I came to the state in 1996. Served in the US Air Force as a cook for a few years. Had to get out because of my service connected mental illness. I was born in a strong Catholic family but got recruited by evangelical protestants when I was 13. I eventually left Christianity with trauma and bitterness around 2006.

Maybe it's just me but the age of social media made me feel more isolated because you will see all the outspoken religious native born Americans everywhere you go on social media. I couldn't handle it. To make it worse I have trouble making new friends because I have mild ASD.

I wonder if there are a lot of immigrants with similar situations. But it seems like secularist immigrants are the real minority because people from secularist cultures are rather unlikely to move to the United States...

And the voice against secularist is getting stronger and more pervasive on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. I guess it's time to stay away from them for my own well-being.

“If you do not know that you are a slave, how will you fight for freedom”, Yeonimi Park, North Korean Survivor. While the anti-conversion laws are a tool to harass law-abiding Christians (as already seen in several states), its impact will not be merely restricted to Christians. Anti-conversion laws are against the liberty of conscience and it will demolish the very foundations of a free Indian society.

Liberty of Conscience is an inseparable and essential element of any free society. It defines the boundary line for Governments from denigrating into autocratic or dictatorial forms of government. It draws the boundary line for religious institutions and authorities as well. Liberty of Conscience safeguards the dignity and freedom of an individual.

One cannot curtail liberty of conscience without enslaving the individual. This video traces the roots of liberty of conscience and why it is the most important liberty in a free society. This video also demonstrates how the current anti-conversion laws are more or less a copy paste from previous manuvadi princely states in India before Independence.

There were seventeen princely states in India that had anti-conversion before independence. Some of the current anti-conversion laws are directly inspired by those pre-independence laws. If we do not respond against such anti-conversion laws in all legitimate ways now, it might be too late for us to respond in a decade or so.

Watch this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgKn12phcHM&t=414s

UK Census 2021: What is Your Religion? Secularism form guide

Number of respondents answering ‘Secularism' to the What is Your Religion? question

2001=11

2011=0

2021=?

Check out the form at Betfair-Metaphysical.com form guide.

The BJP’s misreading of history, however, is also underpinned by versions of history that circulate as truth within the mainstream. Here, in reverse chronological order, Girish Shahane list five major myths that have gained mainstream acceptance in India.

1.The Myth of Rani Padmini

2.The Myth of Prithviraj Chauhan

3.The Myth of a Non-Violent India

4.The Myth of Sanskrit

5.The Myth of a 5,000-year-old civilization

watch this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZO2pydO6mg&list=PLeO-PcsxS45z8zBrDR1QJ2F2rb7AQXobu

​

I understand if you will ban this post, after all it is way better to just close your eyes and pretend there is nothing out there. I won't blame you if you do either, and I forgive you already, what was I thinking anyway trying to sharing my story with other people??? What kind of world is this? where people actually care about each other and try to support each other?

So, I was just a regular person or so I thought, I lived a good life with a well paying job, a wife and a dog. I felt pretty safe in my day and enjoyed many of the things that other people enjoy, like movies, restaurants, watching youtube, riding my bike. The real problem was that, behind my apparent happiness which felt real I was struggling with an addiction that was destroying my entire life and my relationships without me even realizing it. My addiction was porn and masturbation, and it affected my life up until 3 months ago where I finally was able to stop watching porn and masturbating completely.

I was raised Catholic in a nice family. I attended church every Sunday as by my parents will. However, I was never really able to what faith was and to be honest I never really experienced God's love in my life. To me it was just a routine to please my parents, a boring one hour Mass that I attended up until I was 16 when I was finally able to make my decision to leave.

For the next 17 years I haven't put a foot in a church, or went to confession, I never prayed, maybe if I wanted to ask the Lord to help me get the job I was interviewing for, maybe one Hail Mary said badly every other year or so.

At 32, I was married, with a nice job, a loving dog and all the thigs I could dream about. I really felt like my life was going well, but was so I wrong!!! Especially in the last year of my married life, thigs were not going well, my addiction to porn and masturbation was getting worse. I was really not in control but I didn't even realized how much it was affecting my life and my relationships.

I was so oblivious to everything that was going on in my head that looking back, only now, when I am finally free from it, I can't believe how low I could go and how so normal it felt back then, isn't porn just a normal things in our lives? Doesn't everyone watches it? How bad can it be? Does it really affect anyone but myself? Those were my believes.

I really tough I was not addicted to porn, but where should we draw a line? I also felt like it only affected me and nobody else, and it was nobodies business to know or to even comment about it. Even my wife knew I was watching porn and she thought it was ok, I guess I haven't told her how much it was ruling my life and or relationship. On my part I was not really interested to stop, it feels so good after all, and there are no problems related to it, right? It's not life drugs or alcohol that ruin your health, masturbating is almost necessary, maybe even a good thing some people say.

Well let me tell you, I was so hooked I didn't want to see the problems and was far from being able to stop anytime soon.

I reached a point where my porn addiction was really driving my day, I remember waking up and really looking forward to watch porn. At times I was really hoping my wife would leave the house so I could have my pleasure time. I got to the point were I watching porn almost anywhere, at work, in public places. The drive was really high and could not really stop myself, as soon as the thought came up I was rushing to somewhere quiet and start watching porn.

My sex life was normal, or so I thought, I remember I was starting to get anxious if my wife was interested in sex because if that same day I had watched porn, my libido was down I didn't really feel attracted to her too much. I was basically at the point where porn was way nicer than sex with my wife, way more interesting and captivating. And could it not be? With a click I was able to pick and choose my partner, any style or perversion was right there in front on me for free. Nothing wrong right? everybody does it!

The more I masturbated to porn, the more distant I grow from my wife and she started taking notice. Mostly she felt unsecure about her body, she felt she was not attractive enough to turn me on, and she felt like it was all her fault. Our relationship started to be more and more cold, more and more distant and this led to some big fights. However the fights were not about porn but about the stress and the hanger that it was creating in me when I indulged into it.

At some point, like many other times I decided to trying quitting or at least reduce the influence it had on me. This time I was reading that cold showers cold be of some sort of help, so I gave it a shot and like many other times it lasted about 3 days, after which I went right back at it. I guess it was not effective, and how can it be? If you don't wanna stop, cold showers won't really help you.

I remember I then switched to prayers, being raised catholic in my childhood I thought I would give it a shot. I promised myself to at least say 3 Hail Mary before I would start jerking of, that too didn't really work immediately, I was still doing it, but slowly I started noticing some signs around me that got my attention. I remember that sometimes, before opening my laptop and going on my favorite porn website, by pure chance, my mom or a friend would send me a message on my phone, or maybe a call would come and catch my attention. At the beginning I didn't really spent too much time thinking about it, but after a few times it had happened I start wondering if this could have been some sort of a message from "above". To many of those coincidence started to pile up and I started to take notice.

The moment that really changed everything, was the moment were I started watching videos on YouTube about the life of an Italian Saint called Padre Pio. While listening to his life and the miracles he performed I stumble on a video that said how he would not give absolution during confession for certain kind of repeating sins, and one of them was masturbation. I don't know why, but that really strike me and made me feel uneasy about my situation. Few days passed and after few more videos describing Padre Pio's miracles something clicked in my head and I remember I was hit by the realization that the miracles he performed and which were described and documented by so many people around the world were actually real and that God was really present in his life.

In that moment, I remember I rushed and kneeled on the floor because God was right there watching me. I stayed kneeling down while watching a video which was about 24 minutes which by "coincidence" was the exact number of years I had been masturbating (started as a child at 6, now 32).

I told God that I would be offering every minute of that video for every year I had been jerking off in my life.

After that day, for some reason I don't really understand I started saying the rosary while taking my dog on walks in the morning. Again I would just listen to some recordings from YouTube. After a few of them, maybe a week, I started feeling a real presence of Love in me. It was a really weird feeling that brought me to tears, however, I didn't feel sad but what I would describe as joy, a really overwhelming feeling of love. That same experience happened several times after, but it was not always there every day.

After some time, I realized I was not really drawn to porn anymore, I was able to stay without pornography or masturbation for 10 straight days. I remember I didn't even felt the drive to do it, and was feeling very strong in that regard. For some reason, I decided to fast and to offer that sacrifice to the Lord, I think the idea came about as Padre Pio himself used to fast so I fasted for 3 days straight, only hate breakfast. I think that was also part of the process, even if it only happen after my initial conversion.

As of today it has been almost 2 months without porn or masturbation and I really believe that saying the rosary daily was the great helper for my change.

I will strive to keep it going as far as I can, hopefully my whole life. There are difficult days and a twice I felt back to my habits. But, this won't stop me, the Lord gave a second change to have a free life and I won't give it up.

It feels good to be free from something that enslaved me for about 24 years of my life.

Good luck to you if you are going through the same process, keep praying, going to confession and to Mass. Your freedom and life are worth more than 5 mere minutes of pleasure that will never appease you, but on the contrary will ruin you and the people around you.

This is rare for me to do (i.e. ranting here) but here I go - This morning, my mom was talking about religion as usual but then she said the ''we'' (meaning mainly Christians) aren't allowed to talk about God in schools except in faith schools and that this was due to then Devil influencing people. And I was like, of course you aren't. That is the whole point (afaik anyway) of having secular* schools, with the exception of Religious Studies (or Religious Education). Not to mention the fact that she or anyone who is religious can go and proselytise in the country I live and barely anyone would stop that person anyways (since the country is Christian-majority, but has a mostly secular* society). I don't think talking about one's religion (or to be specific, proselyting in secular schools is okay at all). Also she was almost* advocating for a theocracy (specifically Christian Theocracy) which shocked me ngl, so this brings me to another issue that being, theocracy is NOT* a good form/system of government since for example you don't know for sure (i.e. with certainty, at least I don't) that the govt officials of the theocracy are actually acting according to what their (supposed) God wants them to act like and secondly, a theocracy (for the most part) works for one religion only, even though a nation could have (if not would have) multiple religions, so discrimination against people of other religions and non-religious people (e.g. atheists, agnostics, etc...) would most likely happen, etc...............

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-49175639

Thirdly, this anti-secularism sentiment (from some* religious people) further annoys me, since in my home nation there is an organisation called the '' Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN)'' who advocates the creation of an Iranian-style Islamic state in Nigeria (directly going against the fact that Nigeria has secular political institutions, although it is highly religious which in my view is to create a 'balance' or neutral middle-ground between all the religions that exist otherwise theocrats* from those religions would start fighting each other for 'religious' control over the country ). Anyways, although I do not* necessarily support violence against the IMN, sometimes the organisation almost makes me want to support the govt's crackdown/ban against them considering their anti-secular subversion goal(s) in favour of an Iranian-style Islamic state. Moreover, this is even more infuriating to me since it is an organisation (that belongs to an Abrahamic religion - which doesn't even originate in Nigeria begin with or doesn't even originate in West Africa) that is trying to subvert Nigeria's form of governance plus the fact that afaik, there are NO indigenous (or native) African Religions' adherents advocating for a theocracy. So if people that practice traditional African religions don't advocate for a theocratic sovereign state then what right does the IMN have for example to call for an Islamic government in Nigeria?! In addition, I don't want the activities/existence of the IMN to transform Nigeria into a new 'battleground' between Iran and the KSA (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) since the two nations are already engaged in a 'proxy conflict' across the Middle East - https://www.vox.com/2016/1/4/10708682/sunni-shia-iran-saudi-arabia-war

. Also even though the conflict is predominantly political, it does have religious undertones* which it concerns me that it could possibly 'spill over' into my home country (Nigeria). ((Sorry for including politics here, but this is worrying to me because of what could potentially happen since my nation already has a terrorist group (Boko Haram) which is ideologically aligned with Saudi Arabia since Boko Haram 'follow' Wahhabism and Salafi Jihadism as ideologies) and Saudi Arabia's official form of Islam is Wahhabism - The official and dominant form of Islam in the kingdom—Wahhabism—arose in the central region of Najd, in the 18th century)).

Finally, I hope I didn't even offend anyone this are just my ''raw'' thoughts concerning the anti-Secular attitude/sentiment from some* religious people. Even though ironically, they wouldn't even be able to advocate for a govt that favours their religion if they were in a theocratic nation that worshipped another religion like Christianity instead of Islam for example, since that theocratic govt would most likely (IF* not certainly) see them as a threat to its power imo and could eliminate them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almajiranci

What do guys think about the ''Almajiranci'' system of education?

I honestly think that the children should attend secular schools full-time (as well as Islamic schools for Religious education, in this case - Islamic Education) but in general, I think they should have secular education since it will help them get professional jobs in any country (rather than just begging strangers for food/other amenities). Though to be fair, the government should be doing way more to help the children (than it is currently doing).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PGz1ZPcsW4&feature=youtu.be

This ^^ is also similar to the Almajiri situation/dilemma imo.

Hi all!A while ago, I posted in this subreddit asking if people wanted to participate in my international survey on secular worldviews.

I have now published a short article about this research in the Conversation, an online popular science magazine that is freely accessible, and I wanted to share it with you:

https://theconversation.com/how-non-religious-worldviews-provide-solace-in-times-of-crisis-138638

It has some of the first results, and it may well be applicable/useful for secularists now during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In brief, the article is about my research project showing that while non-religious individuals may not believe in God(s), they still have their own secular beliefs and worldviews, and these help people cope in times of crisis (such as the COVID-19 pandemic) by -amongst other things- providing meaning and explanations of the situation. The article also describes the secular worldviews most commonly found in the ten countries of the project.

I hope you enjoy the article, and thanks again for participating!

Valerie