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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As a naturalist, the thing I'm particularly annoyed about is it took me fifty years to figure out how to not be an asshole. That leaves me less than half my life to work towards a net positive. (And I'm still producing a fuckton of material waste, just by living.)
Then there's also the thing about facing pollution as a great filter, and if somehow the species survives that one, a dozen or so other great filters stand between us and sustainable colonies on other worlds. If we die off, the universe won't even blink.
It's nice to be able to imagine we're God's favorite, that our species is special, and even that God has personal interest in me. (This is not consistent with the entire Abrahamic narrative, though it is a major Evangelical selling point, and is believed by millions of Evangelical parishioners.)
We're not God's favorite. Even the earth, The aggregate of our joy and suffering is an infinitesimal speck, tiny and lost in an unfeeling universe. No one watches. No one cares. No one will care when the last human perished from famine or the elements.
And crawling on the planet's face
Some insects called the human race
Lost in time, lost in space
And meaning.
So when it comes to grokking bad news, I'm pretty sure naturalism has Christianity beat.
Well, yes an no. We watch, we care, we exist a most importantly, we know to exist. That alone make us quite fking special. We may actually be one the rarest state of matter in the whole universe, "thinking matter". That's quite something in my book.
Sure! A lot of atheists find spiritual satisfaction in just having lived, or in finding our connection to stars and to the beginning of the universe. But modern Christianity promises immortality and purpose. Granted, it doesn't match well with the material world as we understand it, but it's a comforting myth they need.
(Curiously, it also promises forgiveness, as if the typical Christian has engaged in war profiteering or marketed Fentanyl or let their workers perish in a burning factory. I've done shitty things, but nothing that might piss off a reasonable god. I suspect this is the case with most folk, so I'm not sure why so many folk are desperate for forgiveness.)
The whole point of absurdism is coming to terms with our mortality and purposeless, to find our own way, or a satisfactory sense of purpose in an existence that doesn't bear one out.
Part of the path to naturalism is coming to terms with that insignificance, whether it is to acknowledge it and move on, or decide that some aspect of it is significance enough.
As above I agree up to a point. In the end ideas like "significance" and "purposes" are just humans constructs and can ultimately being find in different aspects of someone life, just like "happiness". Even without a human-centric universe, or any grain of spirituality, we can still see our existence as an "Happy incident" of casuality, and find our own purpose. In some regards, the grandiose promises made by the religions are even "reductive", compared to what our potential as species can archive. Or we can simply "be" end enjoy our little vacancy away from the entropy in all his many wonderful aspects.