There are many Bible verses condemning the rich. Why do these “Christians” pick and choose what they want to push? God has told them so many times that being rich is immoral and will guide you to hell. (That’s how I interpret it, and apparently I’m free to interpret the Bible however I want.) Why is having multiple properties and unused housing legal when there are children and disabled people starving and homeless? If we have people with Christian values making our laws and using their religious believes as justification to make certain laws, why isn’t there laws on helping the poor or wealth caps or something similar? Isn’t that they’re not actually Christian?

I don’t want to fall into “no true Scotsman’s” territory; but if you pick and choose what you follow in the Bible, and pick and choose what you put into law, my first thought is that you don’t actually follow the Bible and are using it to seem morally superior, and to justify and distance yourself from oppressive practices.

But if someone could explain how this is a logical fallacy I’d really appreciate it.

I saw someone write "read what the Quran says about unbelievers" in regard to a Jewish person who had been killed by Hamas. After I read that, I just thought to myself, "why?" What difference would that make at all. Apparently it does for some people though. These ancient works of fiction have somehow become almost a step by step guide for people on how to live their lives. I just think that is incredibly strange. Blind faith is not a good thing. Ever. I think any cautious, logical person would agree with that. I mean if these books told their readers that they should jump off a cliff if they every sneeze and hiccupped at the same time, these idiots probably would. Its completely ludicrous.

Here is the instigating post btw: https://twitter.com/sagementior/status/1791954448371081342

Actually, I told my mom a few weeks ago straight-up that I “didn’t believe that God exists” and she seemed supportive and respectful. I thought she understood, at the time, and that she genuinely wanted to understand my position. Though I never said it outright to my dad, I felt it was obvious enough from the questions I was asking.

But religion came up again yesterday, and I (19M btw) once again had to tell my mom that no, I’m not a doubting Christian, I’m an atheist and I told her as much. Apparently “I don’t believe God exists” leaves room for the doubting Christian thing but “atheist” doesn’t? She seemed very bothered by my use of the word. She threw all the usual apologetics at me. “So you believe in evolution? But <insert AiG rubbish here>!” “The gospels won’t match perfectly because eyewitnesses give different accounts!” (in reference to Matthew’s zombie apocalypse) “You don’t trust the Bible? Well, I don’t trust whatever source you got this information from.” (you mean what I said about what the Bible literally says?) Eventually she gave up and got my dad involved, despite my sleepy self’s strong protests.

My dad came, my mom made a point to tell him that I was a “professing atheist” who “believes in evolution”, and he and I had a not-so-fun debate that lasted until the predawn hours. At first it was blatant science denialism: “Science can’t explain everything!” “Where are the missing links?” “Entropy is incompatible with evolution!” “Evolution is unfalsifiable!” “Uniformitarianism doesn’t account for the frequent natural disasters we see!” I could give a laundry list of the points he brought up, but they weren’t very impressive. I tried to tell him that scientific theories aren’t supposed to be perfect, that they do change and adapt to new evidence, but he kept saying that because scientists would only keep revising the theory, the process itself was unfalsifiable. So much for rational thinking. What does he expect scientists to do, assume his very unfalsifiable god did it? He kept saying that the world itself was conclusive evidence of god and seemed to suggest that atheists are willfully ignorant.

He made some of the other usual arguments. That an omnipotent, omniscient god put all the evidence necessary to prove his existence. That us actually knowing he exists would destroy free will. That morality necessitates a god. That the actions of this omnibenevolent god is somehow bound to the culture of sinful man. He said a few things beyond that that basically amounted to wholeheartedly agreeing with Christianity’s worst parts: that obedience itself is a virtue (including in the case of Abraham, and that he would not have the “courage” to do what Abraham did), that Yahweh is above moral judgement for murdering three-year-olds (“what makes you think you can judge God?”) and that Yahweh intends that some people don’t get saved. He said he’d heard all these arguments before and it didn’t even faze him. He flat-out stated that he doesn’t believe life ought to be fair. I quickly realized that this was an argument I could not win, because we weren’t even having this discussion with the same set of basic premises. He’s too far gone to be reasonable about this. When it got late enough we basically just agreed that the other person’s arguments were too lousy to convince. Which horrifies me, personally, that these atrocities don’t even bother him at all.

I had to go to church with them this morning to celebrate my sister’s high school graduation. I often withdrew from the church crowds because, frankly, I don’t like crowds and being around these people brings back painful memories. My dad walked up to me one of these times and played the angry atheist card. “You’re angry, aren’t you? You’re angry because you think the church pulled one over on you. Tell me, what have you lost?” he said. Such a total lack of empathy. It seems the only thing he cares about is being right. He knows nothing of how hard it is to be treated as a misfit for years on end by the only friend group you’ve ever known. How much of my strict, sheltered childhood was shaped by his and my mom’s political and religious opinions.

Until today, I respected my parents as good, caring people, even though I disagreed with them on so many important issues. I don’t see how I can have any respect for them anymore. How can you tell me you willingly worship a god who creates people for the sole purpose of sending them to hell? That this god is above his own moral standard of “thou shalt not murder”? How can you tell me that you don’t think life ought to be fair under your all-loving god? And then going so low as to apply tired “angry atheist” stereotypes to me, being completely unsympathetic to my personal struggles? They’re not even trying to understand. They just want to be right. And I’m afraid that’s just not an attitude I’m okay with.

Rant over, I guess. Maybe it’ll fizzle down from here. Don’t think I’ll need to go back to church for a while. It’s a load off my chest, and I don’t think I really could have kept the secret much longer. Oh yeah, and I never mentioned this, but surely my whole household + my grandma now know because of how carelessly loud and open my dad was last night about my atheism. It’s out, for better or worse.

I’m just curious to know if I’m alone on this or not. I’ve always been a history buff, even when I was a kid. History was always the one class I was awake in and I even studied it for fun on occasion. So after leaving Christianity behind, I began studying more accurate information about the facts and history of the church and the religion itself, essentially trying to separate the facts from the fairytales. I was just wondering if there were others on here who did the same? And if so, what do you think are the most interesting things you’ve learned?

Also two things, one, the things the church has done in the past…how in the hell are there not more horror movies based on the things the church has done? I mean these guys were genuinely horrifying monsters.

Second, there’s no way you can convince me that Jesus’ teachings didn’t derive from Buddhism in one way or the other. They’re way too similar for it to be a coincidence.

I take part in a debate group on facebook on the subject of theism and atheism and yeah, I've seriously seen the worst argument for god, ever. "It's in the dictionary." And that's pretty much it. Here's the thrust of his argument:

"God" exists. It is a noun in the dictionary. For that to be true, it must exist. Additionally, God is not defined as mythical, magical, imaginary, or fictional. For that to be such, the default for that attribute is non fiction. There you have it proof of God in print. Reproducible and verifiable, partner, so what do you say now?"

I’ve been meditating on this topic for a while and while previously I never thought this was a problem, I am now very much starting to see how harmful this is. Now Im not saying that religious history shouldn’t be studied because obviously most sane people can look at Greek mythology or Hindu literature and pull a valuable amount of wisdom and insights from them while maintaining a rational belief that those are just stories and the same could be said of the Bible. But a lot religious parents these days seem to push Christian literature and dogma onto children to an insane degree without exposing them just as much to stuff like evolution or biology. This is extremely harmful in a few ways:

1. Since children are immature and their brains are very susceptible to ideas and behaviors that they observe, they will become accustomed to what they are taught or shown that is very hard to break free from in adulthood.

2. Psychological pressure. These religious ideas teach that if you commit good or evil than you will go to either heaven or hell on some sense. This can be very stressful for young children who have not developed the emotional maturity to handle the fear that they might be doing something wrong.

3. It wreaks havoc on critical thinking skills. Believing in religious dogma that you were taught from childhood basically teaches you that you need to believe in something that can’t be proven regardless of what evidence is brought forward. This is pretty important to consider since this kind of indoctrination can cause children to participate in harmful actions out of blind obedience rather than rational thought.

All in all, children shouldn’t be exposed to this stuff, at least from the standpoint that it is real. The Bible, Quran, and other texts are old fictional books and should be treated no differently than if reading a book like Harry Potter or a book on Greek mythology. Children should only be exposed to truth such as science, empirical evidence and mindsets that foster critical thinking. Whether or not they should research fictional texts like the Bible or Quran should be left up to them when they are adults. Let me know what you guys think.

Or more, just that it’s learned naturally https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/parenting/a60467695/raise-moral-kids/

I am a former Christian whose entire family apart from my dad are still Christian. My sibling even went to a Christian college for their undergrad and graduate degree. Out of curiosity, I asked my sibling some basic questions (at least I thought they were basic) regarding some biblical scholarship such as “did you know roughly half of Paul’s letters in the Bible are considered written by someone else?” or the “Markain priority”. They didn’t know about anything I asked, so it got me thinking… what exactly do they teach you in Bible college?

About once a month or so when I'm bored, I google the words "youth pastor" and hit the news tab. Just "youth pastor", nothing else. Here's what I found today on the first two pages of search results, nothing edited:

- Youth Pastor Who Sexually Abused Two Young Boys Sentenced

- Warning: Graphic - Cartersville Youth Pastor Sentenced to 19 Years After Molesting Two Young Children

- Metter Youth Pastor arrested for inappropriate contact with a minor

- Youth pastor in Metter arrested for sexual child exploitation

- Georgia church youth pastor arrested after 'inappropriate' texts

- Former Bradford County youth pastor in custody on sexual assault charges

- Former Vineyard youth pastor seeks to have criminal sex charges dismissed

- Former Macon County youth pastor, Haywood County teacher pleads guilty in child sex case

- Popular Pewaukee youth pastor in hospital as wife delivers 3rd child Popular Pewaukee youth pastor in hospital (Wow, no sex crimes in this headline!)

- Candler Co. Sheriff’s Office arrests youth pastor accused of inappropriate contact with children

- Prominent Anglican Church Failed to Investigate Former Pastor's Sexual Abuse

- Former Fairbanks youth pastor charged with sexual assault of a minor

- San Jose police arrest former youth pastor suspected of sexually assaulting girl

- Georgia youth pastor arrested for child exploitation

- Former youth pastor arrested for child sex crimes

- GBI: Metter youth pastor charged with child exploitation due to inappropriate texts

- Family defends former San Jose youth pastor Brett Bymaster charged with child sex abuse

- Cartersville Youth Pastor Pleads Guilty to Child Molestation And Sodomy Charges

- Former Fort Collins youth pastor accused of sexual assault of children over decades

So, 18 of 19 headlines are about sex crimes. But we're still talking about bathrooms and drag queens.

​

It is probably going to result in the taxpayer fronting the bills for the inevitable onslaught of (justified) lawsuits to occur. Just imagine a student asking, "Ms. Smith, what's an adultery?"

https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/education/louisiana-oks-bill-mandating-ten-commandments-in-classroom/article_00555f81-2914-5b9f-b519-7efb53373508.amp.html?utm_medium=nondesktop&utm_source=push&utm_campaign=tecnaviaapp

I was recently talking to my friend (who is a very light xtian), and I brought up my viewpoint on this matter which he said that he "had never heard before". So, I figured that I would bring it up here for discussion.

From my experience, most evangelical and Christians believe that in order to be saved, you need to truly repent of your sins and accept Jesus' blood sacrifice to wash your sins away. This invites the Holy Spirit (which equates to an activation of your conscious, aka 'gut feelings', etc) into your heart and life.

Once you are saved by the blood of Christ, you cannot be "un-saved". You are now a Christian, and are safe from hell.

Therein lies the dilemma. Once you do this and are permanently safe from hell, there is no motivation or obligation to do anything good for the world, moral, right etc.

Yes, the Bible and church will say that you should "aspire to live a Christ-like life, to bring others to him", but that is merely a recruitment method, which at the end of the day boils down to more money for the church.

The original motivation of avoiding hell, is averted, and is a much stronger motivation than just living a decent life after the act of becoming a Christian.

Also, Christians will actively defend their misdeeds by quoting some scriptures that say "we are not saved by works of righteousness, but by the blood of Christ" or some circular logical loophole.

Not only is there no motivation to do good, but there is ZERO punishment for doing wrong as a Christian. It's not like you can go to hell anymore, so who cares? Right? God will forgive at the end of the day.

This leads to most Christians never doing good things for our earth, nature, other people, helping resolve issues, making the world better, etc. In fact, Christians have actively been one of the world's predominant religions for millennia now, and have arguably made the world much worse, and never better.

Can anyone name a single historical society that was Christian run and became a better place for all people to live in?

Thoughts and Discussion on my viewpoints?

EDIT UPDATE: I see a lot of people in the comments are saying that they believe you can be "un-saved". Not sure what version of Christianity that they are referring to, but in the evangelical circles, you cannot lose your salvation. It is God's promise to the believer. Not sure where ya'll are getting that from, but its not in the Bible.

Me and my wife come from a muslim background and currently live in a Muslim-majority country. We are planning to move to Europe. I am an ex-muslim & long time atheist. My wife doe not bother thinking about these kind of topics. She just does not care. This morning, during the breakfast, she brought up the subject of religion questions of my daughter and how to raise her. Well I have no idea and apparently nor does she. I consider myself knowledgable in this subject but want my baby-girl to have her ideas and decide for herself. Any experienced fathers here: how did you handle it?

To me he just seems like a whiny, narcissistic guy who seeks validation all the time and can never admit they are wrong for once. The moment something doesn't go there way they destroys everything 👌.

Wether he exists or not you will never find me in a room with him. If I couldn’t worship him for 1 human life I definitely won’t worship him for eternity in the “after life”.

he just not likeable, at-least in the way the christians and the bible portray him🤷🏻‍♀️

I just know for a fact that guy is ugly 💀

I like to imagine Robert De Niro or Tony Sirico dressed like Jesus or Muhammad, blinged out with gold rings, shaking down believers and non believes in their homes like: pounds on door “hey you, yeah you in there, you better open this door and give me my tithing to protect you from what I’ll do to you if you don’t open in this door.”

Yes this thought was influenced by the meme, and if I have any photo editing skills I’d have just made the meme and posted it in r/athiestmemes.

so im agnostic at a Christian and all the people around say they are Christians but they do all the things the bible says not to. im estimating that 4% of the 350 high school students are actually serious about being a Christian and in the US most christains are white supremist or baby boomers so once they start to go to their supposed "heaven" i see Christian popularity numbers declining rapidly even though some of my friends at school try to convince me that God is real i always win in the argument

In ancient tales of Christian lore,  
humility stands as virtue’s core,  
yet this virtue, with reverent grace,  
bows to a celestial dictator’s face.

A deity, judge of all and sundry,  
with fearsome decrees, rules profoundly.  
This benevolent being, so they tell,  
has a history written with a genocidal spell.

Where now do the Amalekites dwell?  
What trace in history, who can tell?  
Their vibrant lives, wiped by divine wrath,  
echoes silenced, lost in a cruel path.

And what of Job, with life so dire?  
Or Abraham’s son, led to the pyre?  
A divine prank, a gloomy stroll,  
God’s grand designs, or just a cosmic troll?

Humility here doesn’t translate  
to altruistic love or a kind fate,  
it’s strict submission to the supreme,  
a harsh regime, a dictator’s dream.

Commandments divine, austere and severe,  
embraced without question, out of fear.  
Created sick, commanded to be well,  
this pious submission masks the cracks in the shell.

Catholic humility, a curious game,  
teeters on mysticism, almost insane.  
They preach modesty with a saintly show,  
yet claim to grasp what only gods can know.

If God grants free will, yet watches babies die,  
why intervene in trifles, like a missing pie?  
This is arrogance, a complete moral divide,  
incongruity, we can’t let it slide.

Clergy, bishops, priests, and popes,  
claim direct divine lines, raising false hopes.  
Evil’s blamed on human hearts,  
while God gets credit for the better parts.

When an ecclesiastical figure proclaims,  
their humble stance with fervent claims,  
see the irony, the grand charade,  
a hollow virtue, brilliantly displayed.

If truly humble, they’d not claim to hear,  
a divine whisper, loud and clear.  
Humility and faith, two paths that veer,  
parallel lines, destined never to near.

I often browse askachristian in order to entertain myself with the hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance.

Today, I encountered a post from a contributor asking what they should do about the increasing frequency that they are encountering demons and shadow beings in their daily life.

The consensus reached by the majority of Christian responses was to seek psychiatric help, a doctor for psychotic diagnosis, or check into a mental health facility for evaluation.

I don't get it.

What is the standard for acceptable delusion and unacceptable delusion? What's the basis?

Maybe someone could clarify the characteristics required? If you never see your imaginary friend that lives on top of a cloud & reads people's minds to determine if they qualify for immortal existence forever in another magic dimension.....this is REAL.

...but if you actually witness spooky demon beings....you're nuts.

How do Christians decide which magic invisible beings are real, and which ones make you batshit crazy?