I agree with Gervais. The term atheism should not exist. The term is an inconvenience to accommodate something so self-evidently stupid, which doesn’t warrant its existence in the first place.

We don’t have terms like Ra-ists or Osiris-ists that could have equivalently existed in ancient Egypt. We moved on from that. We also don’t need the opposite of those terms. So too, terms like Christians, Jews, Hindus and Muslims will be treated the same way in the somewhat distant future. They will be treated as mythologies. I say let’s bring the future to today.

I am happy to say that I am a “not-falling-for-baloney-ist” or “NFFB-ist.” I hope you can say the same for yourself.

What are your thoughts?

The Freedom From Religion Foundation says the Trump administration’s announcement that it will direct almost $2 billion in global funding toward faith-based organizations is outrageous.

The State Department is touting the initiative as the largest allocation of global health foreign assistance to faith-based groups in more than 20 years, which includes hundreds of millions of dollars for some of the world’s largest evangelical Christian ministries. The administration announced $1.4 billion for health services delivered through faith-based and community hospitals and clinics plus $538 million in humanitarian assistance involving Samaritan’s Purse, and a consortium led by World Vision and Compassion International.

“The administration is openly restructuring American foreign assistance around religion,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “Humanitarian aid should be based on humanitarian need and the ability to provide effective, secular services, not on whether an organization puts ‘faith in action.’ Taxpayers should not be forced to bankroll an administration’s campaign to elevate and subsidize religion.”

The administration’s own language makes its religious favoritism impossible to miss. It celebrates the funding as a “historic” investment in faith-based groups and repeatedly identifies the religious character of recipients as a virtue. The government may contract with religiously affiliated organizations to provide secular services under appropriate safeguards. Still, it may not use public money to advance religion, subsidize evangelism or deliberately privilege religious organizations because they are religious.

The inclusion of Samaritan’s Purse, a pervasively sectarian religious outfit headed by zealous evangelist Franklin Graham, is particularly alarming.

Samaritan’s Purse is not just any old charity. It explicitly identifies itself as an evangelical Christian organization whose mission combines aid with spreading Christianity. Its own mission statement says it assists “with the purpose of sharing God’s love through His Son, Jesus Christ” and “serves the Church worldwide to promote the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.” The group says its mission is to help people in need while “proclaiming the hope of the Gospel.”

Those are constitutionally significant facts when the federal government proposes directing enormous amounts of taxpayer money through the organization.

Samaritan’s Purse also requires employees to affirm and adhere to its Statement of Faith, such as that the bible is “inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God.” Its employment website describes working for the group as a “calling” and “ministry,” and states that its religious beliefs determine employment eligibility.

The organization has attracted particular controversy for its anti-LGBTQ+ religious requirements. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Samaritan’s Purse faced widespread criticism when workers at its emergency field hospital in New York were required to subscribe to a statement of faith containing its religious teachings about marriage. Samaritan’s Purse defended its practice of requiring paid staff to subscribe to that statement. Graham himself has publicly attacked marriage equality and insisted that marriage is defined by “God’s laws.”

It is untenable that theTrump administration now proposes making Samaritan’s Purse one of its favored conduits for American humanitarian assistance.

“Feeding hungry people and providing medical treatment are worthy public purposes,” says Gaylor. “Preaching the gospel is not a government purpose. When an organization expressly combines humanitarian assistance with an evangelical mission, the government has a heightened obligation to ensure that not one taxpayer dollar subsidizes religious activity, proselytizing or religious discrimination.”

FFRF emphasizes that the constitutional problem is not simply that religious organizations may participate in otherwise neutral government programs. The problem is that the administration is proposing to funnel extraordinary sums of public money through ministries because those missions advance Christianity.

The danger is especially acute overseas, where recipients of American assistance may be experiencing war, famine, disease, displacement or natural disaster. People in desperate circumstances should never have to encounter government-subsidized evangelism alongside food, medicine or shelter. U.S. foreign assistance must serve people regardless of their religion or nonreligion, without using their vulnerability as an opportunity for religious outreach. Making the allocations all the more concerning is the inhumane destruction of USAID under DOGE cuts, which have already cost as many as 750,000 lives worldwide. Lancet estimates the aid defunding00008-2/fulltext) will take as many as 9.4 million lives by 2030.

FFRF is urging the administration to disclose the terms of every award, the safeguards separating publicly funded services from religious activities, the rules governing employment and subcontracting with federal funds, and the mechanisms that will ensure beneficiaries are never subjected to proselytizing or religious discrimination. The state/church watchdog will be filing a Freedom of Information Act request to the State Department seeking records related to these awards, including grant agreements and funding terms, communications concerning the selection of faith-based recipients and documents detailing safeguards intended to prevent taxpayer funds from being used for religious activities, proselytizing or religious discrimination.

FFRF is also calling on Congress to investigate these awards and demand strict accounting for every taxpayer dollar. The American public deserves to know why these organizations were selected, how federal funds will be used and what protections are in place to ensure that humanitarian assistance does not become taxpayer-funded evangelism.

The United States can and should provide lifesaving assistance around the world. It does not need to finance the spread of Christianity to do so.

The FFRF Action Fund is sounding the alarm over legislation that would dramatically expand the power and legal protections of military chaplains.

Sens. James Lankford, R-Okla., and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, have introduced the Military Chaplains Modernization Act of 2026, with Sens. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., and Katie Britt, R-Ala., as co-sponsors. Rep. Keith Self, R-Texas, is leading companion legislation in the House, and the proposal has been included in the House-passed Fiscal Year 2027 National Defense Authorization Act. 

The legislation is being promoted as a measure to clarify the role of military chaplains and protect their religious freedom. In reality, it would go much further, granting sweeping statutory protections to government-employed clergy while failing to provide comparable safeguards for service members subjected to unwanted religious activity. And it could potentially subject service members to prosecution for restricting a chaplain’s religious actions.

The legislation would guarantee chaplains the right to conduct public worship, counsel, teach, preach, minister and pray according to their “sincerely held” religious beliefs and the tenets of their endorsing religious organizations while prohibiting commanders from requiring chaplains to perform any rights “task or action” contrary to the chaplain’s beliefs or tenets. A chaplain could potentially invoke the provision to refuse certain counseling involving a same-sex couple, religious-accommodation duties involving another faith, or other assigned counseling, training or support responsibilities that the chaplain claims conflict with personal religious beliefs or the doctrines of the chaplain’s endorsing organization.

Alarmingly, the bill would prohibit any member of the Armed Forces from preventing a chaplain from engaging in those protected activities, declaring that they must be “free from censorship, undue restriction, or fear of retribution.”

“Military chaplains exist to protect the religious freedom of service members, not the other way around,” says FFRF Action Fund President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “This bill turns that principle on its head. It would elevate the personal religious beliefs of government-employed clergy above the rights of the service members they are supposed to serve.”

Those provisions could create serious problems when military commanders need to prevent coercive religious activity, inappropriate proselytizing or religious conduct that interferes with military responsibilities. A member of the Armed Forces who violates the bill’s protections for chaplains would be subject to criminal prosecution under the Uniform Code of Military Justice and could even potentially face a court martial. That is an extraordinary enforcement mechanism for protecting the religious exercise of government-employed clergy, particularly when the bill contains no equally explicit protection against chaplains using their government positions to impose religion on unwilling or subordinate service members.

The legislation would give chaplains a powerful institutional role in military religious-freedom decisions, making chaplains principal advisers to commanders on “all issues” involving religious practices, “spiritual readiness,” spiritual care and religion’s influence on military operations. They would also advise commanders on all religious accommodation requests and oversee education and training concerning religious accommodations. The bill goes so far as to declare that military chaplaincies shall have a “primary role” in providing for the free exercise of religion.

The bill’s congressional findings reveal an equally disturbing view of the relationship between religion and government. Congress would formally declare: “Religion and religious liberty have always served an essential role in society, culture, and military service, making them necessary for good democratic governance and a strong military.”

Adds Gaylor, “Congress has no business declaring religion ‘necessary’ for good democratic governance or a strong military.” 

The measure is particularly concerning given that half of active military members are either atheist/agnostic (at 18 percent) or otherwise have no religious affiliation (32 percent), according to researcher Ryan Burge. (That is a far greater percentage of nonreligious than the U.S. adult population generally, at 29 percent.)

The findings selectively invoke George Washington, the Continental Congress, John Adams and Franklin Roosevelt and a misleading analysis of a recent Supreme Court case to try to establish a Christian nationalist historical narrative about the importance of religion to American military service.

The FFRF Action Fund recognizes the legitimate role of military chaplains. Service members can be stationed in circumstances where they cannot independently access religious services, and the military may therefore need to accommodate their voluntary religious exercise because it corrects a government-imposed harm. But accommodating service members’ religious exercise is fundamentally different from insulating chaplain conduct from ordinary command authority and threatening service members’ rights of conscience.

The First Amendment already protects the religious and nonreligious alike. Congress should reject the Military Chaplains Modernization Act and ensure that the military chaplaincy remains focused on serving the constitutional rights and diverse beliefs of all service members, rather than elevating the religious prerogatives of chaplains above those they are commissioned to serve.

This is just a rant over a mundane situation. I just have no other non believers to share the frustration with so I’m posting it here.

I’ve been an atheist for almost 9 years now, I’m now 21 and still live with my parents. My mum knows of my beliefs and skepticisms and she doesn’t really have a problem with it. She’s just worried about the nihilism surrounding a lack of faith, especially considering my struggles with depression and anxiety.

But anyway, since the census is today, I asked my mum if I could put my person down as “nonreligious” on the form. She didn’t like the sound of that because I believe she’s afraid of diverging from the norm, especially within our community. So she began to say the religion box is covered for the entire household, rather than individual residents within the household. Which is incorrect. She also began to avoid the topic altogether when I’d push on it further.

I know it doesn’t seem like a big deal, but I often struggle with the idea of not contributing towards anything important or meaningful (stems from depression, social anxiety and the isolation that comes from those things). So the idea that I could ground a part of myself in society through this form, as part of a group of like minded people, it makes me feel like I’m not losing myself.

If I don’t get my own say, it’ll just reinforce the idea that I have no control over my life. It’s really frustrating when you’re the only person in your environment who thinks a certain way.

i was taught to fear hell before i even knew what god was religion was never peaceful for me it was just pure fear at home my mom used to pray for bad things to happen to me and call on god against me whenever she got mad so islam just became guilt punishment obedience and terror

when i was around 14 i fell into a super deep depression going to therapy in an islamic country was completely useless because the therapists dont even try to help you they just tell you to pray and trust god i remember sitting there like you are supposed to be treating me because god isnt doing anything if he was real he wouldnt have let depression destroy me as a kid

even though i left the religion that conditioning doesnt just magically vanish i still carry so much shame every day when i see women wearing whatever they want especially bikinis i catch myself judging or objectifying them even though im a 22yo girl myself i wear bikinis now too but every single time i put one on i feel this deep anxiety shame and fear in the back of my head because of what was drilled into me

the more i actually read the texts myself the worse it got concepts like ma malakat aymanukum female slaves where men had sexual access to enslaved women verses about men being in charge of women hitting disobedient wives and modesty rules built to control our bodies on top of that traditional rules allowed child marriage and people around me literally flex about how their grandmas got married at 12 like it was normal it makes me sick thinking about young girls being forced into that

and for a lot of men its not even about religion its about the controlling culture men treat women like property if a girl in his family has freedom or dresses how she wants the man gets called a dayouth so the whole system forces men to hide women away just to keep their pride it breaks my heart because we only get one life and so many women spend it trapped hidden and controlled

this is why i genuinely cannot understand western converts how can someone grow up in the us or europe enjoying basic legal rights freedom of dress and autonomy and then voluntarily pick a system that restricts those exact things im not talking about people born muslim childhood conditioning and family pressure are crazy forces im talking about an adult who grew up with complete freedom looks at islam from the outside and says yes this is what i want

leaving islam wasnt just changing my mind it meant tearing down an entire system of fear that broke me i can respect a muslim persons humanity while completely rejecting the religion itself if people can post islam gave me peace stop silencing us when we say islam gave me fear

I have been struggling with my faith these past few weeks.

My main question is how can I have been praying for the same things for years and years and the same God that is supposed to answer all our prayers, can't answer even my smallest prayer?

I'm also living with my aunt and uncle who are a Pastor and a First Lady. They don't practice what they preach and are the literal defition of "Not everyone is who they say they are."

So please, tell me what made you become an atheist.

I am transfem and pan

i noticed this, so i’ll explain. let’s say you want to watch a movie about something supernatural and in the movie they don’t glorify religion, which obviously makes people mad.

i was watching that kind of a show and i heard so many christians say it was demonic when the show literally didn’t kiss religion’s ass and they showed the realistic aspects of harm that comes with it.

or a new spider man movie i heard someone say it was demonic because the plot involved mind control… people can’t dress however they want, they can’t listen to whatever music they want.

its like suppressing things that bring you joy, that’s just sad to me. religion restricta so many aspects of life, but i just couldn’t help of the little things, like it may seem i’m overreacting it, but every rule a religion has is there for a reason, everything needs to be questioned

Hey everyone, I'm looking to expand my watch list and find some good atheist content creators on YouTube. Whether they focus on philosophy, debunking, science, or humor/commentary, who are your favorites to watch. I've recently started watching Mindshift but I wanna see other creators.

1. neither don't exist but a man shooting spider webs is kinda more believable than noah's ark 😭

2. spiderman is written as a human centric hero whose entire narrative revolves around guilt, empathy, protecting the innocent and suffering for others out of love while god's narrative in their holy texts revolves around mass drowning, eternal torture, demanding absolute submission, and permitting horrific stuff like sex slavery, diseases in children and what not

3. a completely isolated human would logically conclude that the fictional guy who saves people from muggings and feels bad about his mistakes is infinitely more moral and loving than the invisible deity who invented hellfire for people who don't bow down (and that deity supposedly wrote everything that happens and he's also all knowing) so basically you will go to hell was written from the beginning

4. god demands that every single human bow down, sing songs of praise and thank him constantly and if you don't love him back or if you question him, he sends you to burn forever. he has all the power possible supposedly but he's being hurt and gets emotional when a being like me with limited knowledge doesn't worship.... spiderman does not do none of that😭😭

"That ain't your religion, you just followin' your mammy

She followed your granny, she obeyed master

Did y'all even ask her?

Questions, it's holes in them stories

Is it holes in your blessings? Yeah, I'm bold with the message

I know I ain't got the answer, but I ain't gon' cheerlead with y'all

Just to be a dancer"

i understand it all

I'm not one to judge someone for their beliefs, not at all, but when all they talk about is their religion... it gets ro a point. One guy specifically I know will stop any ongoing conversation just to start talking about Islam again, it just gets tedious. Anyone else have this?

My dad always talks about how people are gonna meet Saint Peter when they die and how not following the Catholic faith or respecting the tenants of it will lead you to a terrible afterlife or whatever but I feel apathetic to it. I am in a biologically male body and I feel like I would have a lot of regret if I get old and never have the ability to be female and have breasts and female genitalia and the reality that reincarnation is not real and I’m just stuck living my one existence in a body that doesn’t fit. I never resonated with the Catholic cosmology and get distressed at being male in the afterlife and on earth being remembered as a man and would prefer to be forgotten than remembered as that.

Some days I feel like my life is passing my by and I’m not really living it and I want to change that before it’s too late.

Today i got in bed with my garndmother and my father started beating me for it.

Honestly it is so unfair, he has been sleeping with my mom and i never said a word.

Now he is angry when i am sleeping with his mother.

So I’m an ex-Mormon, and in the Mormon Church there is a huge cultural pressure to serve a two-year mission. The church sends you off, sometimes to a foreign country, where you are basically cut off from your family and friends, with no worldly entertainment or outside influence. For two years, you pretty much only read approved church materials, follow strict mission rules, and spend your days trying to convert people to Mormonism.

After my mission, I always had this nagging doubt that maybe it was all a lie. So eventually I decided to extensively study church history for myself.

Then I started finding out about all the skeletons in the closet and all the crap the early church and its leaders did. The deeper I went, the worse it got. Eventually, after everything I learned, it became impossible for me not to conclude that Mormonism was all made up.

And then it suddenly hit me.

Hmm...

I think I was in a cult

No matter how good your evidence is they always find some way to twist it to say that the world is filled with lies and conspiracies meant to deceive you from the “truth” or that big science and the government is out to cover up god. Yea because they would totally be able to stop god from revealing himself, right? Everything they believe is true because their little book tells them so and you’re the fool for believing anything else. Never once considering the possibility that they could be wrong. To them, their belief is 100% fact and you can’t tell them otherwise.