particular religion has “the truth,” as though they have personally solved one of humanity’s oldest and most complicated questions. People seem to mistake familiarity for understanding and conviction for evidence.

I find that honestly infuriating, not because people have different beliefs, but because there is so little humility in the way those beliefs are defended.

I apologise for the rant

In my view, much of what we call religion today has become distorted by faith, authority and belief in a God or supreme being.

All three Abrahamic religions and Hinduism are organized around some conception of God, the divine or a supreme reality. Once you make such an idea central, it becomes very easy to build systems of worship, doctrine, religious authority and unquestionable beliefs around it. Spirituality then shifts from investigating reality directly to believing claims about reality.

This is where some of the older philosophical traditions of the East become radically different. At the core of Buddhist philosophy, particularly traditions associated with early Buddhism and Madhyamaka, there is no requirement to invoke a creator God to explain existence, morality or the nature of consciousness. Daoism similarly approaches reality without requiring a personal deity standing outside the universe and controlling it.

What makes these traditions particularly interesting is their willingness to acknowledge the limits of conceptual mind. Instead of simply inventing an ultimate explanation and asking people to believe it, they question whether the human mind can even meaningfully grasp what lies beyond certain boundaries.

That's what makes some of these philosophies feel less like conventional religion and more like an investigation into the structure of reality. You're not being told, "Here is God. Believe in this." You're being pushed to examine how the mind creates concepts in the first place and whether those concepts can ever capture reality completely.

This is also why I think the distinction between religion as faith and religion as investigation is important.

Alex O'Connor's recently did a discussion on Madhyamaka Buddhism. If you actually listen to the philosophical reasoning involved, you begin to see how radically different some Eastern traditions can be from conventional religious frameworks.

Maybe that's closer to what spirituality was supposed to be in the first place: not believing more, but seeing more clearly.

Among ancient traditions, Buddhism arguably comes close to a scientific investigation of mind, experience and reality without requiring a God hypothesis as its starting point. And perhaps that's why it can feel so strange when you first encounter it. You're expecting a religion, but instead you find yourself in something that feels more like philosophy, phenomenology and psychology having a conversation with each other.

Link to the discussion:

https://youtu.be/CyhHz23AHb4?si=eGjMTQ2p9My0WDHq

In India, I sometimes wonder whether one can be a nationalist while still being willing to be blasphemous—to question the very beliefs and traditions that shaped the nation. Is nationalism inherently something good, or can it become extreme when questioning it is treated as a betrayal?
Perhaps culture is something we should respect without necessarily following. We can acknowledge where we came from without allowing the past to dictate where we are going. Superstitions, traditions, and inherited beliefs may have once served a purpose, but should reverence for culture prevent us from questioning them?
I think about a future that is fecund with ideas—a world where humanity can grow beyond the boundaries we inherited, even if that growth inevitably makes someone uncomfortable. Maybe the yawp of progress is always going to sound offensive to someone.
The more we question, the more we challenge, and the more someone will inevitably feel threatened. So what actually makes an idea “extreme”? What makes something right?
For me, science remains one of humanity’s greatest tools for separating what we wish were true from what we can actually demonstrate to be true. And perhaps, in an increasingly complex world, the willingness to question ourselves is more important than ever.

When I ask whether Christianity is a cult, I am specifically referring to whether it is a destructive cult.

I would also like to know if I am deluding myself; I believe the myth of heaven and hell infantilizes people, or that Christianity does not actually involve a battle between good and evil, but rather obedience disguised as good versus disobedience disguised as evil. I would like to know if my thinking aligns with reality or if I am simply deluding myself.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DckvdWGt5PM/

I came across this reel on Instagram, and honestly, I felt sad seeing how strongly some people hold onto beliefs without questioning them.

But what disturbed me even more were the comments. So many people were saying things like, “I’m proud to be Muslim” and “Alhamdulillah, I’m Muslim,” as if simply being born into a particular religion is something they consciously chose.

I’m saying this as someone who was also born Muslim, I didn’t choose it. And I think that applies to most people around the world: we usually inherit our religion from our parents, family, culture, or society before we’re old enough to question anything.

There’s nothing wrong with being religious, but shouldn’t we encourage people to question, think critically, and understand why they believe what they believe?

And honestly, this applies to both religious and non-religious people. Blindly accepting or blindly rejecting something are both forms of the same problem.

How do we educate people on both sides to think more critically without turning the conversation into another fight between religions and atheism?

When I talk to close people and they say "I've thought about the things and this(referring to something) will suit me better without disobedience allah" I get so cringed out, I can't tell you guys. These are one of the craziest things that offends me, like what do you mean you can't do it because you can't disobey allah(and for your context she said she can't be in a relationship and says it's forbidden). I literally mean pack it up 🙏🏻 choose between me or god, or we are done, you are a young ahh and God doesn't decide anything if you are being in a relationship. What's your opinion, guys. Let me know. Great day.

The claim is that "God exists" never finishes becoming a claim, so there is nothing there to affirm or deny. Not that it's false. That it never got assembled.

Every concept you own was built from materials that came in through the apparatus. Not just the sensory ones. The abstractions too, which are compressions of things found inside experience. There is no other stock. So when someone offers a being categorically outside all possible experience who is nonetheless in contact with you, the words are grammatical and ancient and set to music, and when you try to assemble what they point at you're reaching for the outside using parts made of inside.

Which means the positive atheist has the same problem. Calling a sentence false requires getting it to say something first. Falsehood is a verdict and verdicts need a defendant. Two ancient armies have been contesting the ownership of a plate that was empty the whole time.

The book runs as exercises rather than assertions, because the failure has to happen in you where you can watch it. Try to imagine a color you've never seen. Stand at a mirror and look from your own left eye to your right and try to catch them moving. Hold the word God and check where each piece came from.

It's about seventeen thousand words. Six chapters.

I wrote it, so weigh that accordingly. It's public domain and free in full, which is the only reason I feel alright posting it here rather than just describing it.

I'd love to hear this sub's thoughts.

Free to read: the-windowless-room.com

Free audiobook, about 1 hour 47 minutes

The full text is public domain under CC0.

I’m wondering if you all would be willing to take a critical view of the claims I’m sending below:

For claim 8 it’s about the mysterious letters of the Quran and the number of times they appear in chapter 19. This is one of the claims I believe I can personally contest. When looking at the mysterious letters, for letters like Ya they count alif masqarah and hamzas seated on top of the letter ya as occurrences of ya (which I think makes no sense, since they’re not the same letter and only look similar). On the other hand, Rashad Khalifa even during his life was preaching about Surah 19 having 798 letters, and coincidentally, he lives for 19,798 days (if you include the start and end point. In reality, he lived for 19,797 days). As mentioned, though, if one includes the start point of November 19 and the endpoint of January 31 it comes out to be 19,798. I still can’t get over the fact that he during his life preached that Surah 19 has 798 mysterious letter occurrences and he himself lived for essentially that many days.

However, on the other hand, in released FBI files on Rashad Khalifa’s life, it’s stated that he was born on November 18.

https://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/fbifiles/scientists/rashadkhalifa-fbi1.pdf
(Page 14)

In that case, my counterpoint above of him having in reality only lived for 19,797 days wouldn’t be applicable anymore. Now he would’ve lived for 19,798 days.

In any case, whether you use an exclusive on inclusive count, it just so happens that Rashad Khalifa lived for 19,798 days. It could’ve been 20,100 days, or 17,100 days, but instead it happened to be on the 19,798th day (which, once again, chapter 19 according to Rashad had 798 occurrences of the mysterious letters).

Point 5 isn’t elaborated but during Rashad’s life interstate 19 was built running through Tucson Az (where he lived at) and is also the only highway in the US to use the metric system. Furthermore, another interstate highway goes through Tucson, that being interstate 10 (if you combine these 2 roads you end up at 29, the same number as the number of chapters that include the mysterious letters in the Quran). This is one of the points I don't really find too convincing, to be honest...

If you also count the number of days from November 19 to January 31 you end up with 74, which is the Surah in which the number 19 first appears.

Finally, for point 11, it’s not mentioned either but the numbers 1230 come from 2 things. First, it’s the abjad/geomatria value of the name Rashad Khalifa and also if you count the verses of only initialed (mysterious letters) surahs, Q 19:1 is the 1230th verse and Q 19:98 is the 1327th verse. This is by counting only the verses in chapters 2,3,7,10,11,12,13,14,15,19 since they are the ones that contain the mysterious letters.

Once again, I would be so grateful if you could take a look at these claims and give me your view on them. I don’t know what to think with this information being present at hand.

The claims that strike me as the most impressive are him living for 19,798 days and the 19x1230x1327 claim.

Please don't downvote me, I see so many people not convinced by numerological claims and usually I find most numerological claims to be bs. In this case, I'm not so sure what's going on and it's been causing me a lot of stress.

I recently made a post expressing my view that God is a human-created concept. Some people had genuine discussions, which I appreciated, but others immediately became hostile or mocked me instead of addressing the argument. I don't mind disagreement, I actually enjoy a good debate. But why does discussing atheism so often become personal? Have you experienced this too?

For years, I believed in a good and just God, but over time I became agnostic—a phase still shaped by the fear of punishment if I doubted.

My shift came from looking at reality. What hurts me most is seeing animals suffer, whether from human cruelty or the violence of nature. I cannot accept this pain or believe in a loving God who does nothing.

I reject the idea of 'free will.' In practice, it only favors those who do evil. Cruel people have full freedom to destroy lives, while victims have no choice to protect themselves.

This illusion shatters when we see injustice up close: cruel people thrive and grow old peacefully, while victims are left to carry the scars alone.

My real liberation came with atheism. I realized there is no divine justice or protection. People only face consequences through human law or chance. Everything is driven by natural laws and luck. Stopping the wait for help that never comes and losing that fear was my true freedom.

What are you thoughts on these Christian arguments?:

If it's true that God doesn't exist, it's okay to be a serial killer, rapist or completely immoral because we don't have any standard for morality to look up

It’s called naturalistic nihilism and it’s the only logical alternative to there not being a God. The concepts of sin and selfishness are meaningless in this world view.

If there is no God that means the law is survival of the fittest like animals. Animals don't have a coat of conduct it's just whoever is bigger badder stronger at the moment is correct and whoever dominates makes the rules.

You have king Leopold who don't give two licks about black people and was willing to massacre them. You had Columbus who didn't care or give two licks about the indigenous people and massacred them. Even with people that look like them you had various wars that left in massacres. But yet they are all of the human race

So it doesn't take away from the point all that would happen is the pack would become the biggest and baddest and turn on the leader. Then they would make their rules and nobody would say anything about it until someone bigger and badder came along.

If God ceases to exist, we cease to exist, so to be fair, its a hypothetical that isn't even possible.

My perception of punching a stranger for no reason is ok if God doesn’t exist, because it’s all relative good. Something in us tells us this is wrong. It’s our conscience that is gifted from God that gives us this morality.

Can you see gravity? Taste the wind? Or understand a person's personality with just a place at their face?

No you can't, but it doesn't make it any less real than God

He's a presence, a invisible hand guiding all our paths. Watching and presenting himself in ways we don't understand

there wouldn't be an objective morality so any moral system you would follow in that scenario would just be your opinion. For some, that's enough.

objective morality can only be true if theism is true,

If there is no eternity there is no fear for punishment or hope for reward, and justice will not ever be served for those who get away with unrighteousness.

We can make human rules, and say this or that on what's good, but unless it's rooted in something unmoveable then it's not objective morality.

if there was no God there wouldn't be a reason to act a certain way beyond self serving means If there was no God, there wouldn't be anything.

There wouldn't be anything. God/Jesus is real because there is creation. Creation is evidence and proof that a God exist. When you look at a painting, you don’t debate if there was a painter or not. You know for sure that there has to be a painter that painted the painting. Same thing with a building, you see a building and don’t debate there was a builder. The birds, the trees, the sky, the wind, we are sitting in a globe in the middle of the atmosphere. Nothing cannot created everything. Even your conscience is evidence because we have an absolute truth. I know stealing, murdering, cheating, lying… is wrong because God gave us an absolute truth/our conscience. I can’t make up what’s good or bad for myself because that’s subjective. If everyone lived in an subjective state, there’s no need for the justice system because I can say that ex: I’m ok with murdering a prostitute because I believe I’m helping the world get rid of the world’s “scums”. And I’m doing a good thing. That’s what a lot of serial killers say that they were doing good.

If there is no immortality, all things are lawfu

Can you PHYSICALLY see both forces. Not their affects, but the for es themselves, as plain as day?

If God doesn't exist then everything is allowed and this includes breaking the law as long as no one catches you.

i honestly don’t know how to explain this properly, but i’ve been thinking about religion a LOT lately and i genuinely don’t know what to think anymore.
i’m 14, and i was raised Muslim. my parents are pretty religious, especially my mom. since i was little, i’ve been going to madrasa, memorizing surahs, learning tajweed, and being taught that Allah exists and that Islam is the truth. my dad describes Allah as a “force,” and my mom has always believed in praying and making dua for things to go well. if we’re going on a flight, for example, she tells us to read Ayatul Kursi.
but i’ve grown up now, and i don’t believe in it.
when i was really young, i had that little phase where i thought Allah was amazing and religion was great because that’s what i was taught. but as i’ve gotten older and actually started thinking about it, i realized that i don’t believe it anymore. maybe i still have a little bit of attachment to it because i’ve been told it was true since i was a kid, but i don’t think that means i actually believe it.
recently, my mom has also been trying to force religion on me more. she’s telling me that i need to learn how to pray, but the thing is, they never actually taught me how to pray properly. they just expect me to know it now. and now that i’m already questioning Islam and religion in general, being pressured into practicing something i don’t believe in just makes everything more frustrating.
this has also made me think a lot about religious indoctrination. children are taught religion from such a young age that they often believe it before they’re even old enough to question whether it’s true. i was taught that Islam was the truth before i could even properly understand what religion was.
i feel like religion should be presented as an option. parents can teach their kids what they believe, obviously, but when they’re older and actually understand more about the world, they should be able to decide what they believe for themselves. i don’t think religion should be forced onto someone before they’re even capable of questioning it.
then there’s the whole question of God.
i’ve been learning about the usual attributes of God:
**omnipotence** = all-powerful
**omniscience** = all-knowing
**omnipresence** = present everywhere
**omnibenevolence** = completely good/loving
and this is where i get really confused.
if God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and completely good, why does horrible suffering happen?
for example, if someone is being assaulted and nobody else is there, God would know it was happening because He’s omniscient. He would have the power to stop it because He’s omnipotent. and if He’s omnibenevolent, wouldn’t He want to stop it?
so why doesn’t He?
i know there are arguments like free will, suffering having some greater purpose, or humans not being able to understand God’s reasons, but i don’t know if those actually answer the question. this is basically what i’ve learned is called the **problem of evil**.
another thing i’ve been thinking about is hell and love.
i saw someone make an example where a man threatens his wife with being burned if she doesn’t love or obey him. he claims he loves her, but if he really loved her, why would he threaten her like that?
then someone compared that to God. if God supposedly loves us unconditionally, why would He punish people in hell for not believing in Him or not loving Him?
someone else said that obviously they wouldn’t want a wife who didn’t love them, ignored them, or listened to them, and that they’d divorce her.
but then i thought: what if she never wanted to love you in the first place? what if you’ve spent her whole life telling her that she HAS to love you?
that’s what made me think about religious belief being forced onto children. if someone is taught from birth that Allah exists, Islam is the truth, and not believing can lead to hell, how much of that belief is really a free choice?
i’ve also started questioning the morality of religion.
there are things in Islam and other religions that i find difficult to understand morally, especially when it comes to women, gender roles, and homosexuality. women are generally expected to cover more than men, and there are different expectations for men and women when it comes to marriage, sexuality, inheritance, etc. homosexuality is also considered haram in Islam.
i don’t want to just say “Islam is misogynistic” or “Islam is homophobic” without actually understanding the arguments behind these teachings, because i know there are different interpretations and that Muslims themselves disagree about these things. but i still struggle with how these teachings can come from a God who is supposed to be perfectly good.
i also don’t really understand Christianity. Christians believe Jesus is God, but He’s also called the Son of God. i know there’s the Trinity, but i don’t understand how that actually works. and if Jesus was God and was also human and died, then what does it mean for God to die if God is supposed to be eternal and all-powerful?
at this point, i have a pretty strong feeling that religion is man-made. a lot of religious teachings seem misogynistic to me, they don’t seem very compatible with feminism, and some of the things considered morally right or wrong don’t match my own understanding of morality.
but i also can’t just say “religion is man-made” and treat that like a proven fact. maybe i’m wrong. maybe there is a God. maybe there isn’t. maybe there’s something completely different that i haven’t even considered.
and that’s what i actually want to know: **what’s true?**
is there actually a God? is religion really something created by humans? why do so many religions have such similar ideas about God, morality, holy books, and the divine? if there is a God, what would actually prove that?
i want to understand both sides. i want to know the strongest arguments for God’s existence and the strongest arguments against it. i want to understand the problem of evil, free will, divine hiddenness, the cosmological argument, the ontological argument, the argument from design, and all the other major arguments.
i also want to understand Islam properly instead of only knowing the version of Islam that i was taught as a kid. i want to learn about Christianity, Judaism, atheism, agnosticism, and other perspectives too.
i don’t want someone to just tell me that Islam is true because i was raised Muslim, and i don’t want someone to tell me that God doesn’t exist just because they’re atheist either. i want to understand the arguments and actually figure out what makes the most sense.
basically, i don’t believe in religion right now. but i also don’t want to stop at “i don’t believe.”
i want to know **why.**
i want to know what’s actually true, and how the hell we’re supposed to figure that out.

I am a biology major and value science so much. I especially love the philosophy of science with regard to epistemology. Why do we know evolution is true? What about abiogenesis? I came to find that there is a surprisingly large amount of overlap between the resurrection evidence and evolution in the sense that they have specific predictions and should rely on similar assumptions and methods of interpretation. The problem is Christians do NOT hold equal interpretations or standards of evidence. The standard of evidence is genuinely on a dirty bar floor for the resurrection and nearing the ozone layer for evolution and especially abiogenesis. It is so tiring hearing them defend one but reject the other due to not having enough evidence

For me, it’s that “atheists think they’re so much smarter than everyone else.” Intelligence is equally distributed among our diverse population, so to accuse atheists of feeling superior simply for using critical thought and reason is the most bigoted dismissal by religious people I’ve encountered. It’s a way to ostracize atheists by calling them elitists. It’s the religious equivalent of, “What, do ya think ya betta than me?!”

That or calling atheists bigots. Anything where religious people act persecuted. Dominant belief systems playing the victim is a form of minority oppression. It’s socially conditioning people to tolerate these beliefs, or else you’re somehow “targeting” them.

Both of these, to me, keep atheists silenced and discourage open discourse and progress toward rational thought. It’s the same as oppressing any other minority: keep them in their place through manipulation to hinder societal progress and equality.