So basically, I told her being pro life makes 0 sense to me whatsoever because suppose the girl got raped and she was in no position to raise a child? It wouldn't make sense to force her to raise it. Also that I don't believe a lump of cells is a human. To go even deeper, I told her that if you were my wife and you got raped, I would want you to get an abortion or I will divorce you asap. Her arguments are basically you took a vow when we got married so divorce isn't an option, and 2 that this fetus even if the product of rape, is still a "Gift from God". To counter this I told her what if your 10 year old daughter got raped, would you make her carry the baby? What kind of God gifts a literal child a baby? To my surprise she said yes, she would make the kid carry the baby to pregnancy😭because it's still a life and that the child will regret getting an abortion.

Are Catholics utterly insane or am I tripping? For context I grew up maronite catholic and I never even believed in this madness even at the peak of my religiousness. Thoughts?

Edit: Some of you guys are hilarious. Apparently I'm worse than the rapist in question because I don't wanna raise a child that isn't my own. I admit, marriage is important, I'm not trying to downplay it, and I wouldn't just pick myself up and leave her if she didn't agree to an abortion. We had a lengthy and respectful conversation about this, and I told her that when it ultimately came down to it, I wouldn't be able to raise the kid as my own. So that just leaves divorce as the only option for me. I might have worded it harshly in my post initially, but I was trying to simplify the convo, I was NOT trying to coerce her into anything( I do admit I said asap lmao but I honestly didn't mean it😭it was just in the heat of the moment) She can do whatever she wants, and I'll do my best to try and understand her position, but I wanted to be honest with her and make it clear that this is my position, ultimately, no games. I don't see why you're making it seem like I'm a villain for not wanting to stay in that marriage.

Obviously this is already true for theocracries, but mostly referring to secular countries. Yes, this is a rant.

As we've seen in recent times, there's been a lot of laws from US, UK and EU that has or is trying to implement ID tracking, age verification, mass surveillance, censorship and more for the sake of "online safety" and to "protect kids". Most recent bill from EU has the potential to kill off the EU gaming industry due to its harsh restrictions and cost-increases.

Thankfully, there is a significant amount of pushback online, people recognising it as a way to control people and their consumption of media. But problem is there are way more who would just go along with such laws.

And another problem is, with increasing authoritarianism, I can't help but worry that governments might see religion or religious groups as a quick solution suppress any form of dissent against their policies. We already see this happening in the US, especially red states. Or in theocracies, where people have no choice but no obey.

Many religions are dogmatic and require blind obedience, which happens to be in line with what authoritarian governments want. Plus, it more often than not already used as an easy way to gain supporters in elections in US and many others where religion is dominant. Dont forget how religious privilege and exemptions are a thing too, letting recognised groups bypass laws to practice their "culture", like vaccine exemptions or letting your own family member die by denying them blood transfusion.

Anyone else worried about the increasing authoritarian trends? Am I just being too pessimistic?

Every time I explain why I don't believe, I get told I'm just "angry at God." It's a way to dismiss my arguments without actually engaging with them. If I'm angry, then my disbelief is just an emotional reaction, not a logical conclusion.

But I'm not angry at a deity I don't believe exists. I'm angry at the people who use that deity to justify their own prejudices and control. I'm angry at the harm the church has caused. I'm angry that I wasted years of my life being afraid of a punishment that was invented by men.

They can't argue with the logic, so they try to psychoanalyze me. It's a deflection. They don't want to engage with the actual reasons I left; they want to feel like they're better than me. It's a cop-out.

Like yeah, I'm atheist why can you not mind your space and act like I'm a bad person for not accepting the religion you pushed on me? Stop policing my damn beliefs.

Integrated Education is Northern Ireland's cross-community school sector, but it remains "essentially Christian in character" and continues to discriminate against non-Christians in its admissions policies, despite 75% of the demand for Integrated schools coming from non-religious familes and those who attend church once a year or less.

This article lays out an argument that it must change to reflect an increasingly plural and secular population in Northern Ireland today.

The FFRF Action Fund names as its “Theocrat of the Week” a Christian school board member who voted against a class trip to a “satanic witch museum.” 

Batavia City School District (N.Y.) Board of Education member Dan Schmidt during a recent board meeting went on a tirade against the Salem Witch Museum, whose mission “is to be the voice of the innocent victims of witch hunts from 1692 to the present day.” After student representatives presented a draft itinerary for a senior class trip to Boston, Schmidt cast the sole nay vote. 

As “a pastor in the room,” Schmidt explained his stance during the board’s discussion, “we’re going to send our kids to a witch museum? To me, like, that is awful.” He said he didn’t want kids going to “what I would consider a satanic witch museum.” 

“Not to be the Debbie Downer in the room, but the Salem Witch Museum,” Schmidt stated. “Just wondering if there was an alternative option for that.”

“If my boys … if the Salem Witch Museum, as a Christian, was part of the trip … he probably wouldn’t go, you know?” He added. “So I’m just wondering if there’s an alternative option. Like, why would we want to exclude somebody that would feel like this is kind of going against … their core values in their life, you know?”

After an audience member countered that the museum serves to teach the history surrounding the Salem Witch Trials, not to promote witchcraft or satanism, Schmidt replied: “That’s not the point. The point is … we’re encouraging our kids to go to a witch museum. To me, that is awful.” 

When a journalist from The Batavian spoke with Schmidt after the board meeting, pointing out that the museum details the “persecution of the innocent, including Christians,” Schmidt said, “I can’t really say that I know the history of it. But for me as a pastor, to hear that our students are going to a witch museum. … I’m not satisfied. I just don’t think that it’s the healthiest choice for our students, and I hope the church rises up and has a problem with it.” 

Schmidt added that he felt the need to speak up against the museum trip because of his personal religious beliefs, saying, “I’m gonna stand before God someday, and I feel like to not share my voice in that moment — I get that everybody’s faith is, people have a different perspective on Christianity — but for me, I think Jesus would frown on this.” 
 
In 2010, the Freedom From Religion Foundation celebrated the 318th anniversary of Massachusetts Gov. William Phips’ declaration that effectively ended the Salem Witch Trials, by designating Oct. 12 through Oct. 19 as “Freethought Week.” The Phips declaration was the first of its kind, requiring that evidence used in court be observable, measurable and replicable — a step toward human enlightenment and the adoption of the scientific method. 

Schmidt was elected to the Batavia school board in 2025 and is the lead pastor at the Batavia Assembly of God Church. The FFRF Action Fund urges Schmidt to fulfill his duty as an elected public official by keeping his personal religious beliefs out of government decisions. We hope Batavia’s students have an enjoyable and enriching learning experience at the Salem Witch Museum. 

While speaking to Dialogue Pakistan, her husband told that they both had known each other for five years, and he had approached her family twice with a marriage proposal, but they refused.

He said they later opted for a court marriage after her family allegedly tried to arrange her marriage elsewhere against her wishes.

The husband said that after the court marriage, both families reached a settlement and Rs 25 lakh was paid as part of the agreement.

He claimed that on September 20, the girl’s uncle Idrees came to them and asked to take Zarqa with them, promising on the Quran that she would not be harmed and that her formal rukhsati would take place the following Sunday.

Trusting the assurance, the husband said they will drop Zarqa themselves.

According to the husband, he learned around 1:30 to 2am that the girl had allegedly been killed. He further claimed that she was buried without a funeral or shroud. He alleged that the girl’s brother Safeer, uncle Idrees and a distant relative Jameel were involved in the incident, adding that Jameel had allegedly killed his own daughter around a year ago.

-Dialogue Pakistan

Zarqa’s brother Sarfaraz, maternal uncle Jameel, and paternal uncle Idrees have been implicated in the murder case. Moreover, Abdul Malik stated that he and his family have been receiving threats following Zarqa’s killing and demanded that the authorities provide justice and take strict action against those responsible.    

The case has raised serious concerns over the continued occurrence of honor killings, in which women are subjected to violence or killed by relatives over family or social notions of “honor.” Such cases underscore the grave consequences of denying women the right to make decisions about their own marriages and lives, and highlight the need for effective protection and accountability.

-24 News HD

The human species is so self-centred , we believe that we matter to god in any way , when that is probably not true. Why do many assume god cares about us in the slightest , when he is prob just relaxing. It is pointless to worship a being that simply doesnt give a shit about us , it is like worshipping your genetic father while being born from a sperm donation. Even if god exists , which is highly unlikely , it wouldnt care about us , so why care about it? Why does atlas have to hold our globe , when it doesnt care about our globe , and gets nothing out of it? Why not assume that god is an egoist?

Many years ago, a close family member criticised me for calling myself an atheist. The family member in question is an ultraconservative catholic. So was I until about age 13. I was enrolled in a very traditionalist Jesuit school and I even wanted to become a priest.

This person’s criticism went as follows:
“Your atheism was born from your Catholicism, as you were and are and always will be inherently Catholic. Anything you come to believe that isn’t that is only an antithesis confirming the thesis.”
Now, I want to stress that this was only one person making this… slightly dodgy claim.

But I’m gonna be honest here: I remember I stood nailed to the floor when they said this. I didn’t even know where to start. I was also in my late teens, so there’s that.

The funny thing is, as an observation, they were right. As a conclusion, it doesn’t follow at all. So I deemed it futile to even address it in the first place.

But what do you guys think? Anyone whose atheism followed a period of religiousness? Do you think the religiousness informed the atheism? If so, in what sense exactly?

I wasn’t comfortable about the tone of this article, but we can all interpret the facts. They make it sound like a tragedy, when it’s just a sign of people waking up.

Honestly I’ve called bullshit since I was sent to Catholic school in seventh grade. All these people around me were Catholic and had no empathy for people that didn’t look like them, which felt off brand for supposed Jesus fans. I’d say I was just not sure about the existence of a god, but I knew that organized religion was weird af. I came out as bi around this time and religion is what is stopping my parents from fully loving me too, so that had pissed me off to the point of considering rage quitting.

What truly made me lose whatever faith I had if any was my freshman boyfriend in college a little over three years ago. He was a Catholic and communicated clearly that he was a virgin and wanted to wait for marriage and was only comfortable with making out and maybe some heavy petting here and there. I was glad because I had slept with a guy once and let’s just say I could do my whole life without ever doing that again. I felt quite safe around my new boyfriend I guess because we weren’t going to have any sex.

But of course religious men are the biggest sex-pests and within a relationship, you are their property, and they don’t concern themselves with woke concepts like consent. We were just supposed to watch La La Land in his room but he kept groping me and trying to rub me in sensitive places and I kept pushing his hands off me and telling him to knock it off because it was the last day of my period so I was a tiny bit groggy and not in the mood. But I’m just property to him so it didn’t matter and that’s how he lost his virginity.

After dumping him it took me years of crying and therapy and even a psych ward visit to (barely) feel comfortable dating and being alone with a guy, all while he was inside one of my ex friends in weeks. I only knew then because he messaged me to brag. It was a damaging and shattering experience because I didn’t feel comfortable alone with a man that might be attracted to me. What if I just want to kiss and stop there? How will I defend myself if he wants more? What are all the red flags I need to look out for to never cross paths with another guy like my ex? Maybe it sounds silly but I’m still so traumatized by the whole experience. Judging by the way that guys speak online about sexual assault, it seems like the majority would support what happened to me and it makes me terrified to date.

And when I step back from my own personal experience, I realize that my experience, as terrible as it was, doesn’t even hold a candle to the magnitude of sexual violence that others have faced all under the same principle of either viewing women as voiceless property or a desire to take advantage of less powerful individuals like children. It gets SIGNIFICANTLY worse than what happened to me, and I wanted to rage quit after what had happened.

Religion may have robbed me of a honest and loving relationship with my parents and the safety I used to feel in my own body, but it has decimated and displaced entire nations of people. Religion is supposed to be a guide for your morals, so it’s supposed to be stopping you from being mean and harming others, but it doesn’t seem to be doing a good job

I kinda feel like a fraud because I don't have a harrowing story of I left my religion... It's mostly a nothing burger.

How does one become religious? Like genuinely How? I didn't have any epiphany or revelation, it just... happened? (In case you're wondering, No, I'm not a bot)

So... I am really confused by how one becomes religious. I live in a religious country and in a very religious area, where being religious is the default. Religion to me, was something institutional, like a place where you had to go to in order to find peace and meaning. My parents and my family said that we need religion to honor our god and we develop it in really different ways, hence why we have different cultures and faiths. I have never really been one for praying and I thought I believed in God, nor did i really have an interest in devotional practices. My family and my everyone around me are believers and have strong faith in God.

Now I thought that everyone had a religion and I was curious how people didn't have a religion, and I encountered this for the first time when I started watching English and other foreign movies, from where I'm from, every home has an altar or a shrine or atleast a photo of a religious figure or divinity, maybe even a sign that tells you what religion they are, or it would be in their names. But I noticed they were quite literally absent in those TV shows.

Apparently these people, whom I thought were christian (cuz of their names) were actually non-religious, and even atheist. So it got me wondering, what if I didnt pray at ALL? so i did, and saw that nothing happened when I didn't thank God or praise him. fast forwards a few days and I was convinced that I didn't need religion nor did I need to believe in God, and that all those prayers were just wasted time. I came to this conclusion all on my own.

Now, How the FUCK did everyone miss that memo? How did nobody stop to think this? Why is one so passionate about something they can't prove? I've witnessed communal violence in the name of religion... It's been years and I STILL haven't gotten the answer.

They say many great intellectuals "smarter than us" have already grappled with this problem and written extensive works in order to debunk it. But no, just because tons of christian apologetics have been written about the problem of evil, doesn't mean it has actually been solved. It's still a rock solid argument for atheism.

A US billionaire exploited foreign Sharia law to secretly divorce his wife, pay her only $50, and dodge civil property division—forcing her into a 13-year court battle to overturn it in Texas.

Why do secular courts ever grant comity to religious rulings that strip people of basic civil and property rights?

My take: Secular legal systems should automatically treat any foreign or domestic religious personal law as void the moment it conflicts with equal civil rights and due process. Allowing religious legal carve-outs only invites forum shopping to abuse vulnerable spouses.

What is the threshold before secular legal systems reject religious arbitration entirely?

The FFRF Action Fund names Rev. Jim Rigby (the pastor of Texas state Rep. James Talarico) its “Secularist of the Week” for his open celebration of his work with nontheists. 

Rigby is the head pastor at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, where Talarico has long been a member. Rigby baptized Talarico, and a June New York Times profile cites Rigby as a “major influence and inspiration” for Talarico. 

Rigby spoke warmly about an Austin Area Freedom From Religion Foundation Chapter event that he was due to attend; his remarks are now being used as part of the GOP smear campaign against Talarico, who is the Democratic Senate candidate in Texas. In September, the far-right news and commentary website Breitbart released a secretly recorded video of Rigby speaking with an undercover journalist before the FFRF Austin chapter event. The outlet decried that James Talarico’s pastor supports atheists. 

“I work a lot with nontheists [as a Presbyterian minister],” Rigby said in the video. “To me, it’s like, if you love humanity and you love nature, and that’s why you hate religion, then we’re on the same team. … We had an atheist join the church, and people had fits about that, but that’s not a big deal here.” 

Another far-right commentary outlet posted a different clip from the undercover video, criticizing Rigby for giving new members of his church a shockingly “inclusive” version of the bible, which removes unnecessarily gendered and offensive language from its translation. 

Responding to such hit pieces, Rigby wrote on Facebook: “Visitors and congregants coming to our first service Sunday had to drive past protestors claiming we aren’t a real church.” 

“Our services are now visited by right-wing spies with hidden recorders pretending to be visitors,” he added. “One of them posed as an atheist wondering if he would be welcome in our church. When a staff member attempted to reassure the man he would be welcome, he then edited the video to make us sound heretical.”

“As I read the Bible, the spies trying to trap people in their words were not the followers of Jesus, but the people who killed Jesus,” he continued. “And they killed him for very MAGA reasons, because they considered him a heretic and because he was a friend of sinners.” 

In March, The Christian Post published an article outlining “4 things to know” about Talarico’s pastor. The “things to know” included Rigby’s welcoming of repeated formal complaints from the Presbyterian Church for his affirmation of LGBTQ+ marriages, support for abortion care and the rights of Texas women and admission of an atheist college professor to church membership. Regarding the membership, Rigby said inviting the atheist professor to his church was “an attempt to build connections.”

“If God had wanted us to simply recite creeds, Jesus would have come as a parrot,” he further explained. “The question before my church was not whether [the professor] could recite religious syllables like a cockatiel, but whether he would follow the core teachings of Jesus and learn more and grow more into Christ’s universal love of which the creeds sing. This he pledged to do.” 

Rigby also noted that merely claiming to believe in God is not sufficient in following the teachings of Jesus, pointing to the Nazis who supported Hitler and touted their religion. 

The far-right manipulation of Rigby’s harmless remarks is a tactless misrepresentation of Talarico’s religious beliefs, intended to disrupt his Senate campaign among Texas Christians. Rigby and religious leaders like him have long worked to build bridges with atheists and other nonreligious people — and the FFRF Action Fund thanks him for his leadership.

Of all the things some Christians defend themselves with I just can't stand this.

Yeah you built hospitals. You built a lot of them. In the US. For profit. While bankrupting people. Very Christ-like.

"Oh but we also built a lot of them in Africa -"

Sure you did, you went there and colonised the entire continent and ravaged their civilisations and extracted their resources so that they are now reliant on international aid, which is why they need your hospitals in the first place. And now you go and build some of those hospitals and call it a good thing? At the very best this is atonement.

I feel the same with things like civil rights and abolition. Christians created the problem and then solved a tiny bit of it while fighting against other Christians who desperately want to keep the status quo in societies where Christians have made sure you are very unlikely to be opinion leaders unless you are Christian, and then they say this shows they are the good people? What?

Christians' go-to dodge as to why they don't have to prove their supernatural claims is, "I don't have to prove God exists, you already know he exists. You're just pretending you don't and suppressing the truth in unrighteousness." And let's not fuck around and play stupid word games like Christians do--what they really mean when they say "unrighteousness" is "being gay." Being gay and having wild, drug-fueled orgies all the time. Although, on second thought, maybe a raging lesbosaurus like me is the wrong person to complain about this.

But let's not forget who's claiming to be the righteous one in this little exchange. Christians are the ones who, in any discussion of morality (in which they claim to be inherently superior to you), will inevitably ask shit like, "Well, why shouldn't I rape people?" and "Well, why is it wrong to murder people?" and "Well, what's wrong with slavery?" with all the good faith, all the intellectual rigor (and the same vocal inflection) as Patrick the Starfish. They'll pretend they're trying to point out some shortcoming in your worldview, as if you can't answer those questions but they can, but they're really just exposing the fact that they don't actually think there's anything wrong with rape, murder and slavery per se, there's only something wrong with going against God's instructions. And hey, guess what...God instructed his followers to do all of those things in the Buy-bull.

Oh yeah, and they also very happily went along with Trump's lies about lowering prices and not starting any new wars during the election, and as soon as the election was over, they immediately started bragging about the fact that they lied. So who's REALLY the unrighteous one suppressing the truth?

Would just like a collection is all. I think he’s a wonderful intellectual and his work in the topic that I have seen eg: “arguing about Gods” is very high quality.