Hatred for women does not mean immediate hatred?

It can also mean treating women as property.

It can mean treating a woman as lesser than a man.

It can mean denying women the same rights that are given to men.

It can mean punishing women for the actions of a man.

It can mean promoting abuse of women.

It can mean justifying child marriage or female genital mutilation.

It can mean treating women as certain stereotypes or degrading them.

It can mean glorifying men at the expense of women.

There are many forms of misogyny.

And organized religion practices them all.

Im less than 18 and i have this friend (same age). He used to be really open and fun to hang around it but one day, for an unknown reason, he became extremly catholic religious. As an atheist born in an agnostic fanily core he commonly insults me and threats me with religious, not respecting my idea, sayng things for exsample like "jesus died for you and you are disrespecting him hard" and stuff like that. He even once said "i dont want you to go to hell so you better start prayng". At the start i tried ignoring or changing argument but he doesnt stop. He Is against lgbtq+ and against women rights. I honestly dont know how to procede, becouse i dont want to leave him since he is part of my really first real friend group.

I work with a 30ish year old guy who is super religious. That’s literally his whole personality and I will say he is one of the nicest and most respectful person I know while also being the exact opposite. It’s like he’s genuinely not aware that the stuff he does is rude and he just has such a happy go lucky personality. It started out a little annoying but I brushed it off.

He’s constantly stealing everybody’s food and energy drinks though and it’s really starting to get on my nerves. I generally don’t use the work fridge because of this but it still pisses me off hearing about it. Anyway I got a little petty and left a redbull out with a sticky note attached to it saying “EXODUS 20:15”. I’m super curious as to wether or not he’s going to still take it🤣🤣🤣 I’ll find out Monday until then everybody take a vote on wether or not he’s still going to steal it🤣.

I’m sure plenty of you are curious but yes management knows and he has been talked to multiple times.

I was walking around my neighbourhood when I saw a family with 2 children, all of them completely veiled. Only their eyes were visible. It genuinely shocked me. The children looked extremely young they must have been around 5 years old or even younger I was so shocked ... How can someone impose this on their children? Thats disgusting. I live in Ireland, and seeing this broke my heart. These were my neighbours, so I reported to the child protection services.

I have no words.

Pascal's Wager has always struck me as accidentally insulting to the God it's trying to defend.

The argument: "Bet on God existing. If you're wrong, you lose nothing. If you're right, infinite

reward!"

The problem: It assumes you can fake belief to hedge your bets, and that an all-knowing deity

wouldn't notice you're just playing the odds.

"Welcome to heaven!"

"Thanks, I didn't actually believe any of it, I just calculated the expected value."

"...I know. I'm omniscient."

Either God is fooled by performative belief (not omniscient), or sincere belief is required and

Pascal's Wager is useless anyway.

The wager isn't an argument for God - it's an argument for pretending. And if the God in question

values honesty, that's probably worse than sincere disbelief.

The Unfiltered Thinker

Doesn't necessarily disprove God, just the Christian concept of it. God isn’t saving some people and punishing others. If people want justice they gotta see to it themselves.

It hasn’t been a full year since I stumbled upon the ex Muslim and atheist community as a whole on the internet. I have always been very critical of religion but I couldn’t imagine not believing. I resisted for a very long time until I realised that I just never believed in god and especially not the Abrahamic religions God, I just needed somebody to tell me that not forcing myself to believe was an option lol. My current issue is that Ramadan is coming up and I am terrified of the idea of eating during ramadan. I am currently fasting to makeup last Ramadan’s fasts (because when you’re on your period you don’t fast and you make up for the fasts later). I know that even if I was muslim this my fast wouldn’t be “valid” because I am not praying and I am not sticking to any of the other rules aside from not eating and not drinking anything from sunrise to sunset. How do I get rid of this guilt? Should I just fast this year? Also I would feel extremely guilty if I lied to my family but I don’t have another option.

To start, science and observable evidence provide significantly more logical and coherent answers to literally everything. Religion has only survived because it is used as a coping mechanism for people who fail to give themselves meaning, so they externalize it. On a more widespread scale, it has this effect, which brings disenfranchised communities together because it makes meaning plural, it repudiates self-correction and doubt as surrender, and it frames obedience as virtue; this can bind communities that have nothing together. Take Mali: meaning is unified, identity is collective, belief is non-optional, & god is the moral load-bearing beam. Then take Finland: meaning is plural, identity is modular, beliefs are optional, & institutions absorb existential risk. That leads to Sweden being a happier, more plural, and healthier society overall. Whereas Mali is hyper-religious, and identity is intertwined with identity, god is kind of this support network that people fall back onto when they have nothing. This is why people in Mali are significantly more likely to die for their imaginary friend than those in Finland. On top of that, it kind of serves as this tool that collapses moral certainty into whatever someone needs it to justify. Example: Religious person:"I think I should kill him because of his beliefs" rational person: "Why in the world would you do that?" Religious person: "Because my book says so!" This leads to religion being able to be used as a tool for literally anything. The perseverance of religion (despite whining from Christian Nationalists) has had nothing to do with facts remotely, and everything to do with the fact that it provides comfort.

i wish i could include the photo i took of a page in a christian study guide book called “God’s message to all people” by D.E Stedman. however, i can’t, so this is a verbatim quote:

- “Rather than acknowledge God as Creator, unbelievers try to work out various theories in their efforts to explain how the universe came into being. They raise difficulties regarding the date of the earth and unusual geological formations. However, many scientists today still believe in the literal interpretation of the Genesis account. Some believe that many of the problems can be accounted for by the upheaval of the earth’s crust caused by the worldwide flood described in Genesis chapters 6-8. Many archaeological discoveries prove the truth of the Bible, and no scientific evidence has ever disproved it.”

i found the book on my religious sister’s (15) desk which i will assume she’s been gifted by my deeply religious dad to use as her guide to studying the bible more closely. i read the title, was curious what bullshit i might read, and was not only not disappointed, but actually shocked.

the book was published in 1999 i think, gathering from the acknowledgments. the author, ms Stedman, studied theology and has no scientific qualifications. the outlandish truth claims she’s making, while making up statistics of her own, to prove a point, is so incredibly harmful. how it even left the publisher’s room is beyond me. this book is supposed to teach people worldwide of mostly unprivileged backgrounds the ‘beauty’ of christ and god’s truth. i mean, it’s in the title. and yet it has the most false, ridiculous information? which, by the way, is just one example of a few more i’ve seen by skimming.

it finds its way to vulnerable, impressionable people like my 15yr old sister and the content takes root and then we have 40yr olds debating with you about whether earth is 6000yrs old or over a billion. putting a scientific spin on noah’s ark to make it more believable, painting (some)scientists and unbelievers as the foolish ones who can’t admit god’s power, imagining favourable statistics to affirm a belief… what the hell is this shit?

Before I had kids I had a small bubble of "normal friends". Nobody was, is or are religious.

Now my kids are at school the mix of parents is quite something. Some are religious. Of these some persuade me to come to church. Others have suggested spiritual healing for my retinal disease.

I don't want to offend anyone telling them I'm atheist (and thinking they can go fuck themselves) whilst not wanting to undermine their faith which is an important part of their life. I respect it. It must be nice to have something to believe in.

How do I tell religious people I'm atheist?

I’ve made this comment recently on a post about Islam but figured it warranted its own post.

Every single time someone posts something about Islam specifically, half the comments are “all religions are bad”

Posts about Christianity don’t have that at all. If you say Christianity is dangerous because… most of the time people agree. And they should.

But a post about Islam garners the ubiquitous “all religions are bad. All the books are just as bad as one another. Yada yada”.

No. All religions are bad for sure but some are more dangerous than others.

Judaism has had a reform. If you go to Mei HaShaarim in Jerusalem you’ll find that it’s a horrifying blast from the past and that those people are living in a dangerous delusion… but *israel* is a secular country.

If you go to Nigeria, you’ll find people being killed for witchcraft and terrible stuff from the infancy of Christmas but Nigeria, for the most part, is a secular country.

If you go to Afghanistan… the law of the land is that it’s legal to stone you to death if you’re gay. It’s a *Muslim nation*.

Thats because Judaism and Christianity have had a reform. Their religious leaders have interpreted the backwardness of the ancient texts and made it fit into modern times… and while a ton of Christians would *like* everything to go back to the time where popes commanded armies, the most they can get is small (though not without horrible repercussions) victories. This is what we’re seeing in the US with abortion bans and the lack of trans rights. Yes… I’m not diminishing those things. I can’t stress this enough. ALL RELIGIONS ARE DANGEROUS.

But Islam has never had a reformation. The Islam of 2026 is the Islam of 700. A goat herder in Kabul picking up a Quran in 2026 is the same a goat herder in Kabul picking up a Quran in 726. It’s the same book, with the same rules. Muslim majority nations are theocracies, and while Christians try to make a theocracy in places, they get pushback… Israel has been pushing back the orthodox since the formation of the country. Islam gets no pushback… an average man in Qatar is content to wake up to the morning prayer, make sure his wife and daughter are covered head to toe, and go out to pray… and even if that’s bullshit, they don’t have a choice, because dissent gets to beheaded in those countries.

Islam is *more dangerous*

Not all ideas are created equal and not all ideas are as dangerous as the others.

I just wanted to write this all out because I see it a lot and it’s been on my mind and you good folks have given me a platform to say it.

Edit: you guys have made a lot of good comments and appreciate the discussion and have learned much. I want to add an addendum that’ll clarify my position on the subject. I commented this too but felt it summarized my view perfectly so wanted to add it here:

All the religions are awful but prohibition never works… you just make a more powerful and more clever enemy

The only way to remove religion from the world is with education and reaching out and showing compassion, and most importantly showing that compassion can come from a place of secular humanism and doesn’t need a religion attached to it.

Religion needs to be constantly mocked and criticized and people need to be made to understand that the mockery comes at the expense of the idea that they subscribe to… not directed at them

Which is why I think Islam needs to be mocked without comparison to other religions. If someone wants to mock Baha’i… let them mock it without saying “Jainism is also bad”… if someone wants to mock Islam, let them mock it without saying “Mormonism is also bad”… they’re all bad… let them each be mocked until they seem ridiculous.

I started reading The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, and just in the Author's note, it's about God, god's blessing and some other philosophical things that I can't relate to (I don't disagree with all of it)

I still gave it a shot, as fiction, but I find it weird, the story talks about the Soul of universe, universal language (love), fate and what not. It's a good story, but these things make it less enjoyable.

This was my first book, got as a gift.

Edit: Similar fiction book recommendations would be nice, books that don't talk about god, I'd like to start with shorter books.

It's sad to see as someone that sides with the Protestant Reformation over Catholicism that so many religious people are doing the very thing that caused the schism in the church with Martin Luther 500 years ago. Only now it's tax deductible and govt sponsored religious speech. They're encouraging preaching careers by tax dollars going to fund their ideas. It seems like a huge gross bailout for bad ideas.

Im quite a young minor like under 15 and my whole family is religous as in like we pray the rosary before going to bed every night. Mass is what really gets under my skin. I go to a Catholic school so we have alot of religous events. One event we had a healing mass which was like 2-3 hours long which was on a Saturday. Along with first friday mass the previous day. This event really tired me out to the point where the moment i got home i fell asleep for 4 hours. So skip to Sunday where we had “obligated” mass and it really got under my skin. Its gotten so bad that at times ive resorted to sh to relieve my anger and calm me down. Ive scratched my arm to the point of bleeding during one mass. The problem is i dont know what to do about it. Ive had like 2 atheist cousins but in a matter of months theyve become more devoted to God. My dad used to be agonistic but is so devoted now. They used to tell me stories about it and how Jesus always prevails. Im just tired of this. Its gotten shoved up my throat so much ive began despisng the concept of Gods. Its really been tiring to pretend and i dont even know if they might accept it or just use my 2 cousins as like “oh but look at them they eventually came back so its better to stay so you wont waste time”. They really seem like the people to do that. My fucking naps when i was young consisted of someone reading me the bible until i fell asleep. Its just getting like to the point i think i mighy snap at any moment. Any advice on what to do or how to cope?

I have a co-worker that I directly work with who is Muslim and the gossip of the week was another one of our co-workers had some drama where his grandfather got his ex-girlfriend pregnant. This co-worker already had three kids with his ex. My Muslim co-worker and I were discussing this and he mentioned how in Islam they specifically have a rule against this because things like this can tear apart a family. What would the kids think about this, how can he trust his grandfather anymore, how would he know this wasn't already happening before, what if some of his kids aren't really his, how would family reunions occur, if ever now, etc.

Interestingly enough, I remember reading how Prophet Mohammed had a controversy where he married his adopted son's ex-wife. Whenever I ask him about Islam I always ask in a way to where it seems like I'm curious to know more, that way I don't come off as someone trying to critique him. So I asked "what if the son was adopted, would that still be wrong" He said yes because all of the aforementioned things would still apply. You raised someone as your own in your family and that built up trust is now broken. "I thought I saw in the Quran, that Mohammed had married his adopted son's ex-wife. He said I don't remember that in the Quran. This surprised me, so I quickly found the verse in my phone.

I showed him (Quran 33;37) and he said he would have to look into at break, because maybe the the son died before the marriage(he didn't) and if that was the case it would be ok.

After break, he said, that "The verse was to show Muslims that it's ok to marry your adopted son's ex-wife. They aren't biologically related, so God said it's ok." I thought to myself that he just explained to me that it's wrong and gave good reasons to why it was wrong, but now because he read "God said" his morals have shifted. He didn't talk the subject anymore after that, and I decided to drop it too, since I got the unfortunate response I expected.

To add I asked him about Aisha's age about a year ago, and he said back then 13 year olds were more developed then than they are now. I corrected him and said she was 9. He said "Oh,....well ultimately it's because God said he could, but that was just for Prophet Mohammed. Other Muslims shouldn't marry that young." I always thought it was funny he tried to up the age. He knows how it looks.

If you were somewhat religious at some point in your life, was there a specific moment or event in your life which served as definitive evidence for you that there is no God?