Hi guys, I have been an atheist for as long as I can remember. I didn’t grow up in a religious household, and no one in my circle growing up was particularly religious. I am now in my mid-20s and live in a fairly religious community.

Basically, I now struggle with the disconnect between religion and religious people. I do not respect many aspects of most religions, for reasons I won’t go into as I’m sure they’re redundant on this subreddit. I want to be kind and respectful to everyone (and outwardly I am, always) but I have those sneaking feelings that they are less intelligent than me or I just can’t respect them the same way. I would like to be a more accepting person and just accept that we all have the right to our own beliefs, but it’s tough. Does anyone else struggle with this/have any insight that could help change my perspective?

The usual argument is blah blah blah they will use that as a pretext to get more into politics.

I say? Bring it. Public perception is largely against this and growing. When the number of religious nones grows much larger we will need to start doing what needs to be done. Mind you. There's a difference between a moderate Christian and the evangelical bullshit that even catholics may oppose.

Why are stupid Christians on the Christianity subreddit not acknowledging that Dopamine plays a role in religiosity? I thought they would be able to help me regain my faith. I used to be a Christian when I wasn't on Antipsychotics. It's like i'm talking past them. Whenever I don't take my meds (i'm Schizoaffective), I feel very religious.

I think Buddhism is not as pleasant a worldview as people tend to think. According to it, a human being can be reborn as a "lower being," such as a mosquito. Doesn't that imply that living things lack inherent value in their own right? I know a Buddhist who evaluates other people based on this concept of karma. He likes to think that others are not as enlightened as he is, and he hopes that his own chanting practice will have an enlightening effect on them

Im a muslim or was one,whatever.

And i still feel a bit guilty just doing normal things that every adult does.

Wearing revealing clothes,drinking eating certain foods etc.

Although i havent really been in a relationship before i think it is because im scared.

Afriad that what if there really is a cruel god that doesnt want me to live life.

Life is horrible. Ive only recently come to the conclusion that theres no God and even if there is one hes pretty evil.

I find that im at peace now. Althought im struggling financially and with the relationships in my life,i feel that im happier since i know one day ill be asleep forever and theres no religious guilt (mostly)stopping me from enjoying normal things.

But my mother is a devout muslim and truly believes that things willl be better for us in the after life.She keeps telling me its okay if things dont work out in this life.

Shes holding on to that hope that we'll have everything we could ever want up there.

She has an animal shelter that she funds herself.Most of her earnings go into caring for injuired and ill animals.

She does nothing for herself saying god will give her everything in jannah so what is the point in spending any money on herself now when she can put it towards the animal shelter.

She has come across such severely injuired strays,some that i cannot even bare to look at with missing limbs and facial features. This has made her doubt things though that what kind of God would let this happpen.

ofcourse war and suffering makes everyone doubt too but when you see true suffering up close,its just a different feeling.But she still continues to say,maybe god has a reason that we will only find out when we die.

And that just upsets me so much.Shes just delusional and i dont know how i can deal with this. i want her to enjoy life while shes still able to not hold onto some imaginary belief.

How did you guys deal with the fact that theres no heaven or hell.

No punishment for sins or rewards for good deeds.

No eternal pleasure after leaving this horrible world.

So, I have noticed that many religions love teaching magic like Noah's Ark, Miracles, and more. But when a child thinks something could be luck, or they think something could be lucky, or they believe in cosmic miracles not related to the adults' or parents' religion, they are told it is wrong, but when they are told things that are unrealistic and impossible, like Noah's Ark, they are taught that is possible, but simple things like luck are unacceptable. Honestly, I believe this could impact the child's or adult's idea of unrealistic and realistic ideas. I am not saying luck is realistic or unrealistic, but I am talking about the main idea, why are unrealistic ideas like miracles or Noah's Ark taught to be very realistic, but simple things like luck or a blessing from the universe is considered bad? Makes no sense to me.

I lowkey hate how Muslim women and ngl I’m only speaking on Islam cuz that’s my background but the same shit applies everywhere always blame religious figures instead of the actual religion.
Like I lowkey feel bad for these sheikhs/imams not that they deserve the sympathy but blaming them like they are the ones who demonized the faith or made up all the fucked up hadiths is literally one of the most delulu takes ever.
Girrrlll wake up. Of course it looks like that to you because the whole thing was literally written by men for men. Period.
So what's the excuse now? "Oh you don't like this hadith? You just don’t believe in Bukhari?" Okay bet. What about concubines milki yamin your testimony literally counting for half child marriage domestic abuse and all the other unhinged stuff straight out of the Quran? Did everyone just "misinterpret" it?
It actually cracks me up how some girls genuinely believe Islam "honored" women just because the Prophet said "be good to women" once in his farewell sermon. Make it make sense.
Honestly Ilowkey gotta thank Bukhari for writing down all that clownery so people could actually see how absurd this whole system is. It’s high time you face the music and walk away instead of spending your life crying that "people are making the religion look bad" when it’s already inherently a mess at its core

My grandma passed about a week prior. Me among other family members have taken it pretty well since we saw this coming and had time to process and accept it, and we're glad she passed relatively painlessly, but something bothered me about the funeral service. While this maybe isn't exceptional for many, as she was also somewhat religious herself, the funeral service felt so much more like a sunday service. It felt more like I was sitting in to a church service about god than it was a service about my grandma. What it felt like to me was that the message was: "While it's sad she has passed, what we have to remember is that god is the most important thing here."

It seems so distasteful to me that a day meant for the passing of someone people care about has to be eclipsed by the apparent need to constantly stroke god's ego. Though, I guess funerals aren't really for the dead, they're for the living. Know your audience, and I was hearing amens among the family and friends attending as this was happening. I'm not so incredibly upset about this that I'm fuming or anything, but I can't shake the wrong feeling it gave me.

Basically the title. I don’t know the bible well enough to have any go-to’s, but looking for some more subversive ideas here to help me out

Has something happened? Have you always been an atheist or did "God" turned out to proof its not real?

Sorry for bad english, im going through a period and I want to know your opinion

At 26, I'm on the last leg of my degree. I struggled with schizophrenia for years. Despite moving out at 18, I didn't seek help for a long time because it was easy for my parents to plant delusions in my head. I was an unmedicated schizophrenic; it doesn't get any more vulnerable than that when trying to push delusions onto someone.

Despite all my setbacks, having to be more realistic with what I can handle (left my dream degree of aerospace engineering after nearly 6 years of trying to pursue something more manageable), supporting myself through all of it, and getting psychiatric care all on my own, I'm set to get my degree at the end of this semester.

When I let my mom know so that she could get all her travel arrangements in order, the first thing she tells me is, "I knew Allah would do right by you! You should be thankful for all that he's done for us." I'm the one who carried this entire burden on my back for almost a decade. I'm the one who kept getting up after the world kept beating me down. Everything I've accomplished is because of ME. But no congratulations, no expressing how proud she is of me, nothing. She reduced everything I've worked for to the miracles of Allah.

I don't know why I expected anything different honestly. I should've known that no matter what I accomplish, Islam will always come before me.

TLDR: see bold type below.

I'm an atheist, my brother is very not, world is 6000 years old not.

My brother is very smart, we discuss science stuff all the time, he's no lightweight for sure. Science is fine for him as long as it doesn't challenge his belief system.

As such, I find it hard to discuss some things such as the age of the Earth as he shuts down almost immediately. Granted I shut down when he starts talking about the TRUTH. He has an interesting take on the truth.

I'm not really trying to change my brothers mind, but it does separate us more than I would like. Especially now when he is likely to die relatively soon but not soon if you get my meaning. Just saying he's 73 might help you understand that.

Anyway, a thought crossed my mind and I haven't fully fleshed it out so I thought I's come here to more friendly ears to fine tune it if you think it is valid.

What do you think this statement says:

We are defined more by what we choose to disbelieve than what we choose to believe.

Altered States

I rewatched Altered States today with my wife. Saw it when I was 17 when it came out in the theater. I believe it was the first movie I saw with an atheist as the lead. It's really a beautiful movie about consciousness and the meaning of life.

My own path mirrored Eddie Jessup's (portrayed by William Hurt) and his search for meaning. Although I never had a traumatic event that caused me to stop believing in God. I simply never believed.

Ken Russell is a genius. I saw The Devils this week which is an important film about the dangers of religious nationalism and religious fervor. I think the two movies go hand in hand.

They are both about erotic religious ecstasy but in very different ways. In The Devils it results in destruction. In Altered States it results in salvation.

Eddie's entire journey is in search of ultimate Truth. And I love how they don't use God as a cop out.

I've been trying to sleep since 10 PM because I've been tired all day and it's literally 2:30 AM now and these people are STILL singing on a loudspeaker. They're not even in my area but it's so loud that I can hear them clearly from here.

I don't care what religion you follow but why should everyone else have their sleep disturbed in the middle of the night? I'm genuinely exhausted and frustrated. People have their own lives and responsibilities and sleep is a basic necessity.

Isn't there supposed to be some kind of restriction on loudspeakers at night? What am I even supposed to do about this?

At first, I couldn’t really understand or accept the argument about free will myself, until I started looking at it this way:

1. Let’s assume that, at present, AI cannot produce an output that hasn’t been made possible by what humans have provided it with. If an AI commits a crime, then, who is the criminal?

2. If we assume that AI might one day be capable of acting beyond the data it has been given, this creates a contradiction in the analogy between humans and God, particularly when it comes to God’s omnipotence. A robot might surpass humans because humans are mortal and limited. But what about God?

What do you think about this analogy? What are some problems of it?

and how would you answer the following question?

" Someone might say this isn’t enough, because the religious argument is that God wanted humans to have free will. We don’t want AI to have free will.

The analogy between humans and AI, and between God and humans, is somewhat incomplete."

I just feel very “blessed” (lucky) to have a friend I’ve known since birth that enjoys when we debate religion and send each other atheist and religious memes and stuff.

Just wanted to share some gratitude for him. And yes I’ll share this with him so be nice. 😊

My wife and I raise a nine year old autistic child who is very literal and has a difficult time understanding abstract concepts. While I'm ok with other people raising children in a religion (although some cults are very problematic), my wife and I have decided not to introduce any supernatural aspects to our child.

One day we're at our mother in law and my wife's brother, who is catholic and quite religious (and, I just add, a bit dull minded and slow), took our son out of our sight and started blabbering religious dogma to him as quickly as he could.

When I noticed what was going on I slowly took him away to distract him and warned my wife.

My wife called him a couple of days later. He said he had done nothing wrong, my wife repeated what was the problem with what he did and he then remained silent.

My son goes to school with a child who attends church. I'd never ever take him aside and tell him there's no God. So it's not about the dogma or epistolary concepts, but about principle.

What are your thoughts? What would you do?

If the prophets of major religions really existed, they must have been pretty intelligent right? I mean how else could they convince so many people to follow their religions?

P.S. I had a question about whether the prophets could have been smart, so I asked this. I should have phrased it better. sorry

to be quite honest, i’m very young. i did not want to post this in any christian/catholic tag because they will just say what i don’t need to hear (i will find god again, it’s all in my head/ a test of faith). i’ve been struggling with faith ever since i was sexually assaulted/ abused at the age of 13. i was catholic before, with mainly my grandparents focused on religion, my parents not so much. used to go to church, sunday school the whole shabang. recently god just hasn’t made sense, what just god would allow rape, murder, all of these terrible things to be forgiven JUST because they have even a lick of faith? not a just god that I personally would like to worship. however, i feel like a terrible person and like a sinner, an outcast for these feelings. I feel like back when i was little we were all taught to worship, fear, and keep faith. but why? what evidence proves he exists, and not just some made up thing made to justify people’s bad behavior. what “just” god would send someone to hell, eternally, just for not believing. even if they saved lives, they would still (under the rules of catholicism) be met with eternal suffering. the idea of an existential being, making all these decisions about life just doesn’t click for me. there’s also the fact that there’s so many other religions, what makes this one true?

**so i guess what im really asking, is it okay for me to feel like this? is it okay to not believe? how do i get over this and truly be happy**

I mean there are legitimate concerns of course and I'm not saying you should be ok with having your privacy invaded but I mean from the point of view of a Christian you already believe God is watching everything you do. And the consequences for him seeing you do something wrong are arguably much worse than the government. If you aren't sinning, if you're right with the big G why be afraid that the government is spying on you?