Atheist/Anti-theist/Agnostic Troper Group

It's actually closer to celestial prosecutor, but yeah.

It reminds me of one of the most shocking experiences I had as a child regarding Satan while reading the Bible (I grew up in a century old Christian family).

When I read the Book of Job, I was really confused, disturbed, and yet all around fascinated by how Satan just strolled into Heaven and even had some casual and familiar interaction with God.

I would call myself an antitheist, but to be honest I just hate all monotheistic Abrahamic religions

I can't bring myself to hate "Pagan" religions like Shinto and Buddhism because it just doesn't seem so harmful compared to Christar-I mean Christianty, Islamism, and Judaism (also because it's so ingrained to my culture and way of thinking)

Edited by Cordite-455 on Feb 18th 2024 at 11:32:52 PM

> When I read the Book of Job, I was really confused, disturbed, and yet all around fascinated by how Satan just strolled into Heaven and even had some casual and familiar interaction with God

they got sick of kicking him out and God was bored that day

Pagan usually means a religion that wasn’t assumed to be founded by a prophet/prophet such as The Buddha.

Note the quote marks- a typical Christ-worshipper sees no difference because they are so ignorant.

Edited by Cordite-455 on Feb 20th 2024 at 12:48:11 AM

Thinking about my elementary school experience lately, and...

Did your classmates randomly come up to you, ask you if you believed in god (the Abrahamic one, of course), and then get mad when you said no?

Even one of my friends told me I was going to go to hell. We had a fight over it. Honestly, I fail to see how my lack of religion was any of her business.

Was this just something that happened to me, or is it common for elementary schoolers to randomly question people's beliefs?

And another thing...

I've been an atheist my whole life, even though I went to a church preschool. I have a funny memory of raising my hand in kindergarten to tell the whole class that god wasn't real, much to their chagrin. The teacher told me that I shouldn't bring that sort of thing up in class, and I understood. Separation of church and state and all that. What I didn't understand was why we had to say a pledge containing the words "under god" every day, and why "in god we trust" is printed on all American money. This was one of the factors that led me to stop saying the pledge, and eventually, I stopped even standing for it.

There was no rule that said I had to stand and say the pledge, but a lot of teachers were "disappointed" in me.

Fun Fact: the "under god" and "in god we trust" things weren't even added until the 1950s, as part of the Cold War.

As someone who suspects his brother is an atheist, yeah, I think atheists should have the right to not believe in gods in peace without being judged.

Not judging people is kind of hard to do when the shitty fantasy novel they worship so much explicitly says that the non-fans (us) go to some bad made-up afterlife.

Reminder: This is not a thread for bashing on religion.

Isn’t that generalizing? I mean, I personally am a Roman Catholic, and respect other’s religions or lack thereof. I really don’t care to be honest, and if you could ask any other Catholics I know, they’d tell you that they don’t force our religions on others.

Edited by J99908 on Mar 2nd 2024 at 12:49:34 PM

most catholics arent all that bad. Its mostly southern baptists who exemplify the major issues of religeon, in my experience.

I'm really sorry but how is that "religion bashing"? All I'm saying is that the bible is just a fantasy novel.

Hmm...in a related note, it's been almost a year since my complete denunciation of faith and accepting new identity as an atheist.

Things have...changed a lot, to say the least....

I believe they meant that your tone was quite negative. Also personally, I’ve been on Reddit enough times to be tired every time someone describes the Bible as a fantasy novel.

Edited by J99908 on Mar 4th 2024 at 9:01:39 AM

How is your new-found sanity and independence working out for you, btw?

Edited by Cordite-455 on Mar 5th 2024 at 10:51:46 PM

I mean all of the other major religions have a bunch of atrocities associated with them too, and most of the minor religions and extinct ones did also. Hinduism for example is the motive for a bunch of violence and borderline-fascism in india right now, and there's a genocide going on in myanmar against muslim minorities by buddhists.

It's the luck of the draw that the abrahamic religions (mostly the various christianities and islams) got into a geographic position to become so dominant, and I believe fully that if it hadn't been them, someone else would have got lucky eventually. (Probably Zoroastrianism and Manicheanism, they had opportunity in the event that the younger abrahamic religions failed to get off the ground, or maybe someone in south or central america gets incredibly lucky and manages to set up extensive steelworking and make viable firearms, as well as good boats, and successfully conquer their way across the atlantic or pacific before europe did.)

Ultimately the religion is a pretext for the violence that's taken very seriously, rather than the cause of the violence. I think the biggest problem with religions are not that they inspire violence, but that they are almost certainly wrong about how the world works, and as a general rule, uninterested in finding out.

Hmm...it's rather complicated and I will elaborate further later.

But I will say this: becoming an atheist, specifically rejecting religion and its thought system, really made me...more skeptical and inquisitive about pretty much everything around me.

If nothing else, it taught me to just say "I don't know" or "I guess I was uninformed" about things I can't explain or got totally wrong.

Honestly, even as an atheist I feel that take is a bit too bitter and aggressive.

Actual son of God? I don't think so. But a malicious, criminal con-man...? I don't think so either.

I figure whatever truth the gospels contain of his life is heavily embellished.

I think there's a good chance that he was not a historical figure in the first place, at least not one remotely similar to the one talked about today (or indeed even in the early church)

Fictional people pop up frequently in new religious movements, often within a decade or less, there is no reason it didn't happen with Christianity. Adding to that suspicion is the problem where there's no records of the guy showing up outside of things his purported followers said, especially when other messiah claimants were better documented.

He probably exists in the realm of Prester John, a fictional king who was believed in during the middle ages, super loosely based on the fact that there were some places south of Egypt and east of Persia that were Christian, where the truth is basically unrelated to the story.

I think it's likely that there was a guy called Yeshua who got crucified by the Romans around 33 CE. That's not a stretch at all.

Yeah, that's probably about as close to reality as he reasonably was.

In fact, I think the actual story might not even involve a guy called yeshua who got crucified some time in the early 1st century AD, but instead a guy who might have been called yeshua who probably was one figure among the several messiahs who were all active around that time, who was probably executed (though it might have been some of the other active minor messiahs, early non-christian sources don't mention him by name but instead call him "king of the jews" or "christus") who got lucky and got his name attached to the dozens of early christianities that popped up throughout the 1st and 2nd century.

Everything else about him other than that "there was an apocalyptic prophet who might have been named yeshua or something like that around the 1st century who was probably executed, and then a mystery cult claiming descent from his teachings (which are unclear, other than that they were probably apocalyptic, because as far as we can tell no contemporary christian sources survive, the closest we get is about 40-50 years out) got into fights with the government throughout the next couple centuries" is so unclear it doesn't really make sense to classify him as a historical figure as most people understand the term.

He was probably real, but only insofar as "a guy existed who was probably involved in an early baptist movement led by John the Baptist, the one that later became the Mandaean religion, and may have started his own splinter group later, or at least been notable enough to get a few followers who retroactively decided he was in some way related to god"

I'm in the camp that I think the new testament is shaped around what Saul of Tarsos wanted it to be. There's strains of liberal christianity, and kind of secular Jesus veneration that tries to do the whole "original radical ideals of Jesus" thing, but all the canonical (in the literal original meaning of Canon) accounts of his life were written posthumously, and have been filtered through Paul's curation, and I view him as a Brigham Young—David Miscavige type. I mean, with the exception that Young and Miscavige both knew their prophets in their lifetimes.

Studying cults, and more benign-but-weird new religions have given me an insight on how religious legends could have started. And funny enough, it's the fervent believers who made questioning my faith so easy. If all faith healers are frauds and speaking in tongues is just gibberish, how easy would it be to have done that and lie after the fact about it in ancient times. Now, I wasn't in a church that believed in faith healing and speaking in tongues, but the arguments of fundamentalists did heighten the contradiction, and made me think about how we're supposed to believe either infallible god gave people an imperfect holy text, or that the holy text is right and our observations of reality are wrong.

Status update: I still personally believe Jesus was a con-man of some flavor. (or more charitably, the world's first stage magician.)

Water to wine? The water took on the flavor of the wine that was in the barrel — the guests were too drunk to care.

Walking on water? Flat stones juuust below the surface of the water.

Coin in the fish's mouth? He put it there with his sleight of hand.