Atheism
Community Guide
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Statement of Purpose
- This is a support and conversation community for people who don't believe in gods.
- Superstition hucksters have no reason to subscribe or post here at all.
- If you are looking to debate or proselytize, options will be linked lower in the sidebar.
Acceptable
- Honest questions or conversations.
- Discussions on parenting or advice.
- Struggles, frustrations, coming out.
- Atheist memes. We can have fun!
- News headlines relevant to atheism.
Unacceptable
Depending on severity, you might be warned before adverse action is taken.
- Anything against site rules.
- Illegal and/or NSFW material.
- Troll posts and comments. There will be no attempt to explain what that means.
- Leading questions, agenda pushing, or disingenuous attempts to bait members.
- Personal attacks or flaming.
Inadvisable
- Self promotion or upvote farming.
- Excessive shitposting or off-topic discussion.
Application of warnings or bans will be subject to moderator discretion. Feel free to appeal. If changes to the guidelines are necessary, they will be adjusted.
If you vocally harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathizer or a resemblant of a group that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of any other group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you you will be banned on sight.
Provable means able to provide proof to the moderation, and, if necessary, to the community.
~ /c/nostupidquestions
If you want your space listed in this sidebar and it is especially relevant to the atheist or skeptic communities, PM DancingPickle and we'll have a look!
Connect with Atheists
- Matrix: #atheism:envs.net
Help and Support Links
- Freedom From Religion Foundation
- The Secular Therapy Project
- Secular Students Alliance
- Black Nonbelievers
- The Clergy Project
- Atheist Alliance International
- Sunday Assembly
- Atheist Ireland
- Atheism UK
- Atheists United
Streaming Media
This is mostly YouTube at the moment. Podcasts and similar media - especially on federated platforms - may also feature here.
- Atheist Debates - Matt Dillahunty
- Rationality Rules
- Friendly Atheist
- Making Sense with Sam Harris
- Cosmic Skeptic
- Genetically Modified Skeptic
- Street Epistemology
- Armored Skeptic
- NonStampCollector
Orgs, Blogs, Zines
- Center for Inquiry
- American Atheists
- Humanists International
- Atheist Republic
- The Brights
- The Angry Atheist
- History for Atheists
- Rationalist International
- Atheist Revolution
- Debunking Christianity
- Godless Mom
- Atheist Freethinkers
Mainstream
Bibliography
Start here...
...proceed here.
- God is Not Great (Hitchens)
- The God Delusion (Dawkins)
- The End of Faith (Harris)
- Why I Am Not a Christian (Russell)
- Letter to a Christian Nation (Harris)
Proselytize Religion
From Reddit
As a community with an interest in providing the best resources to its members, the following wiki links are provided as historical reference until we can establish our own.
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Not at all what I meant. It's just, think about the fact that, by definition, churches are organizations. It's really easy to crowdsource funding when you have an organization with lots of members (or if you've been, say, pillaging and squirrelling away filthy lucre for hundreds of years.)
Now compare and contrast with a person who leaves a church after realizing the message in their book is different than the hateful message being spewed. A singular person can't even begin to hope to fight the financial resource this campaign commands. There's no special church for "people who are Christian who just realized their church was being hateful and changed churches" and even if there was, those people would be wary of joining a new church.
Sure, but with the sheer number of churches, you'd think the "good" Christians would all coalesce around one that is critical of the bigots and fascists who claim to speak for them. Surely in the roughly 2000 years of church history, there would be plenty of time for a "good" church to form and attract members.
People who leave hateful churches still joined them in the first place.
Or were born into them.
Right, but you're just dodging the question by kicking it further back in time. Are all Christian churches bad? If not, then why aren't more of them speaking out against the bad ones representing them? Isn't their silence complicity in the hate propagated in their Lord's name? Are we saying all Christian parents are bad for raising their kids in hateful churches?
I obviously refuse to generalize to "all churches bad" as I haven't been to them. I can say that in my work, I take 2 disabled women to church on Sundays (I'm not a religious person but my job is to enable them to live their lives and they love the music and seeing their families) and their church has explicitly been saying things like "stop idolizing politicians" and "stop asking if someone deserves to be hungry and just feed them."
I think people who never step foot in churches aren't qualified to assume they all say the same thing and I think taking the view that they're all evil is a little too convenient. If life were that black and white, it would be so much simpler.
If 11 people sit down to eat dinner with a Nazi, that's a dozen Nazis sharing a meal.
I know there are reasonable people with good hearts who attend church. I know there are progressive churches who aren't based on hate and bigotry. I have spent plenty of time in churches to recognize that they can be a force for positive change in the world.
My argument is that they, the good ones, do not criticize the bad ones because the good ones do not benefit from it. They do not want to invite the scorn and ire of the bigots because it's bad for business. There's a reason why the bad churches are booming, and why the progressive churches are dying. The good Christians are putting their faith in God to sort it out, while the bad Christians are preying on the fears and jealousy hiding in the hearts of all humans.
I respect your opinion but it feels too monolithic to me. It's a statement that encompasses 100% of people and categorizes them and I can't ever get behind such a thing. There could be, for all I know, churches that do speak out again "Christians." How would I know?
You'd know because you would hear it, everytime Christians spewed hate, the "good" ones would be there to tell them to shut the fuck up. Probably not with those words, but with that force. They would be telling the world that fascist bigots don't speak for them, and that's not what their faith is about.
Like I said at the top, if fascist bigots claimed to speak for me, I'd be there to tell them they don't.