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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Sure, thanks for the discussion.
I think a lack of faith, in the sense of doubting what I believe or what I have placed my trust in, is a natural reaction to uncertainty. What I was clumsily trying to describe is that: Because I lack fundamental knowledge of the universe, I must constantly make decisions based on incomplete information. This requires me to place trust in something or someone external from myself.
I think the point I was trying to make is that, even if I don't consciously acknowledge my decisions, by just living life I am implicitly trusting in a truth about reality. To give an analogy, imagine three people are walking across a frozen pond covered in snow:
The first person has faith in what they have observed and trusts that the ice will hold them. The second person just has blind faith in the ice and trusts that it will hold them. The third person is completely ignorant and doesn't even realize they are walking on ice. While the third person isn't technically "trusting" the ice, they are living their life in a way that depends on the ice just as much as the other two. What ultimately matters is the truth about whether or not the ice will hold. This truth matters regardless if I am ignorant of it, trust it blindly, or trust it because of my observations.
As a Poker player, I can appreciate this train of thought, but I wouldn't want to try to live life based solely on some kind of statistical calculation. I think if I tried to calculate an expected value for living life according to the probability of a worldview, then I would end up in a Pascal's wager type situation: Even if I was 99.99999% certain that the universe is finite and impersonal, bringing any percentage possibility of eternity into the calculation would swing the value completely in that direction.
As far as categorizing this as faith, I would place this in the same category as my statements about science: it would be foolish for me to ignore statistics and other branches of mathematics, but it would also be foolish of me to ignore the fact that even mathematics is based on axioms and may be incomplete.
I don't want to give the impression that I think life must be lived by blind faith; my worldview is based on a combination of experience, observation, and intellection. However, I do want to dispel the notion that if I were an atheist, I could have a complete worldview that doesn't require any faith. I don't mean this as a slight to atheists, but rather an argument that both "religious" people an atheists share the same human condition which is surrounded with uncertainty.
Interesting, thank you for the explanation.