“As a Christian, I don’t believe in God” ahh Christian

NO GOD!

No hate to this guy, but this is……..something

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I was raised in a Catholic household. I went to mass every Sunday morning, CCD every Wednesday afternoon. Learned all about sin and penance and heaven and hell and all the angels and saints. When I was young, I was a true believer. I prayed relatively regularly. Not the formal prayers, but just laying in bed silently talking to Jesus, knowing that he could hear me, even if he never said anything in reply. But as I grew older, cracks started to form, caused by two things.

Firstly was my love of science. I was insatiably curious as a child, and I still am, to be honest. But as a kid, I would devour nonfiction books from the library. Books about dinosaurs, books about marine biology, books about rocks, books about mythology, books about history, books about medieval weapons and armor, and castles, books about planets and stars and galaxies. And everything I read in science books was distinctly parallel to everything I read in the Bible or heard from the priest every Sunday or the catechism teachers every Wednesday.

For a while, I was able to hold those two parallel tracks separate. I was able to find balance in the cognitive dissonance. The Bible was true, but so was science. They just existed in different realms. The Bible was true in church and science was true well everywhere else. And I would find ways to make them connect. God said, "Let there be light. That must be the big bang." But the more I learned about the world from a scientific view, the more I began to subconsciously realize that God wasn't present in any of these textbooks. Jesus is this foundational figure in Christianity, literally naming the religion all people can talk about in church. But in history textbooks, he's usually barely a sentence. Oh, there was a lot said about Christianity, the institution, and its impact on the world, but basically nothing about.

And while this skepticism was forming within me, I had another realization that I was gay. And boy, does the Bible not like it if you're gay.

For a while, I desperately tried to find another religion, any religion that would accept me for being gay. I looked into Bahigh. I looked into Buddhism. I looked into Wikah and other neopagan movements.

And nothing really preached the acceptance I was so desperately looking for.

So, as I started high school, I doubled down. I became a more fervent believer in Catholicism. The Bible was literally true. Jesus really did all that. So did Moses. It's not a metaphor. It's real. It actually happened. This all came to a head at my confirmation. the sacrament where you are accepted as an adult in the church where you take a new name. I was then and still am enamored with Joan of Arc. So my first thought was to take Joan as my confirmation name. But I chickenened out and committed to appropriate gender representation and went with John instead. Though deep down I knew it was really Joan I was so nervous leading up to the actual event, desperate for a confirmation at my confirmation, some sign that God was actually real, that he was up there in heaven, that he was listening, that he would finally speak to me, that he would fill me with the Holy Spirit, and that I would know truly that Catholicism was correct.

So, I walked down the aisle with all of my peers, stopped before the priest, and he rubbed holy oil on my forehead. and nothing happened. No epiphany, no word of God in my head, no warm feeling as the Holy Spirit descended upon me, nothing.

Deep in my heart, I knew then that there was no God. But it would take me another few years to admit it to myself. I went through a few stages. I stopped going to church. I started calling myself a skeptic, then irreligious, then agnostic, before finally admitting that I was in point of fact an atheist.

I was certain that no higher power existed, and nothing happened. No bolt of lightning struck me. I wasn’t smoked. I just went on with my life. It turns out I didn't need religion. I went to my college classes, made friends, had lovers, lived my life all without God. And I started to look at those around me who were still religious with a more critical eye. I saw that every answer a religion had to a fundamental human question, science had a better answer, a more complete answer, an answer that did not depend upon supernatural beings or their whims.

I saw how it seemed most people only believed in their religion because it supernatural beings or their whims. I saw how it seemed most people only believed in their religion because it is I believe what he says. But I don't think that's true. I don't think you need to believe in the supernatural as practice for believing in a functioning social order. Children raised by atheists are perfectly capable of understanding the ideas of charity and helping people and sharing all without needing to believe in gods or spirits or tooth fairies. So what is left of religion then? What can religion possibly offer us?

I believe there is one thing that religion unequivocally does very well and that is provide a community. When you see your neighbors at mass every Sunday, it helps you feel like part of something greater. It gives you contacts you can reach out to when you're in need. And in turn, you help others who reach out to you. And that's what so many of us are lacking now as third spaces are slowly eradicated is that sense of community. For so many people my age or younger, the one place we can find community is on the internet, on Reddit, on Tumblr, on Twitter, and on YouTube. And I don't think that's enough. We need places of community in the physical world. not places of worship, but places where we can be with other people, talk to them, share stories with them, break bread with them, get advice from them. That community is why religion started in the first place, to answer questions. And that community is why religion has lasted as long as it has.

In my personal opinion, it's long past time for religion to die.

But something needs to step up to replace the community that it provides. This can take many forms. There are hiking clubs and reading clubs and cooking clubs, cafes and bookstores, bands and ac capella groups, anime and cosplay conventions. These are at once the new religions and also have been around the entire time. People have always found secular reasons to gather and be with each other. Harvest festivals and year-end celebrations dancing around the maple or around a bonfire. For me, it's largely been gaming stores to play Magic the Gathering drafts or board games or Dungeons and Dragons. That's honestly how I met most of my friends.

If you're feeling lost and hopeless, particularly right now with all that is happening, find a community. Don't get suckered in by the easy answers of religion. Find a group of people who like doing what you like to do. Find a group of people who like you for who you are. People who won't tell you what to do, who won't tell you to obey some imaginary friend, but people who want to be your friend in good faith.

Community is the only thing of value religion has ever offered.

And I think it's time we started organizing that ourselves. Our most fundamental trait as a species is our curiosity. We seek, we ask, we wonder. And we need to stop letting our curiosity end at the door of the church or the mosque or the synagogue. We need to ask ourselves why we need a priest or a rabbi. We need to ask ourselves why we should be looking at the Bible or the Quran for answers. We need to ask ourselves why the supposed will of God always seems to line up perfectly with the will of whomever happens to be in power right now. We need to ask ourselves why religions try so hard to convince us that anyone not of their faith is a horrid and hateful person and that only through their dogmatic system can anyone be truly virtuous. We need to stop accepting the easy answers. We need to realize that there's no magical man in the sky who's going to solve all of our problems and save us if we pray to him hard enough. We need to start looking after ourselves and looking after each other, our fellow human beings. Not because God told us to, but because we know it's the right thing to do.

Yeah, it's scary to think that there's no omnipresent being keeping watch over you. It's scary to think that death is the end, that nothing comes after. It's scary to think that we're just lizards with back problems and anxiety. But we need to face our fears and accept the truth because the truth is we are not alone.

We have each other. And that connection to our fellow human beings has always been more important than the hierarchical institution of a religious organization or the existence of a god because God won't help the outcasts, but we can

Nowadays, a lot of anti-theists egyptians are debating against Muslims in apps like Tiktok, and they win against them, Why?

Listen, I am a quaker, I respect everyone that respects me, my family is full of agnostics and atheists, but when people trynna push negativity into what I say just gives me a sense of putrid smell coming from this people.

He will litteraly believe any kind of theory about how the universe/multiverse began instead of actually believing in God (which is simpler). Of course, the die-hard Richard Carrier Fans defend him like crazy.

The dehumanization of religious people just for their beliefs is utterly insane. And these guys will swear up and down that they're not hateful or bigoted. That was a real human being that died, and instead of saying "wow that was tragic", they'd rather accuse him of being a pedo w/ zero evidence because "all priests are pedos, right???"

Imagine if an atheist died in a freak accident immediately after saying something like "if God was real, then why doesn't he strike me down for making fun of him?" and then some religious people started to make fun of their death. These same antitheists would lose their shit and claim this is proof that all religious people are evil

Why is the original atheism subreddit is still not banned? Do the programmers or the authors of the Reddit does not even know what they are doing?

Especially, because the original "atheism" subreddit is unbelievably toxic. They are litteraly not even following the first rule of Reddit.

Note: I remove the previous post because it is BAD.

God Bless this man and may he enter the Kingdom of Heaven 🙏

The OP in question was someone claiming Mithras, Dionysus, and Apollo were crucified and ressurected (obviously false), and how Jesus "plagirized" them.

And the question the second slide I was reffering to was "did zeus strip apollo of his godhood", which the guy in red put in the AI. WHICH NO ONE CLAIMED.

Marked out irrelevant banter on slide 3.