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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Job was the story that turned me away from Christianity. I was in a youth group, and we read it. I started asking questions, and the youth pastors could not form a cohesive defense of God's actions. They got upset that I wouldn't drop it, and they basically asked me not to come anymore if I was going to be "disruptive".
It really only makes sense if you remember that the ancient Jewish god was basically a big bad motherfucker who would fuck you up if you did anything he didn't like.
Given the book is an adaptation of the earlier dialogues on suffering, The Babylonian Theodicy, it "only making sense" given Judaism's portrayal of Yahweh really isn't the case.
The dialogues are about how there is no knowable rhyme or reason to suffering.
If anything, the Job version is worse than the original as they felt the need to add a preamble to set the stage, which is also plagiarized from earlier. In this case, bearing a close resemblance to the beginning of the Canaanite A Tale of Aqhat where Anat goes to El to petition killing the son of Danel the protagonist who finds out his son is dead at the same time he finds out his livelihood is ruined and tears his clothes in mourning.
So the Biblical story is basically two earlier stories stitched together, but so poorly that during the monotheistic reform they just change the supernatural goddess petitioning the chief of the pantheon to be an unmanned adversary ('Satan'), an editorial change that caused quite a lot of fanfiction down the road.
Though my favorite aspect of the story is that while the author certainly intended that Job's suffering was because he was persecuted by Satan (the meaning of 'Job' in Hebrew), arguably his greatest source of suffering was that the way he was conducting his life was with an expectation of a reward, and when that reward was lost he had an existential crisis because he had been so 'good' all his life. So it's a bit ironic that though entirely unrelated etymology his name went from meaning 'persecuted' in Hebrew to "doing a task with the expectation of a reward" in English today.
Every hypnotist screens their "volunteers" before getting into their act...