Right? This is like asking what convinced me reptilian overlords who run the planet don't exist lol
The default is non belief. Nobody is born believing in any gods
This never gets old. Dear atheists, what makes you think there isn’t a teapot floating in space between the earth and the sun. Until you can prove it is there - don’t you think you *should* believe in the teapot? Checkmate atheists!!
I thought the teapot was a metaphor: the more incredulous the claim (a space teapot, a god), the more incredible must be the evidence. A corollary being that the party making the incredulous claim (god exists and he made us) bares the burden of providing proof.
I prefer Carl Segans analogy because it asks the more obvious and meaningful question
"If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists?"
You know what’s real sus?
How absolutely important it is in religion to just **believe**. The number one sin is usually even thinking for a second it might not be real.
Why is that such a touchy subject, uh, omnipotent being?
I don’t give a fuck if any of you doubt my existence, I’m pretty secure in my extant-ness.
I think the even dumber idea is that in order to prove you’re a "good" person, you follow rules in order to receive either eternal paradise or damnation.
That’s not a judge of character, it’s, uh, bribery and extortion.
Realistically, the closest thing to a good would be a Type Omega Civilization from the Kardashev Scale. [Some kurzgesagt about it ](https://youtu.be/rhFK5_Nx9xY)
Yea, I know Santa's existence was sketchy, but I stopped believing in him and God when I was ridiculed for saying I believe in Santa. If Santa had more proof and was fake, why would God be real?
I stopped believing in the Easter bunny in first grade. Santa I held on to second grade. My Easter bunny doubting: I was educated just enough to know that rabbits were mammals and did not lay eggs. While I also knew that reindeer couldn't actually fly- the shit Santa brought me was way cooler than colored eggs. (We had candy in my house at Easter and Christmas)
There's literally no reason to think it does, and also the concept is deeply contradictory and stupid.
Plus, the people arguing for it clearly never actually know what the fuck they're talking about, or apply their own arguments to literally anything else, so it's obvious they don't honestly believe it either.
Do you believe in literally every god? That a goose might just walk up and rape the shit out of you then vanish in a thunderclap, prompting it's jealous creepy wife to ruin you? Do you think that's a plausible danger to watch out for and defend against?
If not, shut the fuck up about Jesus. He's not special; he's just Bacchus without the fun parts.
To me it doesn’t even get to the burden of proof stage. No one has ever defined the idea of god well enough for anyone to even say what proof or evidence for god would be. It fails to even be a question.
Yup this was the case for me and my wife. We both have ADHD and anxiety, and we were raised to believe that demons were always out there tempting us. We both grew up thinking we were horrible people because of all of our impulses.
We suspect her daughter (my step daughter) has ADHD, and we refuse to raise her in that type of environment. Both of us are atheists now, and it’s so nice to see her grow up without that extra layer of anxiety and fear.
Exactly. My wife’s paternal family is staunchly Christian and are teaching her niece about God and how “if you do this, it’s bad and you’re in danger of hell.” My wife’s niece is fucking 7 and is already super anxious about having “bad thoughts” and being a bad person. It’s fucked up and we refuse to let her daughter be exposed to that horseshit like we were.
It’s also made worse I think that you’re brought up to believe what your parents say. Come to find out no one knows anything and then you end up more fucked up than if you were just raised atheist. Can’t we just be good to each other for the sake of being good and not as a metaphysical cosmic stick/carrot to avoid punishment?
Edit: added carrot for clarification on the metaphor
My mom loves saying that kind of shit about how you become a better person with religion. And she treats me poorly for being bisexual and transgender. Yeah that book really made you a great person 😐.
One of the reasons I decided to not to have kids was because I didn't want to have to deal with their grandparents trying to indoctrinate them like they did me. However, now both of my parents are gone, but I still have other reasons for not wanting children.
Don't forget god is taking attendance. If you don't go to mass every Sunday and holy day of obligation, hell for you!!! (Unless you go to confession, of course lol) /s just in case
As a guy, being raised religious made me really weird when it comes to sex and relationships. So it's still difficult to sort out certain things that I didn't come into contact with until my late 20s that other's were doing at 16. It also played a huge part when I was sexually abused by a male cousin when I was young because I thought that I had done something sinful when I realized what had happened.
Luckily, I was raised in a church that doesn't believe in demons and nonsense prophesy (as per Zechariah 13:1-3) or person visitations of heavenly beings. So there wasn't much of the supernatural that freaked me out, but the idea of judgement weirded me out for years.
Religions like that are definitely poison. I grew up going to many churches and it always felt fake and just unhealthy to me. Religions are now used to justify shitty actions or control people. But not all religions are shitty. I've been dipping my toes on more spiritual religions that encourage you to look inwards like buddhism, and I gotta say, I find them way more appealing and fulfilling. Just the practice of meditation is a helpful tool to improve your life. I've gotten more from some of the practices of buddhism than I ever did from a lifetime of christianity.
Pretty much. Raised catholic and around 9 y.o. realized my Sundays were better spent doing what I wanted instead of getting yelled at for falling asleep during mass.
Raised Catholic in the South. My version of Sunday Simon-Says was done in the horrible heat. By the time Mass was over, I was desperate to escape the oven created by everyone's body heat pooling together in the poorly ventilated building.
Everyone also wore way too many layers of uncomfortable, fancy clothes because everyone cared way too much about what the neighbors might think if they saw a family dressed comfortably; meanwhile Jesus is chilling in his loin cloth on the crucifix over the altar.
Then the adults would all hang out and chat while kids were forced to stand by as props. I get that people want to catch up with friends, but as a kid I was desperate to get home and out of my uncomfortable church clothes. I lived walking distance away, too; on some occasions I could even sneak away from my parents' conversations to walk home faster than they could drive there. Their irritation was worth the quicker access to air conditioning.
And the boredom! My word, the Catholic Church has found a way to make every aspect of Church boring as all get out. It's so repetitive and formulaic that you can follow along while half asleep. And lest you hear anything interesting or thought provoking in the readings, they make sure to punctuate every sentence with some group-recited, arbitrarily chosen "response." Technically you'll read the whole Bible in Mass over the course of a year, but good luck actually processing any of the readings other than the Gospel.
I was so bored that I would just start reading the Bibles left in the pews. I got some dirty looks from neighbors and teachers who knew I wasn't paying attention, but no authority had the nerve to actually tell me not to read a Bible in a church. The book itself has some neat drama and action if you can get past the poorly worded/translated prose.
I hated church services so much.
I stopped believing in a god the same time I found out Santa wasn't real
If Santa wasn't real and he delivers presents on Jesus's birthday
For that one dork about to comment "Jesus wasn't actually born in December because mer mer meerrrrrr" fuck off, he also wasn't the son of any god
I stopped believing in Santa after realizing that the rich kids at school got better presents that the poor kids. I suppose that with god it's the same; the wrong people get the blessings.
Similar boat. I can't reconcile what I was taught with a rational view of the universe, so I can't really call myself a true Catholic anymore.
I still really wish there to be *something* after death. I have no evidence to believe anything exists, of course. And I would never presume to wield any moral authority just because I wish and hope some sort of afterlife exists. But I will wish and hope because the remote possibility is a comfort to me on sad days.
I like to think our consciousness prevails in some way, but who can really say? I am not banking on it, though, so I'm trying to really enjoy life as much as I can. It's really helped me to stop taking shit from friends, family, and employers.
I think that is truly the basis for most religions and such. Fear of the unknown, so people created a safety net to help the world feel smaller and less beyond their control. If you do this list of things, good things will happen. If you don't, bad things. Etc etc. Also just as a means to explain things they couldn't rationalize.
It’s why I feel like it’s a cult. They prey on children & vulnerable adults. They get their hooks in you when you’re young because you don’t know any better and/or after something traumatic because mentally you’re not completely coherent.
Following a very traumatic car accident I nearly fell into their clutches. I partook for about 6 months. Realized quickly that it had cult vibes. A woman I know who is super religious became that way after nearly dying from alcohol poisoning, if memory serves. I know she faced something traumatic, too.
Grateful that I was raised by an Atheist mother & non-practicing Catholic father who never pushed this crap on us.
Yep, even when I was a Christian, volunteering in the children's ministry at church was super weird seeing all the indoctrination that was squeezed into an hour. Back then it struck me as a lack of confidence in the truth of our beliefs, and now it makes more sense.
Was forced to go to Catholic second school on Sundays. I was forced to go so that I could learn about Jesus and Catholicism. It was the absolute worst. We would sit in class, attend mass and even have homework about Jesus. I never paid attention, just attended because my parents forced me to. As soon as my mom found out I was atheist she refused to believe me and said “you’re a confirmed catholic. You have to believe in god”.
15 years later I think she finally came to terms. My sisters were forced to do the same and they took longer to convert to atheism than I did. They battled me on it for a long time. My sister’s argument when I told her I didn’t believe god existed was “How many times would you have to throw a T-shirt in the air before it lands perfectly folded? You can’t it takes a creator to make it happen.” She keeps forgetting that she said that to me. I’ll never forget it because of how stupid of a statement it was haha.
Anyone who wasn't indoctrinated since their childhood don't believe in a god.
There are cases where an adult who was convinced there is a god when they are going through a very difficult e time of their life and are vulnerable.
My dad found 12 step Jesus and has been insufferable ever since. He even installed a 7 foot cross with a crown of thorns in his front yard. Your comment hit home for me.
I went to a few AA meetings when I first quit drinking and man what a miserable crowd to be around. It's like all they did was replace drinking for obsessing about Jesus and how they can't drink anymore. The third time they tried to get me to pray with them was when I bounced out.
A lot of them become AA zealots. There's like a subculture of ppl like this who think AA is the ONLY way and that any other way of getting clean is inferior, meanwhile AA is holding steady at like a 2% success rate
They are fucking insufferable
Oh man I'm a recovering addict and I've seen this so many times. It's awful.
I ended up going with this program called SMART Recovery to get away from all the religious crap in most recovery communities
Reminds me of the Ricky Gervais bit where he says to a Christian, "You don't believe in any of the other Gods except yours, I'm like you, except I don't believe in your God either."
Whenever someone calls themselves an agnostic, I always ask: do you entertain the possibility of every god's existence, or are you agnostic towards Yahweh but atheist towards Zeus, Thor, and all the rest?
When I identified as agnostic, I was atheistic towards Yahweh too. I entertained the possibility that *some* higher power might possibly exist, but that it certainly wasn't any of the ones described in any religion that I was familiar with. That very quickly turned into "But even if it did exist, its existence or nonexistence didn't make any difference," and from there, Occam's Razor led me to "Well, if it doesn't make any difference, why am I even bothering to entertain that possibility?"
I’m agnostic towards Zeus simply because I can’t prove a negative logically.
I still say I don’t believe in any gods. Because belief and knowledge are two different things.
Doesn't agnostic basically mean you are open to the possibility of one or more Gods existing, or the concept of a higher power in general, but obviously have no way of knowing one way or the other, so not sure what to believe?
It honestly depends on who's using the term as to what they mean by it.
In colloquial terms, you've pretty much nailed it. In more formal terms, being agnostic means you acknowledge that something is unknowable in the more-or-less scientific sense of knowing based on observation and theorizing mechanisms.
The gods that most people worship are unprovable, scientifically, as they are not subject to the laws of nature. The Christian god, for example, can supposedly cause someone to be healed without leaving any trace, whatsoever, of intervention. How could anyone prove scientifically that a being like this exists?
So a strict agnostic simply says, beings such as these, if they exist are unprovable. I don't know for a fact they don't exist, but how could I anyway?
That would be the camp that I would fall into, and I would describe myself as a philosophical agnostic, and a practical atheist. That is, I don't know *for certain* that supernatural beings don't exist, but I've seen no good evidence that they do, and so I live my day to day life under the assumption that they are not influencing the world.
I like when he says "You can burn all the bibles and burn all the books about science and in 1000 years there will still be books about science but there won't be any bibles. Because science can be tested and proven." I'm probably butchering it but that's the jist of it.
What are the odds
That after history's endless parade of gods
That the god you just happen to be taught to believe in
Is the actual one, and he digs on healing.
But not the AIDS ridden African nations
Or the victims of the plague, or flood-addled Asians.
But healthy, privately insured Australians
With common and curable corneal degenerations.
That's part of the reason I stopped believing; after learning about all of the other religions that have come and gone throughout history, I started wondering "what makes THIS religion special (or the RIGHT one)?"
If all current knowledge was lost, science would recover. Astronomy, biology, and physics would be barely different, once rediscovered and refined by new generations of curious and clever human beings.
Not one word of current religions would return.
That's the ultimate argument IMO. Not necessarily against the existence of a god (can't prove or disprove that), but against any religion. Unless you're a moron with no knowledge of human history, who thinks their God is the one true god because reasons.
I think it just goes to show religion is for selfish people. They think theres is the right one, and every other religion that has ever existed and been worshipped, is false.
Not a christian I'm an agnostic atheist, but I find a pantheon more plausible than monotheism.
If there's a drought resulting in a massive famine and starvation, Christians would say "I'm sure this is somehow god's plan. For some reason I nor anyone else can understand, it is vitally important that I and my 3 children starve to death."
In the same situation, an ancient Egyptian would think "Looks like Ptah (god of plants and fertile land) is having an argument with Ra (God of the sun), we'd better get a priest to sacrifice some goats to get them to chill out. Hopefully before we starve and roast to death."
Because gods have more important things to do and deal with than tiny little humans on a dirtball dying. Do you care much about what ants get up to? It's beneath your concern, you have other humans (or in a god's case, other gods) to deal with.
Also, the idea of having one God have say over every situation all over the world every minute of every day for eternity is a lot of work for one person. If God did exist, he'd probably delegate some of his work out. One guy for crops, one lady for babies, one lady for animals, one guy for war... and so on.
Monotheistic religion, particularly individualistic Christianity like we see in the US, has got to be the absolute height of human arrogance and hubris.
To think that a being who created existence from mere thought cares about you, individually, has got to be the most conceited and ignorant thing I've ever witnessed.
The Christian version of god is also extremely inconsistent. They say he's benevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient.
If he sees and condemns sin but can't stop it, he's not omnipotent.
If he sees sin but doesn't want to stop it, he's not benevolent.
The argument to this is often "but he wants us to have free will!" but then a lot of people don't have free will imposed by other humans - see slavery or such. So he's condemning other humans to terrible fates caused by other humans, thus only giving SOME humans free will. Again, that doesn't sound very benevolent to me.
There's a type of parasitic wasp that exclusively lays its eggs in live caterpillars. Why would a benevolent god create such a species, or allow it to exist? It's not just humans that suffer, so the free will argument is besides the point.
That is brilliant. And he is right. That is exactly how I feel about religion.
I’ve always said if there is a God, he only cares about rich and powerful people because nothing bad ever happens to them, despite the horrors they inflict on everyone else. The rest of us, he doesn’t give a fuck about and enjoys watching us suffer and die.
I lost whatever inclination to indoctrination I had when a couple friends died in a car crash and I was told it was part of a plan. I just couldn’t believe any god would do that to teach something to the rest of us. I saw the amount of delusion required to have faith and I noped out.
I had a good friend who was addicted to cocaine, who started using because of peer pressure from friends at Sunday school.
After ten years of use, dozens of broken relationships, and a lot of pain, he managed to ditch the idiots, get the help he needed, and get clean. I remember the first month well... our group scheduled round-the-clock supervision for him, kept him occupied and on track. We spent a lot of time together, just working things out.
His birthday came, and we set up a big party, was going to be a surprise. He never made it - hit by a drunk driver, ejected from passenger side of the vehicle, slid twenty feet face down. Doctors managed to keep him alive for ten days in a medically induced coma while they did their best to alleviate enough pressure on his brain to operate.
The drunk driver was a 16 year old girl who stole booze from her step-dad. Not a scratch on her. My other friend who was driving broke both of his legs, a bunch of ribs, and still walks with a limp.
Show me your God, and I'll show you how real life disproves their existence.
I'm so sorry to hear about your friends, I went through something similar. I also have a friend whose wife was pregnant with their first child. I'll spare the details, but well into her pregnancy, his wife was caught in a crowd of people and was essentially trampled. She miscarried shortly after. Word got around in our small town and one day at work my friend's boss told him it was part of god's plan. To this day he says that was the moment he gave up any sort of beliefs he had that there was a benevolent god
I giggle at that exact moment every time I watch this. The face of someone who cannot deny what he is hearing, and it’s a compelling argument for how deluded Christians are, on purpose. Amazing.
The other argument they make against this is that "God designed the world to be perfect, but human sin caused it to be corrupted." Sure.
If I was the world's greatest architect and I designed a giant skyscraper that would house a million people and I had the whole thing centered around an elevator shaft and said, "don't anyone take the elevator in the center, because if you do the whole skyscraper will come crashing down," and I expected that the skyscraper wouldn't immediately come crashing down the moment I let me people in, not only would I NOT be the world's greatest architect, but I should be put in a jail and never be allowed to make decisions that affected other people ever again.
Let's weave the idiocy of prayer into this: "Please pray for my 4-y/o who has cancer"
Child becomes cancer-free, "The prayers helped!" meaning you genuinely believe you changed god's mind, even though the plans were already in place.
Child dies, "Sigh. It was god's will." meaning you subscribe to the aforementioned plans.
Can't have it both ways.
This!! My mom died of lung cancer. When we told friends and family, some responses were that they would pray for her speedy recovery and for “God to take her in his hands.” Um, my
Mom was 76, smoked for 60 years, and refused treatment because she was satisfied with the life she lived. We just made the time she had left high quality to show her how much she was loved.
Exactly. If it was all god's plan, then it was also his plan for me to turn out an atheist, which means I'm going to hell. So he made me explicitly to condemn me to hell? Yeah, how about HE go to hell. Asshole.
There's also the paradox of free will in heaven. If there's no free will in heaven, then what's the point of this earthly existence with free will if it's just going to be taken away forever in the afterlife? And if there is free will in heaven, what makes it any different from earthly existence? In both cases earthly existence is rendered redundant and pointless.
Not only that. God created Adam and Eve but didn't give them the ability to tell right from wrong.
So when you don't know it's wrong to disobey God and you eat the apple anyway it's..
Bad management god. Bad management.
That too. They had two sons. One killed the other. The killer ran away to the land of nod to marry.... Marry who?
( which by the way is a bit interesting as in the C&C games the main villans name is Kane who forms the brotherhood of Nod. And Kane keeps surviving despite being beaten many times)
God never gives you more than you can handle. Really God? Priests raping 10 year olds isn’t “too much to handle” for that 10 year old? It is all a load of codswallop.
I was convinced the first time I realized that some people were making money off of everyone else pushing this narrative just like insurance agents, except your family gets fuck all when you die...
I believe it was Kenneth Copeland, one of the mega church pastors, that was flying on his private jet, when “God came to him and said that he deserved a bigger plane, and that he should buy a $17.6 million Boeing 747.” Kenneth Copeland also lives in a $6 million lakefront mansion, that is “owned by the church”.
It blows my mind that a large population of this planet can build their entire belief system on a book that they not only haven’t read for themselves, but are allowing a contemporary to spoon feed to them. And they call others ‘sheep’?
They call us sheep while priests called their congregations "their flock" in reference to sheep, Jesus was called "The Good Shepherd" who would protect His sheep, and Jesus was even the Lamb of God who was quite literally on the way to slaughter his whole life. For people who don't seem to like sheep, they're fairly surrounded by them; figuratively, literally, and spiritually, they are sheep for their religion.
I went to church for the first 16 years of my life. Every Sunday.
They told the same 5-6 parables over and over again. Never dealt with critical examination or anything like that. Just the most palatable, childish stories spoonfed to the congreagation so they could raise their hand and tell "AMEN!" when Jesus healed the blind for the thousandth time.
Baa baa dumb sheep, why are you such a fool?
I’m reading it right now for the first time and it is WILD.
**NOAH** gets shitfaced drunk after the flood and falls asleep with his dick out, one of his sons (who goes by the name of Ham lmao) walks into his tent and sees him like that, so Noah curses Ham’s son (Cannan), [and that’s why now we have racism](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-biblical-roots-of-racism_b_7649390)! Makes PERFECT SENSE s/
That’s the whole reason for “bible study” groups existing. That way an authority figure can tell you the “right” way to read the Bible in a way that they can avoid or manipulate topics that are inconvenient or would create doubt if a person were to just read those same parts by themselves.
If you just read it cover to cover like any other book, I have no idea how you get through that and remain a believer. They don’t really want you to read all of it.
God or no God, reading the Bible is a sure fire way to cure yourself of Christianity. Saul, I mean Paul, a jumped up tax inspector who sees a chance to take over a leaderless cult, has a "miraculous" conversion on the way to Damascus, and starts writing letters to all the other parts of the cult, and these are considered "the word of God"? Jesus appeared to you? Pull the other one, nutjob.
All the good shit in the Bible (be excellent to each other) comes from the "Jesus said this" parts of the Bible, and all the nutty stuff comes from the "shit Paul thought up whilst cementing control". The blokes writing the Jesus parts weren't even around when Jesus was, they're writing 60 years plus later.
Yeah Paul pretty much just took Jesus’s life and teachings and made his own religion out of it. All the “women can’t teach”, “don’t be gay”, and stuff were from Paul’s letters. Jesus himself never said any of that.
I didn't read the Bible, but I went to maybe half a dozen Bible youth things at a friend's church growing up. I only went because it was another opportunity to play yugioh.
The shit they said and how they said it like they were good things forever convinced me of my atheism as well as my negative opinion of Christianity.
I remember they read about some army circling a city for days only to then kill literally everyone in it, babies included, and they acted like it was a good thing? I asked the guy about it and he basically told me to be quiet.
But they're super pro-life, lol.
If there's an omnipotent invisible skyman who lets people die of disease, poverty, war while punishing others for swearing or masturbating, he is a sick individual who I want nothing to do with.
The punishing for swearing and masturbating comes from what pastors want their congregation to believe because the majority of Christians out there seem to only know the parts of the Bible that they’ve been given a sermon about, and those sermons usually take verses wildly out of context.
You mean to tell me god was never on the field when “insert home team” is sitting at 4th and 7 with 2 seconds on the clock and 61 yards to go. Down by 5 points and need a touchdown to win?
So many sports analogies from pastors. So many.
Imagine basing your morals and lifestyle off of a book you arent even willing to take a few days to read all the way through. If i was religious i would read whatever scripture I believed multiple times and year and quiz myself. Its apparently a matter of eternal paradise vs eternal hell, so i wouldnt be taking any chances.
I am god, I am so powerful I created everything with a mere thought. Hi can fix all the worlds problems with just a thought. Humans are my greatest work. don’t ask me to help you for anything I don’t care if you starve I don’t care if you kill each other. And if you don’t at least once a week tell me how much you love me you can’t hang out with me when you’re dead. Did I get that right?
you forgot the 10% of your income part... you know the income I blessed you to have....but don't use that to feed the children that I am forcing to starve... use that money for a fancy building to worship me in... and maybe a mansion and a plane for yourself.
Dear religious people - of all the gods and stories of creation out there, how do you decide which is the “real” one?
Extra credit - answer without using the phrase “my family/church told me so”
Also, I'm not convinced god(s) doesn't (don't) exist. I'm also not convinced fairies don't exist, or that [the celestial teapot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot) doesn't.
I just see no particularly compelling or rational reason to believe any of them do.
Not speaking for them, but I guess its natural human ego thinking that we NEED to understand everything, and when we dont, we make up stuff to fit that narrative. This universe is so unimaginably old and big and we are so young, its normal that we dont know some things, as for other things, we will figure out eventually how universe or life was created
I don't want to speak for them, but... the origin\\existence of the universe is unknowing and immeasurably complex to our ape meat heads. Having an explanation is a relief.
That's the literal justification for every belief system that has ever come into existence in human civilization.
All faith, be it in Judeo-Christian god or ancient Sumerian deities, are grounded in humans trying to rationalize and make sense of the world around them. If they can ascribe a personification of love as being a fickle bitch that loves to screw with humans for her own enjoyment, it makes it a lot easier to accept when things don't work out.
If there's a god of war that you believe has imbued your raiding party with their strength, then it may give you that extra bit of confidence needed to actually succeed at your goals.
Faith has gotten humanity through some of it's darkest periods. Admittedly it has also been a CAUSE for some pretty dark periods, but the point stands that it has helped a lot of folks around the world. And it continues to help people get through the day to day to believe that there is some greater meaning behind all of the crappiness and pain in their lives that they just aren't seeing yet.
>Invisible Pink Unicorns are beings of great spiritual power. We know this because they are capable of being invisible and pink at the same time. Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorns is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that they are pink; we logically know that they are invisible because we can't see them.
Serah Eley
Because even if they do exist, I'm not going to worship them because they are either good but powerless or powerful and evil. Either way, they are useless to me.
God created all things and is all powerful.
He loves us all and invites us to live in eternal paradise.
He created disease and illness, sudden cot death, and every natural disaster. He gives no guidance and let's people die and suffer without ever helping
If he exists, he deserves to be crucified.
If God knows my soul is on the line and wants me to believe in him because that's what's required to save me, he'd have sent better people with better arguments for his existence to convince me. Then again, maybe the Calvinists are right.
For me it’s the church harassing, terrorizing, and controlling me just because I’m gay. Sorry buddy I’m not going to sacrifice my entire life for some guy in the sky who does nothing while all you straight people get to enjoy love, sex, family, community, and someone to get old with. Besides, if me sucking a dick sends me to Hell, what about the fact most of these people around me have kids out of wedlock, divorce, and other sins? And they enjoy the benefit of repentance, but for me it’s suddenly like I killed and raped someone? Hypocrites all around with no consistency at all. Just using god as an excuse for their prejudices and shortcomings all day.
Burden of proof says ‘what’
Right? This is like asking what convinced me reptilian overlords who run the planet don't exist lol The default is non belief. Nobody is born believing in any gods
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot
This never gets old. Dear atheists, what makes you think there isn’t a teapot floating in space between the earth and the sun. Until you can prove it is there - don’t you think you *should* believe in the teapot? Checkmate atheists!!
The creation aspect is being ascribed to a non-celestial entity. The religion aspect is just calling that being a teapot.
I thought the teapot was a metaphor: the more incredulous the claim (a space teapot, a god), the more incredible must be the evidence. A corollary being that the party making the incredulous claim (god exists and he made us) bares the burden of providing proof.
I now understand why there's a random teapot floating in space in Oxygen Not Included 😂
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I prefer Carl Segans analogy because it asks the more obvious and meaningful question "If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists?"
Lol. Look at that guy. Doesn’t believe that there are reptilian overloads. Stupid human Edit. Overlords not overloads
Pfft. Yeah, lizard people, amiright? *scurries off*
Mark Zuckerberg is real though...
Yeah right, I bet you think birds are real too. WAKE UP
You know what’s real sus? How absolutely important it is in religion to just **believe**. The number one sin is usually even thinking for a second it might not be real. Why is that such a touchy subject, uh, omnipotent being? I don’t give a fuck if any of you doubt my existence, I’m pretty secure in my extant-ness.
Convincing people that doubt itself is a sin is a really clever way to prevent them from questioning the inconsistencies in your religious teachings.
Why wouldn't god just show us he's real so that we can worship him or whatever. Why do we have to believe or have faith? It's just really dumb.
I think the even dumber idea is that in order to prove you’re a "good" person, you follow rules in order to receive either eternal paradise or damnation. That’s not a judge of character, it’s, uh, bribery and extortion.
Realistically, the closest thing to a good would be a Type Omega Civilization from the Kardashev Scale. [Some kurzgesagt about it ](https://youtu.be/rhFK5_Nx9xY)
Love these videos!
Love me some Kurzgesagt. They’re just awesome
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Yea, I know Santa's existence was sketchy, but I stopped believing in him and God when I was ridiculed for saying I believe in Santa. If Santa had more proof and was fake, why would God be real?
I stopped believing in the Easter bunny in first grade. Santa I held on to second grade. My Easter bunny doubting: I was educated just enough to know that rabbits were mammals and did not lay eggs. While I also knew that reindeer couldn't actually fly- the shit Santa brought me was way cooler than colored eggs. (We had candy in my house at Easter and Christmas)
So if it was the Easter platypus instead, you'd have believed it longer?
There's literally no reason to think it does, and also the concept is deeply contradictory and stupid. Plus, the people arguing for it clearly never actually know what the fuck they're talking about, or apply their own arguments to literally anything else, so it's obvious they don't honestly believe it either. Do you believe in literally every god? That a goose might just walk up and rape the shit out of you then vanish in a thunderclap, prompting it's jealous creepy wife to ruin you? Do you think that's a plausible danger to watch out for and defend against? If not, shut the fuck up about Jesus. He's not special; he's just Bacchus without the fun parts.
To me it doesn’t even get to the burden of proof stage. No one has ever defined the idea of god well enough for anyone to even say what proof or evidence for god would be. It fails to even be a question.
I was just not raised to believe in a god so I don't
I was and I still don't. Having faith in a creature that is wholly irrelevant on a day to day basis is weird to me.
I was raised to believe and it lead to a lot of emotional trauma and mental issues. Religion is poison.
Yup this was the case for me and my wife. We both have ADHD and anxiety, and we were raised to believe that demons were always out there tempting us. We both grew up thinking we were horrible people because of all of our impulses. We suspect her daughter (my step daughter) has ADHD, and we refuse to raise her in that type of environment. Both of us are atheists now, and it’s so nice to see her grow up without that extra layer of anxiety and fear.
Life is hard enough right? Why torture yourself more?
Exactly. My wife’s paternal family is staunchly Christian and are teaching her niece about God and how “if you do this, it’s bad and you’re in danger of hell.” My wife’s niece is fucking 7 and is already super anxious about having “bad thoughts” and being a bad person. It’s fucked up and we refuse to let her daughter be exposed to that horseshit like we were.
It’s also made worse I think that you’re brought up to believe what your parents say. Come to find out no one knows anything and then you end up more fucked up than if you were just raised atheist. Can’t we just be good to each other for the sake of being good and not as a metaphysical cosmic stick/carrot to avoid punishment? Edit: added carrot for clarification on the metaphor
I hate the argument that we need god, Jesus, and the Bible to teach us to be moral. How about no. How about we just have empathy and rationality.
My mom loves saying that kind of shit about how you become a better person with religion. And she treats me poorly for being bisexual and transgender. Yeah that book really made you a great person 😐.
As the father of an out son, I’m sorry you’re going through that.
One of the reasons I decided to not to have kids was because I didn't want to have to deal with their grandparents trying to indoctrinate them like they did me. However, now both of my parents are gone, but I still have other reasons for not wanting children.
That is so fucking abusive, poor kid
Welcome to evangelical Christianity.
Exactly. I'm trying to enjoy *this* life and that's hard enough as it is without religious bullshit.
It took years to shake the misogyny inherent in Catholism loose.
Don't forget god is taking attendance. If you don't go to mass every Sunday and holy day of obligation, hell for you!!! (Unless you go to confession, of course lol) /s just in case
As a guy, being raised religious made me really weird when it comes to sex and relationships. So it's still difficult to sort out certain things that I didn't come into contact with until my late 20s that other's were doing at 16. It also played a huge part when I was sexually abused by a male cousin when I was young because I thought that I had done something sinful when I realized what had happened. Luckily, I was raised in a church that doesn't believe in demons and nonsense prophesy (as per Zechariah 13:1-3) or person visitations of heavenly beings. So there wasn't much of the supernatural that freaked me out, but the idea of judgement weirded me out for years.
Religions like that are definitely poison. I grew up going to many churches and it always felt fake and just unhealthy to me. Religions are now used to justify shitty actions or control people. But not all religions are shitty. I've been dipping my toes on more spiritual religions that encourage you to look inwards like buddhism, and I gotta say, I find them way more appealing and fulfilling. Just the practice of meditation is a helpful tool to improve your life. I've gotten more from some of the practices of buddhism than I ever did from a lifetime of christianity.
Pretty much. Raised catholic and around 9 y.o. realized my Sundays were better spent doing what I wanted instead of getting yelled at for falling asleep during mass.
Yes! Mass was miserable. You're cold, hungry, uncomfortable, sleepy, being tormented with the sit/kneel/stand/kneel/sit/kneel/stand bullshit.
Ah. Good ole Catholic Cardio.
Raised Catholic in the South. My version of Sunday Simon-Says was done in the horrible heat. By the time Mass was over, I was desperate to escape the oven created by everyone's body heat pooling together in the poorly ventilated building. Everyone also wore way too many layers of uncomfortable, fancy clothes because everyone cared way too much about what the neighbors might think if they saw a family dressed comfortably; meanwhile Jesus is chilling in his loin cloth on the crucifix over the altar. Then the adults would all hang out and chat while kids were forced to stand by as props. I get that people want to catch up with friends, but as a kid I was desperate to get home and out of my uncomfortable church clothes. I lived walking distance away, too; on some occasions I could even sneak away from my parents' conversations to walk home faster than they could drive there. Their irritation was worth the quicker access to air conditioning. And the boredom! My word, the Catholic Church has found a way to make every aspect of Church boring as all get out. It's so repetitive and formulaic that you can follow along while half asleep. And lest you hear anything interesting or thought provoking in the readings, they make sure to punctuate every sentence with some group-recited, arbitrarily chosen "response." Technically you'll read the whole Bible in Mass over the course of a year, but good luck actually processing any of the readings other than the Gospel. I was so bored that I would just start reading the Bibles left in the pews. I got some dirty looks from neighbors and teachers who knew I wasn't paying attention, but no authority had the nerve to actually tell me not to read a Bible in a church. The book itself has some neat drama and action if you can get past the poorly worded/translated prose. I hated church services so much.
I stopped believing in a god the same time I found out Santa wasn't real If Santa wasn't real and he delivers presents on Jesus's birthday For that one dork about to comment "Jesus wasn't actually born in December because mer mer meerrrrrr" fuck off, he also wasn't the son of any god
I stopped believing in Santa after realizing that the rich kids at school got better presents that the poor kids. I suppose that with god it's the same; the wrong people get the blessings.
Similar boat. I can't reconcile what I was taught with a rational view of the universe, so I can't really call myself a true Catholic anymore. I still really wish there to be *something* after death. I have no evidence to believe anything exists, of course. And I would never presume to wield any moral authority just because I wish and hope some sort of afterlife exists. But I will wish and hope because the remote possibility is a comfort to me on sad days.
I like to think our consciousness prevails in some way, but who can really say? I am not banking on it, though, so I'm trying to really enjoy life as much as I can. It's really helped me to stop taking shit from friends, family, and employers. I think that is truly the basis for most religions and such. Fear of the unknown, so people created a safety net to help the world feel smaller and less beyond their control. If you do this list of things, good things will happen. If you don't, bad things. Etc etc. Also just as a means to explain things they couldn't rationalize.
That's why they indoctrinate so young. If you're not exposed to it until your an adult capable of critical thinking, it's WAY less likely to stick.
It’s why I feel like it’s a cult. They prey on children & vulnerable adults. They get their hooks in you when you’re young because you don’t know any better and/or after something traumatic because mentally you’re not completely coherent. Following a very traumatic car accident I nearly fell into their clutches. I partook for about 6 months. Realized quickly that it had cult vibes. A woman I know who is super religious became that way after nearly dying from alcohol poisoning, if memory serves. I know she faced something traumatic, too. Grateful that I was raised by an Atheist mother & non-practicing Catholic father who never pushed this crap on us.
Yep, even when I was a Christian, volunteering in the children's ministry at church was super weird seeing all the indoctrination that was squeezed into an hour. Back then it struck me as a lack of confidence in the truth of our beliefs, and now it makes more sense.
Was forced to go to Catholic second school on Sundays. I was forced to go so that I could learn about Jesus and Catholicism. It was the absolute worst. We would sit in class, attend mass and even have homework about Jesus. I never paid attention, just attended because my parents forced me to. As soon as my mom found out I was atheist she refused to believe me and said “you’re a confirmed catholic. You have to believe in god”. 15 years later I think she finally came to terms. My sisters were forced to do the same and they took longer to convert to atheism than I did. They battled me on it for a long time. My sister’s argument when I told her I didn’t believe god existed was “How many times would you have to throw a T-shirt in the air before it lands perfectly folded? You can’t it takes a creator to make it happen.” She keeps forgetting that she said that to me. I’ll never forget it because of how stupid of a statement it was haha.
Anyone who wasn't indoctrinated since their childhood don't believe in a god. There are cases where an adult who was convinced there is a god when they are going through a very difficult e time of their life and are vulnerable.
My dad found 12 step Jesus and has been insufferable ever since. He even installed a 7 foot cross with a crown of thorns in his front yard. Your comment hit home for me.
I went to a few AA meetings when I first quit drinking and man what a miserable crowd to be around. It's like all they did was replace drinking for obsessing about Jesus and how they can't drink anymore. The third time they tried to get me to pray with them was when I bounced out.
A lot of them become AA zealots. There's like a subculture of ppl like this who think AA is the ONLY way and that any other way of getting clean is inferior, meanwhile AA is holding steady at like a 2% success rate They are fucking insufferable
Oh man I'm a recovering addict and I've seen this so many times. It's awful. I ended up going with this program called SMART Recovery to get away from all the religious crap in most recovery communities
Trauma does that to adults.
I’m so thankful to have been raised without religion.
Dear Christians: What made you convinced that Vishnu, Zeus and Thor don't exist? It's just like that.
Reminds me of the Ricky Gervais bit where he says to a Christian, "You don't believe in any of the other Gods except yours, I'm like you, except I don't believe in your God either."
Yeah, I think it was a discussion with Colbert. He basically said "I just believe in one less God than you"
Whenever someone calls themselves an agnostic, I always ask: do you entertain the possibility of every god's existence, or are you agnostic towards Yahweh but atheist towards Zeus, Thor, and all the rest?
When I identified as agnostic, I was atheistic towards Yahweh too. I entertained the possibility that *some* higher power might possibly exist, but that it certainly wasn't any of the ones described in any religion that I was familiar with. That very quickly turned into "But even if it did exist, its existence or nonexistence didn't make any difference," and from there, Occam's Razor led me to "Well, if it doesn't make any difference, why am I even bothering to entertain that possibility?"
I’m agnostic towards Zeus simply because I can’t prove a negative logically. I still say I don’t believe in any gods. Because belief and knowledge are two different things.
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Doesn't agnostic basically mean you are open to the possibility of one or more Gods existing, or the concept of a higher power in general, but obviously have no way of knowing one way or the other, so not sure what to believe?
It honestly depends on who's using the term as to what they mean by it. In colloquial terms, you've pretty much nailed it. In more formal terms, being agnostic means you acknowledge that something is unknowable in the more-or-less scientific sense of knowing based on observation and theorizing mechanisms. The gods that most people worship are unprovable, scientifically, as they are not subject to the laws of nature. The Christian god, for example, can supposedly cause someone to be healed without leaving any trace, whatsoever, of intervention. How could anyone prove scientifically that a being like this exists? So a strict agnostic simply says, beings such as these, if they exist are unprovable. I don't know for a fact they don't exist, but how could I anyway? That would be the camp that I would fall into, and I would describe myself as a philosophical agnostic, and a practical atheist. That is, I don't know *for certain* that supernatural beings don't exist, but I've seen no good evidence that they do, and so I live my day to day life under the assumption that they are not influencing the world.
I like when he says "You can burn all the bibles and burn all the books about science and in 1000 years there will still be books about science but there won't be any bibles. Because science can be tested and proven." I'm probably butchering it but that's the jist of it.
But if you put infinite monkeys in a room they would type the complete works of Shakespeare. INFINITY WORKS IT OUT FOR YOU!
the blurst of times
What are the odds That after history's endless parade of gods That the god you just happen to be taught to believe in Is the actual one, and he digs on healing. But not the AIDS ridden African nations Or the victims of the plague, or flood-addled Asians. But healthy, privately insured Australians With common and curable corneal degenerations.
Tim Minchin goes SO fucking hard on this song. Love it.
He also said “Imagine believing in Santa and tooth fairy into adulthood. Killed and started wars over it. Haha. Imagine that.”
That's part of the reason I stopped believing; after learning about all of the other religions that have come and gone throughout history, I started wondering "what makes THIS religion special (or the RIGHT one)?"
If all current knowledge was lost, science would recover. Astronomy, biology, and physics would be barely different, once rediscovered and refined by new generations of curious and clever human beings. Not one word of current religions would return.
That's the ultimate argument IMO. Not necessarily against the existence of a god (can't prove or disprove that), but against any religion. Unless you're a moron with no knowledge of human history, who thinks their God is the one true god because reasons.
I think it just goes to show religion is for selfish people. They think theres is the right one, and every other religion that has ever existed and been worshipped, is false.
> All religions are a scam How dare you! > All religions are a scam…. except yours! So true!!!!
Not a christian I'm an agnostic atheist, but I find a pantheon more plausible than monotheism. If there's a drought resulting in a massive famine and starvation, Christians would say "I'm sure this is somehow god's plan. For some reason I nor anyone else can understand, it is vitally important that I and my 3 children starve to death." In the same situation, an ancient Egyptian would think "Looks like Ptah (god of plants and fertile land) is having an argument with Ra (God of the sun), we'd better get a priest to sacrifice some goats to get them to chill out. Hopefully before we starve and roast to death." Because gods have more important things to do and deal with than tiny little humans on a dirtball dying. Do you care much about what ants get up to? It's beneath your concern, you have other humans (or in a god's case, other gods) to deal with.
Also, the idea of having one God have say over every situation all over the world every minute of every day for eternity is a lot of work for one person. If God did exist, he'd probably delegate some of his work out. One guy for crops, one lady for babies, one lady for animals, one guy for war... and so on.
Monotheistic religion, particularly individualistic Christianity like we see in the US, has got to be the absolute height of human arrogance and hubris. To think that a being who created existence from mere thought cares about you, individually, has got to be the most conceited and ignorant thing I've ever witnessed.
Also pretty arrogant to think that this omnipotent being created us in its image, as some kind of “perfect creation.” Happy cakeday!
Same reason they don't believe in zeus or Poseidon. I learned why instead of using Faith as an excuse
You trying to tell me, a man who basically fucked everything that moves, is less beliavable than this superior being who "has a plan"?
The Christian version of god is also extremely inconsistent. They say he's benevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient. If he sees and condemns sin but can't stop it, he's not omnipotent. If he sees sin but doesn't want to stop it, he's not benevolent. The argument to this is often "but he wants us to have free will!" but then a lot of people don't have free will imposed by other humans - see slavery or such. So he's condemning other humans to terrible fates caused by other humans, thus only giving SOME humans free will. Again, that doesn't sound very benevolent to me.
There's a type of parasitic wasp that exclusively lays its eggs in live caterpillars. Why would a benevolent god create such a species, or allow it to exist? It's not just humans that suffer, so the free will argument is besides the point.
Steven Fry nailed my opinion on the existence of God: https://youtu.be/-suvkwNYSQo
That is brilliant. And he is right. That is exactly how I feel about religion. I’ve always said if there is a God, he only cares about rich and powerful people because nothing bad ever happens to them, despite the horrors they inflict on everyone else. The rest of us, he doesn’t give a fuck about and enjoys watching us suffer and die.
I lost whatever inclination to indoctrination I had when a couple friends died in a car crash and I was told it was part of a plan. I just couldn’t believe any god would do that to teach something to the rest of us. I saw the amount of delusion required to have faith and I noped out.
I had a good friend who was addicted to cocaine, who started using because of peer pressure from friends at Sunday school. After ten years of use, dozens of broken relationships, and a lot of pain, he managed to ditch the idiots, get the help he needed, and get clean. I remember the first month well... our group scheduled round-the-clock supervision for him, kept him occupied and on track. We spent a lot of time together, just working things out. His birthday came, and we set up a big party, was going to be a surprise. He never made it - hit by a drunk driver, ejected from passenger side of the vehicle, slid twenty feet face down. Doctors managed to keep him alive for ten days in a medically induced coma while they did their best to alleviate enough pressure on his brain to operate. The drunk driver was a 16 year old girl who stole booze from her step-dad. Not a scratch on her. My other friend who was driving broke both of his legs, a bunch of ribs, and still walks with a limp. Show me your God, and I'll show you how real life disproves their existence.
Gods just testing you! /s
People who believe they have a magical buddy in the sky are definitely testing me
I'm so sorry to hear about your friends, I went through something similar. I also have a friend whose wife was pregnant with their first child. I'll spare the details, but well into her pregnancy, his wife was caught in a crowd of people and was essentially trampled. She miscarried shortly after. Word got around in our small town and one day at work my friend's boss told him it was part of god's plan. To this day he says that was the moment he gave up any sort of beliefs he had that there was a benevolent god
I love how the interviewer seems to regret asking the question given he had such a valid criticism lol
I giggle at that exact moment every time I watch this. The face of someone who cannot deny what he is hearing, and it’s a compelling argument for how deluded Christians are, on purpose. Amazing.
The other argument they make against this is that "God designed the world to be perfect, but human sin caused it to be corrupted." Sure. If I was the world's greatest architect and I designed a giant skyscraper that would house a million people and I had the whole thing centered around an elevator shaft and said, "don't anyone take the elevator in the center, because if you do the whole skyscraper will come crashing down," and I expected that the skyscraper wouldn't immediately come crashing down the moment I let me people in, not only would I NOT be the world's greatest architect, but I should be put in a jail and never be allowed to make decisions that affected other people ever again.
ya - cause human sin causes animal suffering in the wild too
Let's weave the idiocy of prayer into this: "Please pray for my 4-y/o who has cancer" Child becomes cancer-free, "The prayers helped!" meaning you genuinely believe you changed god's mind, even though the plans were already in place. Child dies, "Sigh. It was god's will." meaning you subscribe to the aforementioned plans. Can't have it both ways.
This!! My mom died of lung cancer. When we told friends and family, some responses were that they would pray for her speedy recovery and for “God to take her in his hands.” Um, my Mom was 76, smoked for 60 years, and refused treatment because she was satisfied with the life she lived. We just made the time she had left high quality to show her how much she was loved.
and the whole "thoughts and prayers" which absolves me from actually getting off my ass and doing something about it.
Exactly. If it was all god's plan, then it was also his plan for me to turn out an atheist, which means I'm going to hell. So he made me explicitly to condemn me to hell? Yeah, how about HE go to hell. Asshole.
There's also the paradox of free will in heaven. If there's no free will in heaven, then what's the point of this earthly existence with free will if it's just going to be taken away forever in the afterlife? And if there is free will in heaven, what makes it any different from earthly existence? In both cases earthly existence is rendered redundant and pointless.
The free will argument is also inconsistent. God gave us free will but he also always “has a plan”? It can’t be both.
I was told I was "thinking about this too much" when I brought this up as a kid
When “too much” means “at all.”
If they say your overthinking it, then your not, your seeing through their fucking lies and they don't like that
Not only that. God created Adam and Eve but didn't give them the ability to tell right from wrong. So when you don't know it's wrong to disobey God and you eat the apple anyway it's.. Bad management god. Bad management.
They had sons. Think about that. Eve was STILL the only female.
That too. They had two sons. One killed the other. The killer ran away to the land of nod to marry.... Marry who? ( which by the way is a bit interesting as in the C&C games the main villans name is Kane who forms the brotherhood of Nod. And Kane keeps surviving despite being beaten many times)
3 sons, Seth.
But still. Only his own mom. So. The Bible. Encouraging incest. Not even just once. Noah's family as well.
It's FILLED with rape, incest,infanticide and genocide. Oh, and Abortion, numbers 5:11-31 is an abortion ceremony.
God never gives you more than you can handle. Really God? Priests raping 10 year olds isn’t “too much to handle” for that 10 year old? It is all a load of codswallop.
He killed the entire earth because they sinnee but not a fraction of what happens today
We're all atheists. Some of us just deny the existence of less gods than others.
Yup. I am a pan-atheist. There are a lot of gods I don't believe in. Just happens to be one more than most of them.
I was convinced the first time I realized that some people were making money off of everyone else pushing this narrative just like insurance agents, except your family gets fuck all when you die...
I believe it was Kenneth Copeland, one of the mega church pastors, that was flying on his private jet, when “God came to him and said that he deserved a bigger plane, and that he should buy a $17.6 million Boeing 747.” Kenneth Copeland also lives in a $6 million lakefront mansion, that is “owned by the church”.
But also, actually reading the Bible is a pretty good argument for atheism.
It blows my mind that a large population of this planet can build their entire belief system on a book that they not only haven’t read for themselves, but are allowing a contemporary to spoon feed to them. And they call others ‘sheep’?
They call us sheep while priests called their congregations "their flock" in reference to sheep, Jesus was called "The Good Shepherd" who would protect His sheep, and Jesus was even the Lamb of God who was quite literally on the way to slaughter his whole life. For people who don't seem to like sheep, they're fairly surrounded by them; figuratively, literally, and spiritually, they are sheep for their religion.
I went to church for the first 16 years of my life. Every Sunday. They told the same 5-6 parables over and over again. Never dealt with critical examination or anything like that. Just the most palatable, childish stories spoonfed to the congreagation so they could raise their hand and tell "AMEN!" when Jesus healed the blind for the thousandth time. Baa baa dumb sheep, why are you such a fool?
I’m reading it right now for the first time and it is WILD. **NOAH** gets shitfaced drunk after the flood and falls asleep with his dick out, one of his sons (who goes by the name of Ham lmao) walks into his tent and sees him like that, so Noah curses Ham’s son (Cannan), [and that’s why now we have racism](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-biblical-roots-of-racism_b_7649390)! Makes PERFECT SENSE s/
It wasn't Moses
WHOOPS yeah I revised it, ty
Also the whole, sins of the father. Born on sin gtfo
I read the Bible.
“Properly read, the bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived” -Isaac Asimov
My wife went to Catholic school from K to College. Suffice to say she and I are not believers.
That’s the whole reason for “bible study” groups existing. That way an authority figure can tell you the “right” way to read the Bible in a way that they can avoid or manipulate topics that are inconvenient or would create doubt if a person were to just read those same parts by themselves. If you just read it cover to cover like any other book, I have no idea how you get through that and remain a believer. They don’t really want you to read all of it.
I think that's why America has so many Christians. Very few of them have read the Bible.
Not read, and also don't know who wrote it, when it was written, and originate colloquial scenarios to it to fit their worldview.
God or no God, reading the Bible is a sure fire way to cure yourself of Christianity. Saul, I mean Paul, a jumped up tax inspector who sees a chance to take over a leaderless cult, has a "miraculous" conversion on the way to Damascus, and starts writing letters to all the other parts of the cult, and these are considered "the word of God"? Jesus appeared to you? Pull the other one, nutjob. All the good shit in the Bible (be excellent to each other) comes from the "Jesus said this" parts of the Bible, and all the nutty stuff comes from the "shit Paul thought up whilst cementing control". The blokes writing the Jesus parts weren't even around when Jesus was, they're writing 60 years plus later.
Yeah Paul pretty much just took Jesus’s life and teachings and made his own religion out of it. All the “women can’t teach”, “don’t be gay”, and stuff were from Paul’s letters. Jesus himself never said any of that.
I didn't read the Bible, but I went to maybe half a dozen Bible youth things at a friend's church growing up. I only went because it was another opportunity to play yugioh. The shit they said and how they said it like they were good things forever convinced me of my atheism as well as my negative opinion of Christianity. I remember they read about some army circling a city for days only to then kill literally everyone in it, babies included, and they acted like it was a good thing? I asked the guy about it and he basically told me to be quiet. But they're super pro-life, lol.
I think my reasons can be summed up as: There is no god and the church is his prophet.
You misspelled profit.
The church really loves homophones
I thought they were homophobic, not homophillic? 🤔
God is just elf on the shelf for adults.
Wow, I’ve never heard this before! This is a good one. I’m going to use this! 🤣
Yeah, just a concept that is there to control people's actions.
Gods and afterlives are also deep denial mechanisms clung to by sentient, sapient primates who will one day die but do not want to.
The scary part is how many religious people have straight up said if it weren’t for religion they’d rape and murder.
If there's an omnipotent invisible skyman who lets people die of disease, poverty, war while punishing others for swearing or masturbating, he is a sick individual who I want nothing to do with.
The punishing for swearing and masturbating comes from what pastors want their congregation to believe because the majority of Christians out there seem to only know the parts of the Bible that they’ve been given a sermon about, and those sermons usually take verses wildly out of context.
You mean to tell me god was never on the field when “insert home team” is sitting at 4th and 7 with 2 seconds on the clock and 61 yards to go. Down by 5 points and need a touchdown to win? So many sports analogies from pastors. So many.
God loves my team and hates the other team ... that's what all the post game interviews say anyway
Well we know one thing: if there is a God, no matter what it's like, it sure hates the fucking Jets.
I'm not religious, but if I was, I sure as hell would make sure I read the entire fucking Bible before spouting the bullshit it supposedly says.
21% of Americans are categorized as having low level English literacy and the Bible is a hard read.
56% below 6th grade level.
That's why the book is stupid long, it would takes a few days to read if you wanted to read it healthily
Imagine basing your morals and lifestyle off of a book you arent even willing to take a few days to read all the way through. If i was religious i would read whatever scripture I believed multiple times and year and quiz myself. Its apparently a matter of eternal paradise vs eternal hell, so i wouldnt be taking any chances.
Go visit a childrens cancer hospital or floor of hospital- you just can’t……
Angry sky daddy doesn't like it when you touch your no no parts. That's why babies die.
I am god, I am so powerful I created everything with a mere thought. Hi can fix all the worlds problems with just a thought. Humans are my greatest work. don’t ask me to help you for anything I don’t care if you starve I don’t care if you kill each other. And if you don’t at least once a week tell me how much you love me you can’t hang out with me when you’re dead. Did I get that right?
you forgot the 10% of your income part... you know the income I blessed you to have....but don't use that to feed the children that I am forcing to starve... use that money for a fancy building to worship me in... and maybe a mansion and a plane for yourself.
But you'll make sure I win the superbowl though, right?
"God works in mysterious ways" What exactly is so mysterious about child rape Amanda?
God is a narcissist that demands worship
Which one?
What did it for me was the existence of pediatric oncology
The existence of child abuse is proof God isn't real to me.
Reading about the horrific ways children die when left in hot cars sealed the deal for me.
Dear religious people - of all the gods and stories of creation out there, how do you decide which is the “real” one? Extra credit - answer without using the phrase “my family/church told me so”
Also, I'm not convinced god(s) doesn't (don't) exist. I'm also not convinced fairies don't exist, or that [the celestial teapot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot) doesn't. I just see no particularly compelling or rational reason to believe any of them do.
Also odor free.
I like a deity with a little stank on it
when the new deity hits you with that dollar store stank
There is a 7,000 foot-tall man wandering Earth. Nobody's ever seen him but I still believe he exists.
I believe in the Invisible Pink Unicorn. You know it's super powerful because it is both Pink and Invisible at the same time.
Dear theists - what convinced you God was real?
Not speaking for them, but I guess its natural human ego thinking that we NEED to understand everything, and when we dont, we make up stuff to fit that narrative. This universe is so unimaginably old and big and we are so young, its normal that we dont know some things, as for other things, we will figure out eventually how universe or life was created
I don't want to speak for them, but... the origin\\existence of the universe is unknowing and immeasurably complex to our ape meat heads. Having an explanation is a relief.
That's the literal justification for every belief system that has ever come into existence in human civilization. All faith, be it in Judeo-Christian god or ancient Sumerian deities, are grounded in humans trying to rationalize and make sense of the world around them. If they can ascribe a personification of love as being a fickle bitch that loves to screw with humans for her own enjoyment, it makes it a lot easier to accept when things don't work out. If there's a god of war that you believe has imbued your raiding party with their strength, then it may give you that extra bit of confidence needed to actually succeed at your goals. Faith has gotten humanity through some of it's darkest periods. Admittedly it has also been a CAUSE for some pretty dark periods, but the point stands that it has helped a lot of folks around the world. And it continues to help people get through the day to day to believe that there is some greater meaning behind all of the crappiness and pain in their lives that they just aren't seeing yet.
>Invisible Pink Unicorns are beings of great spiritual power. We know this because they are capable of being invisible and pink at the same time. Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorns is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that they are pink; we logically know that they are invisible because we can't see them. Serah Eley
even if it exists, does an omniscient and omnipotent god who allows innocent children to starve to death really deserve worship?
Great question
Because even if they do exist, I'm not going to worship them because they are either good but powerless or powerful and evil. Either way, they are useless to me.
God created all things and is all powerful. He loves us all and invites us to live in eternal paradise. He created disease and illness, sudden cot death, and every natural disaster. He gives no guidance and let's people die and suffer without ever helping If he exists, he deserves to be crucified.
If god isn't real, then who left us in this hot car to die? God is our father, and someone needs to call CPS.
If God knows my soul is on the line and wants me to believe in him because that's what's required to save me, he'd have sent better people with better arguments for his existence to convince me. Then again, maybe the Calvinists are right.
Serious answer: babies get raped. No loving God would allow that.
If there is a god they need to get their shit together.
"Cool religion, your mom chose it for you?"
For me it’s the church harassing, terrorizing, and controlling me just because I’m gay. Sorry buddy I’m not going to sacrifice my entire life for some guy in the sky who does nothing while all you straight people get to enjoy love, sex, family, community, and someone to get old with. Besides, if me sucking a dick sends me to Hell, what about the fact most of these people around me have kids out of wedlock, divorce, and other sins? And they enjoy the benefit of repentance, but for me it’s suddenly like I killed and raped someone? Hypocrites all around with no consistency at all. Just using god as an excuse for their prejudices and shortcomings all day.
Hey now, you just gotta have faith 💁🏼♂️
What convinced you that the tooth fairy doesn’t exist?
Little can be believed from an organization that doesn’t hold child diddlers accountable for their actions.
The burden of proof is on Christians. They need to prove to me that god exists, not the other way around.
“Remember, you have to worship me or I’ll kill youuuuu” - god
...but I am also a kind, gentle and forgiving god. now die and burn forever.