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.
view the rest of the comments
I don't understand the mental gymnastics needed to say "you haven't provided any evidence" when I've told you the arguments, who made them, why and where you can read more about them.
You're pretending as if you don't know how to use a search engine. Or open links, for that matter.
https://books.google.fi/books?id=S1tQ5Larst0C&redir_esc=y
https://books.google.fi/books?id=9P4TU-0zEs8C&redir_esc=y
Arvind Sharma, "A Primal Perspective on the Philosophy of Religion"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_conversion
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianization
https://devayasna.wordpress.com/2016/12/23/a-theory-of-polytheism-2/
We have noted in a previous blog that polytheism distinguished between justice and cult while monotheism merged them and projected justice itself as the true cult. Assmann claims – a point that is not fully clear to me – that monotheism marked a separation between religion and state while they remained indistinct under polytheism. In the Egyptian case, the Pharaoh acted as god’s deputy on earth. Assuming a distinction between heaven and earth, the Pharaoh maintained order on earth, on behalf of the gods in heaven. The state thus assumes religious authority and its power becomes absolute. Monotheism challenged and overthrew precisely this absolutism by introducing a separation between religion and state:
Religion is now constituted as a sphere with its own normativity, which might even override the political normativity of the state.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_monotheism
Criticism of monotheism has occurred throughout history. Critics have described monotheism as a cause of ignorance, oppression, and violence.
You're just regurgitating things you literally pull out of your arse. Have you ever taken a single course of theology, or studied it independently? I can bet you haven't. And you're not willing to look at the materials I giving. So you're asserting something, without an explanation, without evidence, and the rhetoric you try to use is ridiculous as fuck: "Oh polytheism is more tolerant than monotheism? Well explain the mongol empire."
That's honestly the "best" strawman I've seen this year. It's ludicrous, and the cherry on top is that you larp someone who understands how rhetoric works. :D
Thanks for the entertainment, but please realise that you're just doing this because you want a debate, not because you know anything about either philosophy or religion.
When you write academic papers, do you just add entire books as sources? No, you supply evidence within the book that reinforces your argument. Just simply pointing at a book and saying that is my evidence is just a poor attempt to appeal to authority.
Again, you're pretending that giving someone a title of a book is an academically honest way to supply supporting evidence to a statement.
And based upon the "evidence" that you have supplied that isn't behind a paywall, I'd highly doubt they're making the same definitive conclusion you have.
My initial rebuttal still stands. We don't have the same quality of sources or cultural context for polytheistic societies to make adequate comparative studies. Even if we did, terms like progressive and tolerance are still too subjective to blanket different social and cultural mores too.
And finally it is exceedingly rare for an actual consensus about historical social motivations. There is no overall consensus that polytheistic are more progressive or tolerant, as there is no consensus on just how impactful religion is to societies. For every 4 books you can find about this specific topic, I can find 10 more over the theory of historic materialism that claims religion is just window dressing.
Yes professor, you see this blog I found ...
The primary claim in that blog is that political and religious violence are independent of each other. This is not a provable claim.
Again, I am talking about history. You are the one who is trying to force this conversation into a theological one. As I said, I am completely uninterested in your realm of fantasy outside of its historical context.
Just denying something.... You're the one making the claim here.
Lol, keep on purposely misinterpreting..... You are the one who defined tolerance as less violent, and now you're mad your definition is so easy to disprove.
Lol, do you want a redo? How about you try defining tolerance again in a way that's less subjective?
Lol, this was about history. I'm sorry you don't know any methodology that can be found outside of the philosophy department of a liberal arts building.
You are presenting philosophical theory as fact, which is just academically dishonest. People are free to make their case, but you are forming definitive conclusions, and you should know that's just illogical even in philosophy.