Atheist/Anti-theist/Agnostic Troper Group

Oh yeah at the very least it can work as a Magic Feather.

But well, the whole point of that trope is you don't really need it.

Edited by Elfive on Feb 7th 2023 at 6:11:56 PM

Warning: Massive rambling/rant incoming.

Welp, it finally happened.

I've born to a generation of Christian family, whose history of faith goes back for almost a century. As thus, I've also been, or at least raised as, a Christian since my birth.

After 20 years of being a Christian (specifically, starting as Prebysterian, Baptist, Non denominational, and now non-practicing)...I finally decided to once and for all reject my faith altogether.

Jesus Christ (heh), where do I even start.

Firstly, it's not an overnight realization/decision. I've been struggling with crisis of faith for over a decade by now, both because of my perspective on state of the world and science/natural world .

With all that said, I don't think I will ever come out of the closet as an atheist to my family yet, if ever. At least as long as my parents are alive, I will probably continue to (pretend to) be a Christian.

Hell, I will most likely just never outright say anything about existence of God offline, period...which I'm pretty sure most average atheists are like.

Man. Why did I have to come to this realization on EASTER of all times. XP

Edited by dRoy on Apr 9th 2023 at 10:29:43 PM

Well, welcome to atheism! Congratulations!

I...well, thank you but I'm still genuinely and strongly conflicted about my decision at the moment so that might be a bit early. XP

Yeah belief's a funny thing. If you genuinely don't accept the tenets of Christianity as true any more, then you're not really a Christian any more, even if you still go through the motions. It's not something one can ever fully control.

hi guys

Hi afterwards welcome. Hi dRoy: I hope however it ends up you and your family both end up happy with whatever you believe.

Thank ye kindly!

After my decision to renounce my faith, and for at least few days before that, I've been really conflicted and still collecting my feelings.

Right now, I don't think I would describe myself as "gone completely atheist" quite yet, but more of going through the very end of a faith deconstruction.

Like for instance, one of the passages that I used to accept but simply cannot anymore would be Romans 1:20 -

"Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God."

...Like bloody fucking Hell, He did!

Seriously, Christians (former ones like myself included) always struggle with which parts to take literally and which parts metaphorically.

Also if that's really the case then there would have been no Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, etc, just the Church.

Jesus freaking Christ.

But you know what's funny?

My deconstruction of faith actually compels me to seriously study Christian theology more, although currently I'm more interested in learning mathematics and physics (ayyyyyyy).

I think part of it is because I feel criticizing/denouncing religions as an atheist have more weight when you actually have religious background/knowledge.

For instance, two of my current favorite atheist YouTubers, Genetically Modified Skeptic and Cosmic Skeptic, have graduated from Christian university and got a theology degree from Oxford University, respectively.

I will obviously never go to that degree, but hey, at least I can be a walking irony and become hilarious common trope of an atheist who is more religiously literate than actual Christians. XP

Edited by dRoy on Apr 12th 2023 at 10:12:51 PM

Oh I like Genetically Modified Skeptic as well! If you don't mind the dark humor he had an appearance reviewing a bad Christian movie with other atheists on a podcast. Interesting takedown of a bizarre filmmaker with very bad ideas about what Atheists are like. As for the points you made, yeah I never bought into the proof of God is everywhere thing either. My family was mostly Methodist or Catholic, if you don't mind me asking was yours different and do you think it made thinking of yourself as a nonbeliever harder?

Hmm, a very good question.

Throughout my 20+ years of being a Christian I went through many different denomination. I first started as Presbyterian, then during my brief stay in US I went to Methodist church, and upon returning back to Presbyterian, Baptist during college years, after that Non-Denominational, then non-practicing, and...well, now a non-believing, I guess.

And yeah, it doesn't particularly concern my denomination per say, but my family is THE single biggest reason why I kinda forced myself to keep my faith. As I said in one of my above posts, I will probably never reveal that as long as my parents are alive.

Yeah....

Hmmm....I'm sorry your family might have a hard time accepting your non-belief. I understand though, some of my family members are very tied to the church and much less accepting of my non-belief or other family member's LGBT status. So we don't necessarily hide it, but we don't often talk of it much at our family gatherings. Do you know if you have any other admitted atheists or agnostics in the family?

Does anybody else have a certain fascination with bad Christian movies and get a kick out of how atheists villains are portrayed in them? I really wouldn't mind atheist antagonists in Christian movies, but funnily and yet somehow depressingly at the same time, they are often written with less nuance then 80s Saturday Morning cartoon villains, (hence why I used villain in this case and not "antagonist")! I'm never seen one, (who wasn't turning Christian) betray the other villains in an atheist Legion of Doom because they were jealous, go after one hero in particular because of a personal vendetta, or even show affection for other atheists in the big bad evil, (insert social group the Christian movie doesn't like here). All things I've seen in one 80s Cartoon or another in some fashion.

Edited by Wildcard on Apr 13th 2023 at 10:03:29 AM

My little brother actually came out to me as an atheist many years ago, and he's the only one I know in my family, including the extended family.

It's really funny in a kinda sad way. Many years ago when he first came out as an atheist to me, although it was more along the line of me pressing the issue until he admit it (which in hindsight was a massive dick move), I actually even posted in the Christian Thread in this subforum and expressed my concerns over it. Life can get really ironic at times...

Welp, it has been over a week since the near-complete destruction of my faith. It has been both enlightening and fairly disturbing experience, sadly leaning more towards the latter. Like I said on top of this page...the worldview without deities make far more sense, like heliocentric model.

The most disturbing aspect is me retracing my development of reasoning and morale throughout my whole life.

What else might I have missed or purposefully ignored in the name of faith? What great injustice or paradoxes might I have just simply accepted in the name of Christianity?

Honestly, this is quite possibly one of the biggest existential crises I ever faithed-I mean, faced in my whole life. XP

Also, in addition to Genetically Modified Skeptic and Cosmic Skeptic, I stumbled across another atheism/rationalism YT channel, Rationality Rules. I'm preparing myself for the day, which I hope never comes but pretty sure is inevitable, when I would have to explain why I lost faith.

And gotta say, I realized that 'm...awfully unprepared in terms of logical debate, and unfamiliar with terms such "appearance to ignorance" and "fine-tuning argument".

Edited by dRoy on Apr 18th 2023 at 11:28:32 PM

I think my brother is an atheist, but I'm not sure. Either way, I'm fine with it if he is. He's a pretty decent person.

Edited by CosmosAndChaos on Apr 19th 2023 at 5:04:54 AM

Hey, sorry I haven't had time to absorb it all on respond appropriately. But I hope the loss of faith isn't feeling horrible to you right now. I know you wrote "existential crisis" but not being able to read tone 100% accurately over text I don't know if you mean that it occasionally bugs you or if it something that keeps you up at night. I've been told I'm something of an anti-nihilist type. Basically life only has the meaning you decide to give it, and there is nothing wrong with that. Just because something is human-constructed and not divine doesn't give it any less value. So sometimes that helps me get through existential crisis's of my own. Real Example from my life: I needed expensive medication to not die when I was a very young child because of a rare allergy, why do I deserve it more than the people whose parents didn't have the money or who were discovered too late? I don't, that was unfair. However, I can do my part to change it so that death won't happen to the next kid without middle-class parents who have my allergies.

If you need to talk immediately there are resources for other atheists dealing with what leaving their faith left them. I might recommend the phone number for the recovering from religion foundation if you need to talk now. I hope that it can help in some way.

Welp. It happened.

The final process of my faith deconstruction has completed and I can say with an absolute certainty that I no longer believe in Christian God or any kind of deities in general, nor will I ever return to faith.

Now...the hardest part so far is trying to not be a stereotypical angry atheist. I should probably stop watching Theramin Tree channel and his videos about religious abuses, to start with. XP

Okay, wow.

This whole "Everything Wrong with [Insert Title and Chapter] in the Bible" series is absolutely hilarious in a dark way. I'm listening to this like a podcast and so far I'm almost done with Exodus 35.

Now that my faith deconstruction is complete...man, the Bible was even more insane than I remembered. I guess this is why you need outside perspective on things...

Edited by dRoy on May 11th 2023 at 11:02:24 PM

Yes I know I'm a Muslim, not an Atheist. But hey, we're primary talking about Christianity right now.

I do recall a phrase that went along the lines of this: "The best way to make an atheist is to read the Bible."

Many people have hypothesized that the reason why back then only priests and kings were allowed to read the Bible is that they believed it might be too nonsensical for a "peasant pleb" that they would stop having belief, and by extension, they would lose control over them. Well, mentally. Physical control was still very much possible.

The main reason I don't really trust the Bible is that it has been hidden for many years by priests and kings, so I don't know if I'll be following the same thing a peasant did many centuries ago. Who knows what could've happened to the Bible in that time?

There's also the fact that it took...way too long to "correctly" translate the Bible. To the point where it's been long enough for people to form opinions about the "true" translation and have arguments about it.

I'm a lapsus (as the saying goes, you can stop believing in God, but you can't stop being Catholic). I've said before, the only reason not to think there's a Yeti is that we haven't found one; Bigfoot, in contrast, many of the sightings are proven hoaxes, but a world with Bigfoot or a Yeti is broadly the same as a world without. The same can't be said for Christ. Granted, Jesus probably existed, and I'll even go on to say he probably delivered the Sermon on the Mount, and his other parables, and I'll even say he probably flipped the tables, and probably was crucified - only he didn't come back. He died on the cross, age 33. I think the Muslims say he swooned - nope. He died like everyone else Tiberius did that way. But unlike Bigfoot or the Yeti, a world with Christ or YHWH looks fundamentally different than that which we live in.

Yes, and even if he somehow performed healings etc I don't think that means he was God. As generally described, God has attributes wholly different from human beings. A person being both fully God and fully man contradicts itself I would maintain. It's incompatible properties, even if you do believe that God exists.

Oh my bloody God.

I actually had to unsubscribe from Genetically Modified Skeptic, one of the first atheism YT that eventually led to me to leave Christianity. Of the last dozen of his latest videos, more than half of them have been about Satanism in one way or another.

Now, I know that none of the members of Church of Satan literally believes in THE Satan, it's more of a movement against Abrahamic faith, and all around not that dangerous of a group anyway. Even then, I really couldn't care about that particular group and I'm getting sick of the channel keep bringing that up.

Edited by dRoy on Jun 29th 2023 at 9:26:44 PM

It has been a while since I watched him, (I saw him around a year ago when he was on the God Awful Movies Podcast) but is he a member of The Church of Satan in the last year? If so that might explain his obsession with it.

They're a perfectly fine group for coordinated activism, as that goes, but they tend to be really flashy in their stunts. Obviously attention is good and all, though it does occasionally get a bit annoying when you have to hear about their latest fun idea of point-proving, especially when it's one of the misses.

They often try to be funny in their commentary, but the consequence of doing so many stunts is that often they're kind of dumb actually.

I do approve of their comparative militancy though, I think the atheist community at large really lost a lot of good things during the (justified) backlash to the New Atheists. The New Atheists were not great, obviously, I have no idea what Dawkins is doing now but it's probably stupid whatever it is, and some of the others were just bigots trying to cloak their fear of immigrants in scientific-sounding ways, but the militancy that was lost along with them is something that could afford to be brought back.

After all, the civil rights movement in the US didn't achieve its (extensive, though not sufficient) successes through King alone. Malcom X was also very important as a background threat to peace if King's demands were not addressed, and both of them knew that. We could stand to have a stronger militant branch off which an ostensibly more peaceable branch plays to help at least win some rights we don't enjoy (6 states still bar atheists from holding office and we're extremely underrepresented in government at large) and get more organization and recognition.

As it stands, we're among the most distrusted ideological groups (More than any religion, at least in the US) so we need to do something about that.

As much as I don't care too much about Satanism, I still find this video by GMS very powerful:

Like, shit. If freedom of speech, rights for women and LGBTQ community, separation of church and state, holding churches accountable, etc are work of Satan as Christians love to say, yeah, he does sound more heroic than YHWH.

Fun fact about the Devil: in Judaism he isn't even necessarily a bad guy. More like a lawyer.

Didn't know that. But then again, I don't know that much about Judaism.