Atheism
Community Guide
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Statement of Purpose
- This is a support and conversation community for people who don't believe in gods.
- Superstition hucksters have no reason to subscribe or post here at all.
- If you are looking to debate or proselytize, options will be linked lower in the sidebar.
Acceptable
- Honest questions or conversations.
- Discussions on parenting or advice.
- Struggles, frustrations, coming out.
- Atheist memes. We can have fun!
- News headlines relevant to atheism.
Unacceptable
Depending on severity, you might be warned before adverse action is taken.
- Anything against site rules.
- Illegal and/or NSFW material.
- Troll posts and comments. There will be no attempt to explain what that means.
- Leading questions, agenda pushing, or disingenuous attempts to bait members.
- Personal attacks or flaming.
Inadvisable
- Self promotion or upvote farming.
- Excessive shitposting or off-topic discussion.
Application of warnings or bans will be subject to moderator discretion. Feel free to appeal. If changes to the guidelines are necessary, they will be adjusted.
If you vocally harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathizer or a resemblant of a group that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of any other group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you you will be banned on sight.
Provable means able to provide proof to the moderation, and, if necessary, to the community.
~ /c/nostupidquestions
If you want your space listed in this sidebar and it is especially relevant to the atheist or skeptic communities, PM DancingPickle and we'll have a look!
Connect with Atheists
- Matrix: #atheism:envs.net
Help and Support Links
- Freedom From Religion Foundation
- The Secular Therapy Project
- Secular Students Alliance
- Black Nonbelievers
- The Clergy Project
- Atheist Alliance International
- Sunday Assembly
- Atheist Ireland
- Atheism UK
- Atheists United
Streaming Media
This is mostly YouTube at the moment. Podcasts and similar media - especially on federated platforms - may also feature here.
- Atheist Debates - Matt Dillahunty
- Rationality Rules
- Friendly Atheist
- Making Sense with Sam Harris
- Cosmic Skeptic
- Genetically Modified Skeptic
- Street Epistemology
- Armored Skeptic
- NonStampCollector
Orgs, Blogs, Zines
- Center for Inquiry
- American Atheists
- Humanists International
- Atheist Republic
- The Brights
- The Angry Atheist
- History for Atheists
- Rationalist International
- Atheist Revolution
- Debunking Christianity
- Godless Mom
- Atheist Freethinkers
Mainstream
Bibliography
Start here...
...proceed here.
- God is Not Great (Hitchens)
- The God Delusion (Dawkins)
- The End of Faith (Harris)
- Why I Am Not a Christian (Russell)
- Letter to a Christian Nation (Harris)
Proselytize Religion
From Reddit
As a community with an interest in providing the best resources to its members, the following wiki links are provided as historical reference until we can establish our own.
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Given the critical mind that led you to your current atheistic beliefs (what I did there? :P), you have to have developed a mature moral code. I’d argue that taking an oath on something at the core of your being would be more binding than taking one based on any external books or faith system. (Muslim here btw but I love philosophy)
Most people of faith don’t realise how most atheists develop strong intrinsic morality by necessity during their journey. And I’m not saying that all atheists are morally superior! (Humans be humans)
This is just an observation based on my experiences and discussions with most of the open-minded ones I’ve come across thus far.
Education beats indoctrination any day. And the well-informed believer has to go through an atheism phase (to varying degrees, so YMMV) to be honest with themselves. Doubt is a perquisite of developing independent morality that confirms faith. At least that’s what I believe.
Edit: also to anyone reading this, don’t ask me about religious stuff, I’m not an Imam or anything. Just someone who went through some heavy shit and had to think outside the framework to make their life work.
I agree with pretty much everything you said up until you implied they ultimately return to some form of customized religious belief (still gave the thumbs up, tho). If they do that, it's most likely because it's of comfort to them on some level to have that rather than completely obliterate the foundation of their childhood. There's certainly no logic to deciding something religious is responsible for reality when it's obviously one of the many things we are unlikely to ever know the true reason for - mainly because it's recursive: e.g. if "God" created all this, then how did God come to be? Then how did that come to be? Etc. Etc. Etc.
Morality is most certainly possible without any kind of religious foundation. Ask me how I know.
They don’t have to. That’s the beauty of it. Some never do. I don’t fault them for it and never will.
Agency implies choice. So any religion stating that god gave us agency is bound to respect that. It follows that anyone going against this fact or arguing that said agency precludes certain choices does not really understand what free will is, nor the true message being conveyed by their own faith. :)
Fair enough - well said.
All right, now let me to respond to the other stuff without that misunderstanding looming in the way. :P
Are you speaking of Gödel’s Incompleteness theorem? Sorry if that’s not the correct name. I call it the N+1 problem personally (long story), but the gist is that we can’t observe our universe in its entirety without looking from a higher dimension with at least one more axis.
I think that’s essentially the recursiveness you’re speaking of: we cannot study our reality because it requires a perspective/view point that’s located outside of it. Correct?
Poetry used to provide an 'external' answer to Gödel, in that regard. Now I am not sure what, we're stuck with memes I guess.
It’s all about perspective. If we can’t truly see from without, why not nudge the viewport from within a bit? :P
Creative work and literature (memes also count!) are a great medium for exploration in this regard. Like… look at that Robert J. Sawyer’s book “Calculating God” (he’s one of my absolute favourite authors because of that book and others) and the fire it lit under so many butts in some “intellectual” circles, just by exploring the unconventional and discussing something both sides of the argument aren’t comfortable with.
I love things like that. Things that require your brain to do some squats and warm up before reading the next chapter.
You might find the teachings of Bhuddism or The Baha'i faith to be enlightening. Their philosophies are remarkably similar.
I did brush up on Buddhism amongst others during my youth, although not very deeply because I couldn’t do that for all religions without dedicating my entire life to that pursuit. Some things made sense, some are more contextual and require a certain lingual/cultural background/upbringing that I lacked, as is the case with most religions (mine included). A lot of nuance is lost in the translation. Not to mention that this was the early Internet and before machine translation was a thing. Most of that knowledge came from forum discussions, irc, and through books.
As for the Baha’i faith: I’ll admit I’m not very familiar. I might look it up when I have some free time though!
Yeah I'm gonna have to stop you there
No you won’t, because that’d be a knee-jerk reaction resulting from the lack of consideration/understanding of the other, so not so dissimilar to religious zealousness, which you disapprove of judging by that knee-jerk reaction.