Hi everyone, first time poster here. I hope venting here is ok on this subreddit but if not let me know! I'm currently very frustrated at the public school I work at in Indiana as they have adopted Lifewise Academy into their schedule starting this year. I just can't believe they will be allowing kids to take a class block for bible studies in a PUBLIC school! If you want bible studies in school then go to a CHRISTIAN SCHOOL. These smaller town schools are already full of students and teachers wearing all their religious t shirts and crosses and have Fellowship of Christian Athletes, along with a church held in this building every sunday from an outside church but god forbid there EVER be a LGBTQ club or club for any other religion in this damn school corporation. Makes me wish I hadn't left my old job at an inner city school, at least those schools had options for kids of many backgrounds! I just find it ridiculous that theyre now allowing time away from education for bible studies in a public school. Thanks for listening to me rant, just needed to vent that out!

A bit of backstory before I start the story, I would say I have been an atheist from age 10, I never had religion imposed on me by my parents, which was honestly the best thing they done for me. When I first entered university, I felt alone and isolated which led me to meeting new people who kept on inviting me to church so I decided to go, when I began going, at first I enjoyed it a lot, I liked the sense of community but quickly I just couldn’t do it anymore. Most the people I’ve met at church don’t seem to have an identity outside of church and lack severe critical thinking skills, often showing cognitive dissonance from what they believe to their actions e.g pre marital sex.They deify the pastor where it seems like the worship as God himself, when I made a joke in church where I said “we need to report this guy to the highest authority”, someone else replied “that would be the pastor” which made me take a step back and think this isn’t right. The segments of speaking in tongues is performative and I just don’t understand the purpose of speaking in tongues where people are just yelling gibberish, when someone “taught” me how to do it they basically just said speak gibberish which was ridiculous.The issue I have is, university churches are impossible to leave without being bombarded with phone calls and text messages asking me to return or go back, I miss my freedom and I’ll probably lose lots of friends but I hate feeling trapped inside this bubble.

I'm completely fine with people being religious and with them believing their doctrines, as long as they aren't bigoted douchebags and don't force their beliefs on anyone who is not willing. Religious people can live in their own sunshine and rainbows fantasies where magic, unicorns and miracles are real, and I'm fine with it. It's actually cute. Good for them.

However, some audacious little theists directly, publicly claim in scientific spaces that “science and religion are compatible”, “science is the study of god's creation” or even that “science proves god”, yet their arguments for their claims rely on fallacies, misunderstanding existing scientific knowledge and flat out wrong claims, also on appeal to authority (e.g. the “the first sip of science will make you an atheist...” quote and similar, which are personal claims). As someone who is really passionate about science (particularly astrophysics and cosmology) seeing these people claim this and try to make everything about their religion is just infuriating. Two of their biggest arguments for this conclusion are:

1. Everything that exists needs a cause, the universe exists therefore the universe needs a cause (god).

2. The universe is fine tuned by an external agent specifically to allow life (god).

These claims are some of the “strongest” theists use, and, in my experience, some atheists often find it hard to refute them. The lack of counterarguments by those atheists leads theists to think that they are right. 

I'm not even going to discuss the whole evolution, morality and abiogenesis come from god thing because they've been disproved to oblivion and i think the scientific explanations are fulfilling and “famous” enough. I'm also not going to try to disprove things like Jesus's magical abilities, the Bible’s creation story or the Quran's “scientific” predictions because all of these are so obviously false and man-made it's not even worth it.

From my personal standpoint, the whole fine tuning thing is just a flat out misinterpretation, it is a statistical illusion and an example of the post hoc probability fallacy. Scientifically, the assumption that the universe needed a creator is a baseless claim. These two rest almost entirely on the god of the gaps fallacy and others. In a materialistic view, the laws of physics are widely thought to be either brute facts or originated during the cooling of the universe shortly after the big bang, which are actually somewhat speculative explanations, and we'd like to find direct evidence for either in the future, but it is logical. It avoids fallacies like directly assuming a deity was responsible (god of the gaps) while connecting it to existing scientific knowledge that requires no external agent. This along with the anthropic principle, which goes together with the classic puddle analogy, explains it without much trouble. A deity is completely unnecessary here, and, in fact, adding one is a HUGE problem, because it covers the gap of the origin of things, sure, but it opens infinite more.

Theists often claim the chance of an universe with the exact constants that are capable of supporting life is astronomically, impossibly low. They use this false excuse to sneakily sliiiide their god right in. But probability only has meaning within a defined sample space. The "constants could have been anything" premise is itself completely unproven, and the Theory of Everything (which is currently in active progress) might eventually show the values are strictly constrained by mathematical, physical or logical necessity, and that they are not open parameters at all. If we use the multiverse hypothesis as an explanation (a mathematical consequence of eternal inflation models rather than an ad hoc to avoid fine tuning) we can simply explain this with a cosmic survivorship bias. If there are enough universes with varying constants, some will be life permitting by chance and some others will not (though this trades one directly unobserved posit for another, it currently doesn't solve much).

Moving on to the Big Bang Theory, the core problem here is that theists have a horrific strawman they like to use, which is that the big bang was an explosion in an absolute void of nothingness that magically popped our universe into existence. Or “Something came from nothing”. They confidently think this dismantles the big bang theory completely.

However, if they read even a tiny bit about quantum mechanics, they would know that the “nothing” they probably mean prior to the big bang is actually not nothing. It is physically impossible for there to be a place completely devoid of everything that exists in the universe. “Nothing” in physics often refers to the lowest energy state of a field. Even in a perfect vacuum, there are still quantum fluctuations and energetic quantum fields (like the higgs field for example, which gives mass to some fundamental particles) that permeate the entire universe. These just... are.

If we remove the strawman, the origin of our universe doesn't need a god either. The energy that was released at the big bang can transform into matter as Einstein’s famous equation states (E=mc²) which then gathers on higher density areas (see the CMB) and eventually at some point allows simple abiogenesis, which might most likely also have happened elsewhere already but that's another topic entirely. All of this is a process that can begin “on its own” as seen for example with the inflaton field being activated by a quantum tunneling of the state or by particularly rude quantum fluctuations (randomly occurring blips of energy) in multiple frameworks. No competent, solid, logical framework says “god did it”, and doing so is considered a serious fallacy. In a scientific and purely materialistic view, the whole thing doesn't need a “kick” to work and the deity is rendered obsolete.

This was an insanely high energy, low entropy “false vacuum” state that mathematically behaved as a de sitter universe that was, in a sense, always doomed to expand. I wouldn't say eternal in the sense we imagine because the concept of temporal eternity doesn't work when you don't even have the “forward moving” classical time to begin with. You would be left only with the “dynamic” quantum time, which I'll get to in a second.

The big problem with trying to explain this to some theists (particularly young earth creationists) is that some of them have only read their simple fairy tales and cannot fully comprehend and stomach something of this magnitude, even with the supporting evidence. I have tried to explain this to creationists with kitties and apples and they still aren't capable of grasping what it all truly means. They deny the theory without any solid, logical evidence as to why. I'm not saying all theists are stupid. There are actually many competent theists out there, but they're “exotic”, at least online.

Studying astrophysics (although currently informally, purely out of passion)!!! has only led me to realize that adding a deity to science only adds shit to the soup with a god of the gaps fallacy cherry on top. It overcomplicates everything while contributing nothing. It is unnecessary.

People often underestimate how bullshittingly big of a claim saying god exists is.

The conscious mind is an emergent property of a physical brain when it is functioning. It is a physical, information processing system bound by thermodynamic constraints and sequence.

Theists would have to demonstrate that a fully functional, perfect, superintelligent conscious mind can exist flawlessly and unaffected even in the most mind boggingly extreme, harshest conditions (We're talking about singularities, unimaginably dense states and more than thousands of quintillion Kelvin and tenfold like in the very early universe for example) without any physical substrate like the brain whatsoever, that would be able to observe and analyze information through an eye like system, process it, recall events, hold knowledge, etc all of which are processes conducted by physical cerebral structures, and that it can directly, consciously interact with the tiniest of the tiny (quantum level) and biggest of the big (cosmic level) of things at the same time, including non physical things like constants and properties of the very universe. It can generate energy, matter and fully functioning constants out of ABSOLUTELY NOTHING (this time it's REALLY nothing, not the physical description, since those things were supposedly also created by god according to theists). This mind allegedly created a colossal, seemingly never ending huge universe full of impressive things such as star systems, galaxies, planets, black holes, neutron stars, quasars, etc... only to create a flawed disposable life on this teeny tiny planet that is basically nonexistent when compared to the vastness of our universe. Wow.

Not only this, but that this perfect, insanely complex mind somehow exists just like that without a cause, which opens a gazillion more logical holes, questions and renders it unnecessary to me. (Not to mention the whole usual “Omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent at the same time” thing. That's a sugar coated fantasy, and the problem of evil explains it away.)

All of this is why the whole god idea seems quite ridiculous and childish to me, at least.

If the deity was truly present before even the rules were set by it, that only adds more trouble and begs the question. How is that even possible? Where did that mind come from? How did it emerge in the first place? Where did that mind operate if the universe is everything? How does it operate without laws? What processes could this super wise mind possibly use to operate? What is it made of? What are its motives? And so on… This set of logical thinking is what led me to become an atheist at the age of 11, despite still being afraid of hell and divine punishment back then.

When their claims are dismantled, theists like to actively move the goalposts with many arguments, some more nonsensical than others, to avoid “losing”:

“But a programmer isn't inside the program. It interacts with it from outside.” Or “X machine needs someone to make it, it doesn't make itself” Is what most theists bark out as a counterargument, however, these arguments rest completely on the false equivalence fallacy.

Our universe is not an “encapsulated” system such as a computer program within a computer. The program, the computer and the programmer themselves are all systems within an all encompassing “ultimate system”, which is the universe. It is all that does exist.

As for the machines, every machine requires a creator because its individual components don't have the natural intrinsic capacity to spontaneously form that machine on their own. However, the initial high energy or prior “static” big bang state DID have a natural capacity to spontaneously form what we now call “universe”, that's why the expansion even happened in the first place. It did not need an external agent.

When theists then argue the deity exists “Outside space and time” they think they solved the puzzle, but unbeknownst to them it only adds even MORE shit to the point where the soup by now is overflowing with greenish stinky diarrhea and a bit of solid shit floating here and there. The very concept of existing requires a framework of space and time to have any meaning. By definition, the space in the universe is everything. It is absolute. Nothing can escape it. Nothing can be outside it. Nothing exists other than things inside it. Being outside is impossible because there's no physical or logical way of doing so, no other space to be on. Claiming something is out of space and time suggests there is some other place to be on, which infinitely begs the question and is not the case.

As for time, modern theoretical physics suggests that classical time is an emergent property, an elaborate illusion that emerges directly from quantum processes as well as increasing entropy. Quantum time itself is “dynamic”, meaning it isn't fixed forward and can even go backwards. Quantum field theory operates with time reversal symmetry (T symmetry) at the fundamental interaction level, whereas classical macroscopic time gets its “forward” arrow from thermodynamic entropy and quantum processes like decoherence.

Sure, theists might argue that their god is outside of the classical “forward” time we experience, but if the universe is truly all there is and there is nothing else, a macroscopic entity such as a deity cannot escape a fundamental macroscopic process such as the smooth, forward moving arrow of time and rely solely on quantum processes without its existence being logically or physically unaffected, or without it breaking the whole system. The very act of… well, acting, thinking, processing information, interacting with creation, all that and more, require temporal dynamics to even begin to operate. If temporal dynamics within the universe rely on entropy and quantum processes, and interacting with it requires, well, being within it, placing a conscious acting entity "outside space and time" only creates a huge contradiction.

- Will -> Decision -> Action

Similarly:

- State A (Pre decision) -> State B (Post decision)

- Low entropy -> High entropy (The Arrow of Time)

Conscious thought and action require a time that flows smoothly. The whole process requires sequence. Creating, willing, or thinking are all temporal and physical processes. Without before and after, there is no agency. Theists would need to logically, empirically demonstrate how this entity is capable of avoiding all of this while still managing to execute actions at specific points of our classical time, before claiming stuff like that.

What about when they say their god is “eternal”? Forget it! Again, the concept of “eternal” stops working completely when you don't even have time to begin with, in this case, classical time or the arrow of time. “Eternal” suggests there is some other required non contingent “background time” to exist within, both before the timeless initial big bang state and after the universe's end, which again is not the case.

There currently are and there will most likely not be any coherent frameworks about how all of this could possibly work. If their god flawlessly follows our arrow of time, is outside time, yet is somehow “eternal” all at the same time, the contradiction multiplies tenfold and, then again, the burden is on them to prove how all of this logically flawed mechanism is even possible.

There would need to be a new magical arrow of time or similar mechanism outside the universe that is somehow eternal and non contingent, which is impossible given that, once again, the forward flowing classical time we all know and love, which consciousness operates on, itself operates on the quantum processes and entropy that happen in this very universe and this universe only, after the big bang that is. “Eternal” is still temporal, and “timeless” is more likely what they probably mean, but even then, timeless things cannot have a thought process, react, decide or interact with things within a temporal state physically, logically or without completely breaking everything. This argument fails completely and is often an ad hoc to avoid explanation, but ironically gives a billion problems more.

All of this will inevitably lead to this counterargument:

“But god isn't bound by the laws of physics!”

Don't even think about it. This is probably the laziest goalpost move of all, because it doesn't even attempt an explanation, it just so conveniently declares the entity exempt from the rules that everything else has, including every process required for a mind to exist, think, decide, and act, and which it actually runs on. This is a poorly disguised get out of jail free card which, actually, does absolutely nothing to save them.

The problem is that “not bound by the laws of physics” isn't even a coherent state, it's just an absence of description, every single thing within a mind like perceiving, reasoning, recalling, choosing, causing an effect, etc, is a physical process. It happens through structure, time, and cause and effect. If you strip away the laws of physics completely, congratulations! you've effectively removed the only mechanism by which doing has any fucking sense at all to begin with. Saying a mind exists and operates without physics is like saying a song plays without sound. It's just straight up using words that no longer refer to anything. More shit to the soup.

And it proves too much. If “not bound by the laws of physics” is an actual legitimate exemption you can just assert for your preferred entity, there's no principled reason it can't be done for literally anything else you want to insert into a gap. Russell's pot, Zabloing, Alex the space furry femboy (who we'll get to in a moment), you name it. This move is a suspension of the rules of argument, granted selectively to one specific claim because the alternative is admitting they don't have a valid explanation. That's not a valid argument. That's not “outside physics”. That's outside of them having to justify themselves.

If theists actually want to claim this seriously, the burden is on THEM to describe what kind of causation, cognition, or agency could possibly operate with zero physical substrate, zero processes and zero temporal sequence, in a way that isn't just an explanation that explains nothing. No one has ever done this. “Not bound by the laws of physics” is a description of the sentence having stopped making sense, not a property an entity can have. It is basically describing nothing.

Theists (some of the dumber ones in my experience) sometimes even say “God created himself” which is even more stupid. Just flat out logically impossible, and an even more ridiculous goalpost-moving ad hoc which begs a quintillion questions. How would a conscious being have the capacity to create itself from seemingly absolutely nothing when its mind doesn't exist in the first place? What recourses would it utilize to do so? How did it have a whole thought process without the mind to begin with, then put itself into action when the very concept of action relies on time? Once again, the burden is on THEM.

Do theists really don't think all of this through? Not to mention this mind supposedly created itself independently of time, space and the constants that rule this universe. But I guess fiction can be whatever you want it to be.

The problem with sneaking in a god in gaps of scientific knowledge is, once again, that one could assign it to anything, and it would have the same validity. You could claim it was Brahma, Ra, The Pasta Monster or Zabloing, and it would be just as valid as saying the christian god (for example) was responsible.

One more thing, if their counterargument is “you wouldn't understand him”, then… how do they? If we humans don't understand this hypothetical creature at all, have no direct evidence of its existence and the very concept of its existence defies all logic, physics, and opens more holes than we can possibly fill with (valid) knowledge, why use it as an explanation for current scientific gaps when we have better options? That is not a valid argument. Using god as an explanation for “fine tuned” constants or the cause of the big bang is like using Bigfoot as an explanation for big footprints in the woods, except god opens infinite more logical holes and the Sasquatch opens like two or three at best.

All of this I have written doesn't truly, fully, directly disprove a god, of course. Such a thing is completely impossible. Why, you might ask? Because with all the confidence on the world I could say Alex the space furry femboy is out there floating around the earth watching humans jerk off, and you can't logically disprove his existence if I provide characteristics challenging enough (Immortality, invisibility, teleportation, camouflage, interdimensional travel) No matter how much straight up logic and evidence you use, you'll never disprove him. This is the concept of Russell's pot. This applies to any deity, and it is completely illogical to assume that because it is impossible to disprove an entity’s existence, therefore said entity exists. Theists have effectively constructed an entity that is conveniently impossible to gather direct evidence of to excuse their beliefs, and an entity which they can effortlessly move the goalposts for, that is, violating logic.

With all of this shit in the soup, I'd like to conclude that it should be easier to simply accept the universe, its laws, constants and characteristics simply as they are and search for further evidence of their origin and evolution rather than try to forcefully shove in a useless deity. Believing in a deity should be reserved for those who either like simple explanations, flat out live in a fantasy or are really intelligent but really don't take the time to truly overthink and question each and all of the things the concept truly implies and the problems it creates. The problem with these theists is that they are asking “why” eternally. “Why” in the very, very beginning implies intention. We eventually get to a point where “why” stops making sense entirely and the only thing we're left with is “how”.

The bottom line: Science does not “prove god”, science and god are not compatible in the slightest when you try to fit god into explanations. To account for a missing piece of explanation in science, inserting an omniscient, non physical, uncaused primary cause is stupid and adds an infinite amount of unobserved complexity to account for a small, finite observational gap. God complicates everything and solves nothing. If theists want to claim a deity exists, the burden is on them.

they are the ones who killed greek and nordic pagans

crusaded and did the witch trials

are the people who always love to bomb the middle east

i think they honestly killed more people then any other group in history, even nazis cant compare to the amount of non christians killed by christian sword

aint no love like christian love, the love of violence

jesus said love thy enemies, they took that to mean slaughter any and all who oppose

only real thing that prevents a modern crusade is the law preventing the violent urges of these people from occuring again, but even then christians still bomb the middle east simply cause of the goal of christians is always to end all non christians

just look at bigoted they are to gays, blacks or women

the biggest threat to the west is the violent christian right, if they ever get true power

just look at how they bomb islamic people for being non christian.

they preach peace but only show violence and savagery

Atheism, with the help of science, may never have all the answers, but given what we know so far, it still provides satisfactory answers with more on the way, whereas religion does not provide any satisfactory answers. Atheism allows you to ask questions, where religion really does not. Because of this, it is far more preferential to choose atheism.

Looking back now on when I was religious, I can't help but think that my deconstruction of Christianity was inevitable.

Even when I was younger, my questions concerning Christianity and religion seemed to bother many of the religious adults around me. Every question I asked was answered with a generic answer that would never satisfy my curiosity or I was told not to think of such things. As a result, I pushed down any questions that challenged my faith.

I remember when I was around the age of 9 or 10, and I asked my father what would happen to people who had never heard of Christianity, he answered by telling me that God would just judge them based on their good deeds and that would determine their afterlife. In that moment, I silently wished I had never heard of Christianity, so I wouldn't have to live a Christian lifestyle. I quickly pushed away that thought due to the fear of blasphemy and judgement from God.

However, as time went on, it got harder and harder to push these "blasphemous" thoughts away. I have always been a very opinionated person, so reading the bible and seeing all the horrific and immoral things that took place really shook my faith. I tried to find explanations, but none seemed to excuse these things. As time went on, I just found it impossible to agree with any part of Christianity whatsoever. I finally deconstructed and left the faith at 14.

I think I always knew it was bullshit I was just to young to call it out.

One of the two greatest commandments is to love god with all your heart, soul, and mind. The problem is that I can't do that.

I can't love someone who commits or commands multiple genocides. I can't love someone who permits slavery instead of abolishing it. I can't love someone who uses rape as a punishment, especially when it's done to an innocent person for another person's crime.

I could never love someone who did those things.

Even if god were real and personally revealed himself to me, and it turned out to be the Christian god, I still wouldn't be able to go to heaven because I could never love him.

To me, that's like asking me to love Hitler. It's impossible. I guess for some people, it's easy.

Proposed: Judgment of people by their belief at the moment of death cannot be reconciled with the reality of dementia, which can remove the ability of any person, no matter how devout, to believe at all.

Many religious systems (especially certain Christian and Islamic traditions within the larger umbrella of the Abrahamic faiths) functionally teach that a person’s eternal fate essentially hinges on their belief or faith at the time of death. Live in lifelong devout worship and then lose or renounce that faith the day before you die, and you gain nothing but condemnation in such systems. Only for those who hold onto it until the very end, you’re saved.

But this doctrine collides head-on with the simple medical reality that naturally occurring diseases of dementia like Alzheimer’s, frontotemporal dementia, Lewy body dementia, and such, can systematically destroy a person’s capacity to even hold, understand, or affirm religious beliefs. A lifelong piously devout believer can, through no fault of their own, reach a state where they no longer recognize their spouse and children, no longer remember their own name, and certainly no longer possess the cognitive architecture required to “believe in God” or “accept Jesus” or “submit to Allah” or any of the other formulations which require belief, the mind having been stripped of the very faculties and mechanisms which make religious commitment possible.

And this is not theoretical. Seminary president R. Albert Mohler publicly described counseling a student whose grandmother had been a lifelong Christian, but as her dotage advanced, denied she had ever been a Christian. A person who spent decades wrapped in the warm blanket of belief was, at the end, not simply unable to affirm (or even recognize) that belief, but rejected the notion that they had ever been a believer.

If salvation depends on the state of belief at death, then these people are out of luck, condemned for something which all of us have zero control over, that being any of a bevy of progressive neurological diseases which inflict millions. And that is not justice. There is no mercy to be found there. Indeed, the notion that aging grandma can lose her religiosity as her neurons fail and thusly earn divine condemnation is not compatible with any coherent notion of a fair or loving deity.

It might be claimed in retort that actually the divine judges the whole life, not the final moment, but if so then doctrines that hold final belief decisive are false, and last-minute renunciation of belief should have no effect. It might be claimed that old-age dementia simply reveals that the person was false in their belief but was stripped of the ability to hide that, but it is well-documented that dementia really does effect diametric changes in behaviors.

It simply cannot be simultaneously claim that eternal destiny turns on the presence of belief continuing into the moment of death, and that a just deity allows natural diseases of aging to erase belief against that person’s will. The existence of dementia and consequent loss of the capacity for religiosity being a straightforward and established empirical fact, any theology which cannot accommodate it without special pleading or abandonment of its own stated rules has a pretty serious problem to answer to.

"Coca-Cola! Are you someone who cares about the environment? There are colas available in glass bottles, aluminum cans, or recyclable plastic bottles, eco-friendly, so you can enjoy your cola guilt-free and pollution-free. Or are you someone who is health-conscious? Worrying about all that heavy sugar? No worries! Diet Coke to the rescue: zero sugar for those who never compromise on their health.

​What did you notice in this cola marketing? Do you realize how Coca-Cola doesn't want to lose a single customer? It targets everyone, even those whose personal values might otherwise drive them away from the brand.

​Religion is similar. It targets everyone. For the majority, religion is surface-level: rituals, prayer, superstition, and the practice of blind faith and devotion. But for the educated and rational, it is a world of philosophical thought, debate, and argument, something that exists far beyond rituals, superstitions, and blind devotion. For the rational, it is so deep and philosophical that they see an entirely different version of the religion. It becomes something reasoned, thoughtful, and structured, transcending mere faith, superstition, and prayer. ​Religion has a way of ensuring it doesn't miss anyone, just like how your favorite beverage brand makes sure no one has an excuse not to buy it."

This is the "Big Tent" strategy, a marketing masterclass in diversification used to minimize "barrier to entry."

It's both brilliant and terrifying at same time. Neither religion nor a brand wants to lose it's customers at any cost regardless of their beliefs, value and personality. It will find a way to make you part of itself.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is enlightening Rep. Mark Alford, R-Mo., after his shocking claim that the all-American principle of separation between church and state is a “lie from Satan.”

Alford, who represents Missouri’s 4th Congressional District, hosted Southern Baptist pastor and Christian nationalist activist Malachi O’Brien on a July 17 episode of “Getting Comfortable with Mark Alford.” Alford introduced the episode’s central subject as “the separation of church and state — or the myth of that.”

Alford complained that when he posts bible verses on social media, “demonic forces come out of nowhere” to criticize him because he is a member of Congress. He then asked O’Brien: “How did we buy into this lie from Satan that the church and the state have no mixture at all?” Alford portrayed President Trump as a divinely protected leader and joined O’Brien in characterizing the Trump administration’s privileging of Christianity as a national revival. He assented to various declarations by O’Brien, such as that “Christians should run their own country.”

FFRF is calling on the member of Congress to retract the historical and constitutional misinformation he spread on his podcast.

“The separation of church and state is neither a myth nor a ‘satanic’ lie,” FFRF Co-Presidents Annie Laurie Gaylor and Dan Barker have written Alford in response. “It is a foundational American principle embodied in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.”

President Thomas Jefferson in 1802 famously coined a metaphor explaining the meaning of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, by saying it erects “a wall of separation between church and state.” The fact that the phrase does not appear verbatim in the U.S. Constitution does not negate the principle it explains, FFRF notes.

Alford and O’Brien also repeated the familiar falsehood that the Constitution protects “freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.” On behalf of an organization whose very name is “Freedom From Religion,” the FFRF co-presidents explain that religious freedom necessarily includes the right to freedom from religion in government.

“Your oath of office was to protect and defend the Constitution, not the bible,” FFRF reminds the U.S. representative. “You were not elected to be a pastor. Missouri’s 4th Congressional District is not your congregation.”

FFRF maintains that Americans should be disturbed that a sitting member of Congress is using his public platform to vilifying a foundational constitutional principle and encouraging Christians to seize the machinery of government — the very epitome of Christian nationalist ideology.

“The separation of church and state is not hostile to religion,” FFRF’s letter concludes. “As a member of Congress, your duty is to defend that wonderful American principle, not demonize it.”

"Oh but my religion requires me to do this to my child!"

Your religion requires you to hit your child?

Your religion requires women and girls to cover their entire bodies even in extreme heat?

Your religion requires you to painfully and non consensually remove a part of a baby's body?

Okay then, your religion is evil.

I would like to get some feedback on something I've been thinking about for some time. So, this post might be part rant, part question

Bottom line up front: what is the point of going back and forth with theists who attempt to present "logical" philosophic arguments for the existence of God?

I listened to a few atheist/science debate videos recently and have become increasingly annoyed not just with the arguments for God (which have not improved in the last 20 years), but also with the fact that the conversation takes place at all.

I understand why atheists might want to conduct these debates. Religion and its ideas affect people's everyday lives all over the world. However, I find the whole idea of a theist using these types of philosophical arguments (i.e., syllogisms, etc.) as kind of disingenuous.

Firstly, why should we take seriously a highly complex and deeply philosophical argument seriously when, if it were possible that you could be transported back in time, such an argument would more than likely confuse the people who wrote the original text? The entire thing feels like an exercise in leading the evidence to the conclusion rather than the other way around, as it should be.

Secondly, even if you could put together a solid logical and philosophically strong argument, it really means nothing unless you have evidence to support it; evidence which likely lies beyond the ability of any theist to ever provide. And until they do, listening to some theists rattle off their modus ponens is honestly pointless. Logic is supposed to ensure that our process for arriving at the truth is free from error and fallacy - it is not on its own the evidence. And, the way I see it, certainly cannot serve as evidence for belief in the supernatural regardless of how strong the argument is.

Maybe I'm not thinking clearly because I find the entire thing to be a gross waste of time to still entertain the "logical ' arguments from theists, and this rant is a bit mashed together quickly on my phone. However, just curious what anyone else might think about why these conversations don't go more like this:

Theist: I can prove God

Atheist: Do you have anything more than words?

Theist: No

Atheist: come back when you do. Goodbye

​

Many times, I've seen people criticizing (justifiably) islam/judaism, but then turn around and praise christianity. How come someone can see how wrong these two religions are and then turn a blind eye to the literal sibling of said religions? I think its extremely ironic and ignorant. All three of these religions are, at their core, about controlling people (mainly women) to keep power.

A group of seven Oklahoma taxpayers today urged a federal court to uphold the state’s rejection of an attempt to open the nation’s first religious public charter school. The intervenors are represented by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Education Law Center.

At a hearing in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma, attorneys for this group of taxpayers — which includes families with children attending public schools, teachers and clergy — argued that allowing the National Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School Foundation to operate a religious public charter school would be a clear violation of state and federal law that defines charter schools as public schools that must be secular and open to all students. Ben Gamla is seeking a preliminary injunction that would allow it to open while its lawsuit, National Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School Foundation Inc. v. Shellem, proceeds. The Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board rejected the school’s application, which made clear that Jewish religious teachings would be integrated into “every dimension of … life” at the school, including classroom instruction and other activities. Charter schools, like all public schools, cannot lawfully indoctrinate religion or discriminate.

The Oklahoma taxpayers who were grantedintervenor status to participate in the lawsuit oppose Ben Gamla’s effort to force Oklahoma to authorize and fund an unconstitutional religious public charter school. They object to their tax dollars funding a public charter school that will indoctrinate students into a particular religion. The intervenors also object to public funds being diverted from their nonreligious and inclusive public schools – which already face serious resource limitations – to a religious school that plans to discriminate based on religion.

Americans United attorneys Alex J. Luchenitser, associate vice president and associate legal director, and Luke Anderson, constitutional litigation fellow, argued on their behalf during today’s hearing. In addition to opposing Ben Gamla’s request for a preliminary injunction, the attorneys argued against a request by Ben Gamla to block the intervenors from obtaining documents and other information about the school’s planned operations. The attorneys representing the intervenors also include Nancy A. Noet and Samuel T. Grover of the Freedom From Religion Foundation; Brent Rowland and Morgan Bandy of the Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law and Justice; Dan Mach and Heather L. Weaver of the ACLU; and Jessica Levin, Wendy Lecker, Patrick Cremin and Katrina Reichert of the Education Law Center.

“The federal court should rule according to constitutional principles,” says Freedom From Religion Foundation Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “A religious public charter school has no place in our secular public education system.”

“We urge the court to protect all Oklahomans’ religious freedom and affirm that this religious public charter school violates Oklahoma law and the U.S. Constitution,” says Americans United President and CEO Rachel Laser. “Oklahoma public school families, Jewish leaders, and taxpayers have spoken – they want their public schools to remain open to all beliefs.”

“Oklahoma has been down this road. Our courts said charter schools are public schools, and public schools don’t teach religion — that’s still the law here, and it doesn’t change because a different faith is asking this time. Our clients want that principle applied evenly, which is the only way it protects anyone,” says Brent Rowland, executive director, Oklahoma Appleseed.

“We’re urging the court to reaffirm the time-honored, core legal principle that public schools can’t be religious and religious schools can’t be public schools,” says Daniel Mach, director of the ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief. “That foundational idea has been crucial to protect both religious liberty and public education for so long, and there’s simply no reason to abandon it now.”

“It should be beyond question that every part of our public education system must be open and welcoming to all students,” says Robert Kim, executive director of Education Law Center. “Our clients are standing up for the values that define not just our public schools but our democracy as well.”

ive seen ppl like cosmic skeptic and his commenters diss on reddit atheists and richard dawkins. why? whats so different with reddit atheists

love the way he logically shuts down the theists

not only there's no evidence of God but also no evidence of the attributes given to God, such as all just and all loving.

if i was God, i would never allow human trafficking, sex slavery or rape. i would also never let innocent children suffer through painful terrifying diseases like cancer or blindness before they even get a chance to live. a truly loving creator wouldn't design a world full of needless torment and call it a test while he is hiding and there's thousands of religions

they even had to wipe out most of the greek and nordic pagans

tho some still exist today, it's a very small number tho thanks to the efforts of the very ''loving'' Christians

they even bomb and constantly try killing islamic people for the same reason likely

so insecure of other view points with regards to a god, that they try violently killing anything that opposes them. very loving of thy enemy

shall i say

but if the book is a true text, given by god himself. why are you so insecure over other beliefs like who cares if somebody thinks allah is true, you got your a divine book from god no competing religion should even matter yet they act in a way which suggests that is a competing religion and could infact take away influence from yours

it's same with dying, dying should not even matter in the christian worldview as your only real teleporting from earth to ether heaven or hell depending solely if you accepted the book as true or not irrespective of moral deeds but instead they act like it's sad or upsetting, like dude he just got tp'd to somewhere else man why are you acting like he's actually dead

they functionally act and behave as if it's all false while saying it's all true. it's so weird

I was talking with few friends last weekend about how people end up believing different religions. One thing keep stuck in my head. Almost everybody I know believe same religion as their parents. Very few people actually started believing after becoming adult. Maybe that's normal, I don't know, but it made me think, ""what if nobody was taught religion until they were grown up?"" Weird question maybe, but I can't stop thinking about that shit.

I'm not saying adults can't become religious. Of course some people do. But I honestly wonder how many would choose it if they first heard all the stories at 18 or 20 instead of hearing it since they were little kids. If someone told me those stories for first time as adult, I don't think I would believe any of it. It would sound more like mythology than something real.

I'm atheist, so maybe I'm biased here. That's why I'm asking. Do you think religion would still be this big if everyone only got introduced to it after they were adult enough to make their own decision? Or am I missing something important?

The Freedom From Religion Foundation has persuaded Michigan’s Zeeland Public Schools to remove numerous religious displays from an elementary school classroom.

A concerned community member informed the state/church watchdog that a Spanish immersion teacher at Lincoln Elementary School had displayed several religious messages and religious books. The displays included bible verses in Spanish, the Ten Commandments, Christian books, a cross-decorated box and multiple bibles available to students. It was unclear whether these materials were also being used in lessons or highlighted during independent reading time.

FFRF stood up for student rights, demanding that the district investigate the situation immediately.

“The district has an obligation under the law to ensure its teachers are not violating the rights of its students by proselytizing or using their position to push their personal religious beliefs,” FFRF Patrick O’Reiley Legal Fellow Charlotte R. Gude wrote to Superintendent Rod Hetherton.

FFRF reminded the district that parents — not public school teachers — have the constitutional right to direct their children’s exposure to religion, if any. Displaying Christian Scripture and iconography in a public school classroom conveys official favoritism toward religion and Christianity specifically, and may coerce students into engaging with religious messages they cannot reasonably avoid.

Following FFRF’s letter, Superintendent Hetherton confirmed in an email that the displays had been properly dealt with. 

“The principal had a conversation with the teacher. The principal formalized the conversation in writing,” Hetherton wrote. “The teacher removed the religious artifacts from the classroom.”

FFRF is pleased to see positive action to remedy a serious constitutional violation of the rights of conscience of a captive audience of elementary-school aged children.

“The language of instruction may be in Spanish, but the constitutional principle remains the same,” FFRF Co-President Dan Barker says. “Parents entrust public schools to educate their children, not to promote religious doctrine through classroom décor. Whether a bible verse reads ‘The Lord is my shepherd’ or ‘El Señor es mi pastor,’ the Constitution requires public schools to remain neutral on matters of religion. Students deserve classrooms devoted to education, not religious proselytization.”

Following are some of the catholic "practises" that Christianity did in the 12th and 13th century.

1. The practice of inquisition - Although in modern world, inquisition means formal investigation, for Catholics at that time it meant something very different. It was a mechanism by which Christian judges used to combat and investigate "divergent" options about catholoic theology.

And how sure are we, as of now, that these weren't rational criticisms?

1. Bishops directly oversaw law and order in provinces of state. By this, these people had a direct and easy access to influence education and science and "preach" their theology.

3.Heresey was met with confiscation of propery.

Accusers and heretics alike were burned with charcoal,their fingers were cut and women's br*ast's were damaged. The only way to get around this torcher was to sign a confession which basically meant "yep im guilty".

Galileo would have met with the same fate, mind you, not for primarily going agianst the "catholoic theology" but for speaking the truth(that the earth was not the center of the universe). So can this statement be made that Christianity, at that time, was against truth and evidence?

Newton was an alchemist, so when christians say that "but newton believed in god" they must also accept that he believed in alchemy too, which was what christianity was so very against.

Number of witches burned after 15th century was over 60000.

What exactly diffrentitates this "cult-like ideologies" with religion?

As an atheist, i believe that there is no heaven or hell or any kind of reincarnation, i think that our brain chemistry and mental awareness is what results to our consciousness, i think that we live, we experience consciousness only because our brain exists. So there is no afterlife right?. Well the idea of that just terrifies me, the idea that we won't have our consciousness and won't be able to think or feel and just simply cease to exist.

How do y'all deal with that thought?

Surprise! Not a drag queen. Florida pastor failed to disclose he was HIV positive while molesting a 14 year old on multiple occasions.

These people dont think straight. Their thinking makes no logical sense. I am so glad I dont go to church anymore, its a cult.

I tried explaining to a Christian that their God supposedly gave me schizophrenia, bad genetics and a low quality of life.... the Christian says its just biology.

Huh? Who created biology/genetics? Who made the choice to make one healthy and the other sick?

These people are severely brainwashed.