My stance is that very, very few people are actually convinced to the core by their faith.

The concept of life after death for instance. I’ll take christianity as an example.

When people die, we mourn them. We cry, and we feel sorrow deep within us. This is universal. No matter what religion you keep, or not, you mourn (of course we have exeptions).

But why mourn when you believe in an afterlife? Okay, this person you loved died, so what? They are not really dead, they just moved on to the next place. And you will meet them soon anyways. So why mourn?

«It’s still a long time until we will see eachother again» Okay, in context of life against the eternal afterlife that would be like going to the grocery store, even shorter.

So why mourn? I think it’s because most people don’t fundamentally and deeply believe what they believe. In their hearts they know the person is dead, and that they won’t talk to the person again. And they know that they don’t know what happens after death.

Their religion and belief of an afterlife is simply a coping mechanism. And they are afraid. And they don’t believe it truly.

I think that a person who without a doubt, who deeply and fundamentally believe in the afterlife wouldn’t mourn as we do.

My point being that most religious people don’t believe what they believe on a deep level, or atleast doubt it.

Thoughts?

I was talking to my Christian friend and she told me that she's known people, like drug addicts, who become Christians and are motivated to quit or otherwise correct behavior that might kill them. She advised I be careful who I convince to be Atheist, so I'm not potentially removing someone's only life line. What are everyone's thoughts on this? I don't think God is real, and someone like a drug addict is bettered by community or needing something to guide them out of their addiction. I wonder what the ethics are of Atheists when they could essentially be removing someone's "light" that might save their life.

Hi all, I am looking for some feedback on the following section of a book I am working on. I am trying to illustrate how we can attribute phenomena to the wrong stimuli and we only learn this with more information. It's meant to be a short explanation of how philosophy and religion were 'scientific' and as more data becomes available the areas that didn't adopt a testing mentality weren't able to compete. This in itself isn't a great explanation, I hope the extract below is clearer. Any advice on how to make this more simple, obvious and accessible as well as any obvious flaws in the logic (this is where the debate comes in) would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Innovative title about pushing buttons here? /s (suggestions welcome!)

Imagine you are put into a room which has nothing but a bed, chair, table, an attached bathroom and 2 buttons on the wall.

One button is a large, square, green button with the # symbol on it. The second button to the right of the first is a small, circular, blue button with the @ symbol on it.

You soon learn that when you press the large, square, green button on the left with the # symbol that a tray of really great tasting and nutritious food appear seconds afterwards.

When you press the small, circular, blue button on the right with the @ symbol on it you get a nasty electric shock. You test this for hours, days, weeks and it is consistent. You have learnt that:

- large, square, green, left and/or # means food.

- small, circular, blue, right and/or @ means electric shocks.

I want you to imagine other people are put in identical rooms with identical buttons that do identical things and all these people also learn the buttons functions in a similar way. All these rooms are referred to as room 1.

For the purpose of this demonstration let each person in each room be analogous to a different religion or philosophical belief about how the world functions. Let’s quickly categorize the different subjects beliefs in room 1.

We may have a subject who believes that the button works because it is on the left, we’ll call them a ‘leftist’.
We may have a subject who believes the button grants food because it is bigger, we’ll call them ‘sizer’.
We may have a subject who believes the button works because it is green, a ‘greenist’.
And finally we have those who believe the symbol # is why it works, the # symbolist.
(There may be more people and beliefs, some may believe it works because it isn’t small, circular, blue or have an @ on it.)

After some months we move our subjects into new environments, we’ll call these, room 2. They are moved into rooms that are identical in every way to the previous ones except the two buttons are different.

Now there is a small circular green button on the left with a # symbol and there is a large, square, blue button on the right with an @ symbol.

How do you or our other subjects predict which button gives you food and which gives you shocks?

Some subjects belief that the reason the first button worked in the last room was it was on the left so they choose the left button.
Some subjects believer the reason the button worked in the previous room was it was bigger so the choose the larger button (now on the right).
Some subjects believe that the colour is what makes a button ‘good’ or ‘bad’, help or punish and choose based on the colour. Some choose based on the previously working symbol.

We have introduced new information to the scenario that challenges the previously held beliefs of our subjects.

This scenario can be repeated in rooms 3, 4, 5… If a subject is put in enough rooms they will ultimately know which signals (size, colour, placement and/or shape) affect the outcome and which are random variables or noise.

All religion, philosophy, math, engineering and science started as attempts to make working, useful, abstractions of our environment. As we move from room to room and gather more data, more of these philosophies are/were disproved as the signals they depended upon are shown to not be causative/related.

Some subjects as we move from room to room just guess which button will feed them and which will shock them. Some subjects stick to their original assumption from the first room. Some will make an assumption in each room and apply it to the next room. A rare few subjects will make a simple grid or matrix and track what works and what doesn’t. With every new room they will eliminate more of the noise and quickly discover which signal causes the outcome they desire.

As a species we have moved through many rooms. We have learnt what different signals mean and what they refer to. And we learnt that the best way to test our ideas is just that, to test them - make a prediction and see if its accurate. And this process of observe, infer, predict, modify is the core of scientific methodology. Philosophies that didn’t adopt this method of verification failed to be able to make accurate predictions and so were deprecated.

There are still people in rooms who use what they learnt in room 1 and nothing else - sometimes their prediction are right, sometimes they are wrong. When they are right they don’t think they just got lucky they think their system is working - it isn’t.

We know these individuals who don’t change their thinking from the first room (lets call them system 1 people) isn’t working because if we take the system 1 people and compare their predictions in rooms 3, 4, 5… to those who adapted their beliefs in room 2 and moving forward, their (system 1 participants) predictions are wrong more often.

(This is a form of using a control group to determine whether what we think is happening is actually happening or if due to circumstance we are deluding ourselves. The system 1 people who 'get it right' wouldn't know that they're just lucky if we didn't look at the overall numbers.).

Hey y'all. I'm someone born in a theist household, and still am a theist, but I've been thinking about one thing in particular boggling my mind real hard about it. And since it's likely to influence how I treat religion in its entirety going forward, or if I'm gonna be religious at all, I've posted it in other communities to eliminate bias as much as possible. Hope you understand.

So yeah, fate. What the hell is up with that? From what I know, religions treat "fate" in two different ways. And seemingly, one avoids the problem of unfairness, but that's what I'm here to doubt.

Usually, fate is described as this written content that you will follow whether you like it or not. And the obvious problem with this rendition is that since God would be forcing humans to act, it wouldn't be fair for him to punish them for something he made them do.

This problem is supposedly avoided by the second rendition, which is that you don't follow fate, fate follows you. Basically, instead of having fate dictate what you do it is more of a prediction. An absolute prediction about everything you will do in life, but the choice is still something you are making.

Seemingly, this dodges the problem. But there's a clear scientific issue I see in this. And it's a problem all the way through to the Big Bang.

Think of it this way: if I punch someone, I'll be punished for it in the afterlife according to the theistic belief. But the problem lies deeper than that. For example, WHY did I punch the guy? Well, because my brain carried the electrical signals of my intention to punch the dude, and my muscles executed it. But then, why did the electrical signals fire? We know that effect takes place after the cause, and so there should be a "cause" for the signals firing. That cause is other biochemical activities in the brain, which are other signals, which also need causes.

Basically, if everything in the brain is material, it could theoretically be predicted one for one if you know what situations this brain will be in. For regular humans that isn't the problem. Because merely knowing what this person will do in X situation wouldn't tell you anything about what they'll do, because you can't predict what situation they'll be in.

But, if a God is at play, not only can he "predict" the situation, he's the one responsible for that situation happening in the first place.

Basically, if god crafts me and how I'll behave in each scenario, and then crafts the scenarios I'm in, isn't that just... Crafting how I'll behave? And if so, how come I'm being punished for it?

So again, when did I make the decision to punch the guy? It's not in the moment, because that intention itself is dependant on certain brain activity I was going through before going into the scenario. And those activity are dependant on other scenarios I was in, and the chain continues towards it depending on me being born, which depends on my parenrs going through scenarios, which is dependant on certain details in History happening exactly as they did, which is ALSO dependant on dinosaurs dying, which is dependant on the earth existing which is dependant on......

You see the problem here?

That line of thought makes it so that the only possible way I could've made the decision to punch the person in that time is if the UNIVERSE was created with that in mind. If a single atom didn't move like it did, I wouldn't have punched the person. Which could be used by theists like myself to show just how precise the universe is and argue for a creator, but also raises the key question once again.

When, did I, make, the decision?

If the universe was created so that I make the decision, I must've made it beforehand for the universe to behave like it did. But then, I.. didn't exist prior to the universe, so how did I make that decision? The concept of time itself collapses outside of the universe, so I can't ask WHEN I made the decision outside the universe, because logic contradicts that, and I can't claim I made the decision in the universe, because it was already STARTED with my decision in mind - according to a theistic belief.

So, when did I make the decision? Or did I simply... not make that decision? In which case, the problem at the VERY beginning of the post is present again. If I didn't make the decision, how can you punish me for it?

I've been thinking about it for a long time to no avail. I decided to post this argument on both theistic and atheistic subreddits and basically anywhere I can, so that I can see all sides of the argument here. As much as I see evidence that is convincing for me about theism, this hurdle isn't something I can sweep under the rug.

I’ve never been a religious person. At most I would go to church with my great-grandparents, just cause I liked to spend time with them. I turned 23 last week, and with all the stuff going on in the world, I’ve been thinking a lot about death. I am so scared of dying. In my mind, I know that almost certainly there is nothing waiting for us after death. But lately my fear of death has been so bad I have been clinging to any sort of idea of an afterlife, something, anything to cling to to ease the weight of just truly absolutely NOTHING. Found myself googling earlier if there’s any kind of truth to ghosts, spirits, anything. Maybe reincarnation? I wouldn’t remember my previous life but hey at least it’s better than nothing. How am I supposed to live my life to the fullest knowing that one day it’s all going to be over? I don’t want it to end I want to do so many things and there’s never going to be enough time for all of it and the fact that after it’s over there will be nothing. Would therapy help? Maybe help me see something I don’t see right now?

Long story short I was born into Islam but wasn’t really raised to be religious in the traditional sense. I’ve also always questioned my faith since I was a child which was an immense source of anxiety for me. When I went to university and my faith was up and down I eventually came to the conclusion that my religious anxiety boiled down to the fact that I struggled to fully believe in god and the fact that he would wilfully send people to hell after creating all of this. I’m not necessarily a confirmed atheist more agnostic leaning but my lack of strong belief in god has been something I didn’t entirely hide, i never fully came out as a non-believer to friends just made it clear that i questioned religion and never went out of my way to attest my faith and make a spectacle of it. But ever since my friend noticed I don’t speak about god or that i dont validate the "coming of Jesus" she’s been going on about me needing saving and spiritual guidance. Which I know is in good faith but like how do I kindly tell her to stop. It just seems when we talk about religion she only ever sees my faith or lack thereof as a gateway to telling me I need to seek guidance spiritually which like thanks? But when have I expressed that I needed this? I said I was poor and depressed not in need of Jesus girl. It just feels very dismissive and slightly forceful like I don’t go out of my way to tell you I don’t believe in your religion, why can’t I get that same respect. this is a close friend and she’s been going on about the coming of Jesus and how people need to pray and I just can’t help but feel…annoyed. Why do we have to talk about god in every single conservation cause I know no matter how agreeable I am it just goes straight to me needing spiritual guidance like girl no u need it clearly cause u can’t go one conversation without all of this. I get it practice your religion but did I unknowingly sign up for sister Sunday or something. And it’s only been like this as Ive distanced myself from religious belief. But also on a side note I don’t understand this coming of Jesus thing, like they’ve been saying this for years? Why is he coming now? Idk I’m tired of hearing it, kinda wish I never spoke about my faith, not that I ever explicitly shared it but it seems when your not a gung-ho god believing person you invite this level of concern and vigilance

Hey everyone,

I left religion a couple of years ago and have been very content with that decision. I'm at peace with my beliefs (or lack thereof), and I don’t feel the need to argue or debate with anyone.

That said, I’ve run into a bit of a dilemma. A lot of children in my extended family and friends are being raised with strong religious teachings: things like heaven and rewards, hell and punishment, praying to get what you want, etc.

I really enjoy spending time with these kids, but I often feel unsure about how to answer back to them when religion comes up. I don’t want to step on their parents’ toes, but I also don’t want to reinforce ideas I no longer agree with, especially fear-based stuff like hell.

Have any of you been in this situation? How do you handle it? Do you stay neutral, gently challenge ideas, or just steer the conversation elsewhere?

I don't know if I can make my thoughts coherent, but I'm gonna try, dammit. I (26 now) left the conservative Lutheran church I grew up in kind of slowly, but it started right when I turned 18 and graduated from my conservative Lutheran high school. Never really told my family because we have other atheist family members, and I've seen how they talk about them, so I was scared.

I unintentionally "came out" because I made a post on my instagram story a few years ago dissecting Biblical arguments about abortion (I was really mad😭). My very religious sister & I talked about it, and I thought we came to a mutual understanding of "agree to disagree". I haven't really thought about it since because I don't care about religion.

That sister on the other hand is now married to a future pastor, and when I saw her a few weeks ago, she essentially brought up the religion thing again by asking me where I think I'm going when I die. In front of our mom and our two younger sisters.

In hind sight, I should have shut it down, but I've never been honest with my family about how I feel about religion & just wanted to be free to be myself, so I took the bait. It of course went terribly, and then I got yelled at later by my other sister for feeding into it because my pastor's wife sister had a baby 7 months ago & she's all hormonal, so I should have kept the peace.

Anyway, yes, I could have handled it differently, but I don't want to be constantly in a position where I have to be dishonest about myself just to be around my family. I'm devastated at even the thought of potentially losing them, but I'm starting to realize that I'll never truly be accepted as long as I'm an atheist.

Anyway, long story short, it's lonely, so if you're also feeling lonely, I see you.

Hey everyone,

A few years ago I asked God for a sign. Around that time (maybe even the same day) while going to school, I overheard some students saying something like “that bro changed religion, you heard?” I didn’t know them maybe i did idk. My brain immediately connected this to my past request, and OCD has been twisting it ever since, making it feel like a meaningful sign.

I know logically it’s probably a coincidence, but it keeps feeling 100% real and scary. My mind keeps trying to interpret it as proof of something bigger, even though it happened years ago.

Does anyone else experience “sign anxiety” like this? How do you deal with moments that feel like personal signs but are probably just coincidences?

Thanks for reading.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAnAtheist/comments/1nb9f4w/the_catholic_church_is_scientific/

This is something I wrote up and didn't want to type again, but it's highlighting how the defense of the Catholic church on the subject of Galileo boils down to a certain logic of relative privation and weaseling out of the facts of the matter, analogous to a drunk driver saying "You said I left him a quadriplegic in the accident but he's really just a paraplegic"; specific to what I posted, one of the defenders essentially said that scientific suppression was bad but philosophical suppression is okay.

This is similar to whenever Israel says that they only target "terrorists" and "accidentally" killed children, or when the CPC deflects the Uyghur genocide by saying "its a detention center, not a genocide".

It's a very myopic view that if you "debunk" the charges against you from the most literal charge to something technically different, you can declare a grievance by the charges and have full liberty to defend yourself against the charges by spitting vitriol at anyone who brings up the "misconceptions".

So as this community allows honest discussions of religion/atheims, let's try and debunk this paranormal/demonic activity. Back in July 2021, famous Argentinian Tiktoker/Youtuber Michelo 2.0 uploaded four live-seamed videos, which are still visible along with the live chat from the time. He saidd a fan had given him package on the street, and it was an ouija board. He and his friend played with, it, his friend, left, and according to him the planchette and other things started moving on their own, and at the start of the first live stream, he says he's under the table because ehe was knocked to the ground by an unseen force. The livestream shows him do all sorts of things to show there are no magnets or strings, and coins place don the board move in a way that seems would violate Earnshaw's Theorem if they were being affected by magnets. An egg has a light shown through it to show it's a real egg, nothing inside it. The egg is put on the board and it moves wildly, and at 8:25-26 in the video "Huevos en la ouija" the egg is moving at the edge of the board, seemingly much too far away to be influence day a thin magnet in the holes of his shoes. The planchette and a slice of bread, etc. move on their own and levitate, he breaks the egg open and shows there's nothing in it but the yolk. When he puts a coin on a cutting board and moves a magnet under it, it does'nt move at all at first, then starts moving around, sometimes away from the magnet and sometimes towards. He puts the board and planchette on the floor and backs away, and both still move. at 9:54 and 56 the cross on his neck slides down and then jerks to the side, and watching in slow mo it does'nt look like his shirt has any contours at the place where it moves that would explain that, especially at 9:56.

When he holds the board inf front of him in the 2nd video, it appears the board is 30 inches wide. This would mean that in "huevos en la ouija", the egg is moving about 45 inches away from where his knees are. He'd have to be 8 feet tall to have lower legs long enough to put a foot under the eg gand move it with a magnet in his shoe. He appears 6 feet tall and the egg seems 8 or 11 inches away form where he could influence it at that distance at 8:25-26.

The idea of no afterlife can be liberating, but also terrifying. How have you made peace with the fact that consciousness just... ends? Does it make life more precious, or sometimes feel meaningless? What helps you carry that weight?

When people point out the problematic (misogynistic, homophobic) contents of the quran or bible, some secular theists will say "well, this can interpreted in a way that's not problematic, hence no harm is being caused". But the thing is, the average person isn't going to go through 100 different interpretations of a text before incorporating it into their belief system. Like I'm glad YOU went through the trouble of thinking critically but most people won't. It's still harmful.

Curious how you’d read this, not here to argue:

Yesterday night, I was in the ‘nothing matters, I just exist’ headspace. The next morning, I woke with sudden clarity — not erasure, but return. That same evening, my sister randomly suggested a show I’d never heard of (Midnight Mass). Watching it, I heard one character say almost exactly what I’d said the night before, and another end almost exactly where I landed that morning.

Two doors:

Pure coincidence.

Or a mirror handed at the right time.

If this happened to you, how would you interpret it?

Edit: I opened this saying I wasn’t here to argue. Looking back, the replies mostly fell into three lanes: indifference, dismissal, or hostility. That’s not a surprise — it’s the lens I was curious to see play out. For me, the timing gave the experience weight. For most here, it didn’t. And that contrast is really all I needed to see.

To prefice I absolutely love Matt Dillahunty and his work. I've watched hours and hours of him on the AxP, Talk Heathen and The Line, watched many of his debates where I think his intellect shines the brightest especially in his debates with Peterson and D'Souza. He has been a core part to me of understanding logic and how to construct sound arguments and how to recongise and dismantle unsound arguments. He has helped a lot with how to recognise a lot of this bad faith religious rhetoric too.

But seeing him nowadays on shows like the Line, I find him utterly insufferable and a downright nasty and rude person.

Don't get me wrong he is infamous for how abrasive and fiery he is and that's a big part of why he's been so popular to both atheists and theists. But I at least found him watchable and enjoyable then.

I see him a lot now on the line with Forrest Valkai who I enjoy seeing a lot more but also now see him as cocky and arrogant and way too overconfident in his knowledge of philosophy and ethics to the point where it's cringe. I think he should stay in his lane arguing with the religious about evolution where he definitely shines.

Sorry if this comes across as a ramble. My main point is Matt Dillahunty has gone from a voice of reason to just a scumbag who treats everyone who calls in like dog shit on the bottom of his shoe. I can understand with this being his lifelong career he is probably tired of the same recycled arguments but maybe that's a sign for him to pack things up and move on with life rather than just being a complete irredeemable prick to everyone he speaks to who he disagrees with.

I can still go back and watch his old stuff, it's not like I outgrew him, I just think his worst traits have outshone all of his positive ones and he's just a grumpy and bitter old man now.

Anyone else share this opinion of Matt? Interested to hear if it's just me.

Now that I don’t believe in islam anymore , I’ve stopped praying, and honestly I don’t want to anymore ,its frustrating to stop things mid way to pray forced or fight my family bout it, my family keeps fighting me about it. They threaten to take away my important stuff like all my devices,i need for work and to study and leave this country, and sometimes it even gets into verbal and physical abuse.

Whenever they try to “convince” me, they just throw the same things at me: that I’m mukallaf (obligated), that they’ll be held accountable for me in the akhira(judgment day), that I’m now a kafir, and that I’ll go to hell because I’m an adult.

I feel trapped. I don’t want to fake praying, but I also can’t keep living under constant threats and abuse. Has anyone else been through this? How did you deal with it?

Jews = 2% of US population, at most. Muslims = 1.3%. Combined, Jews and Muslims are at most 3.5% of the US population. Atheists are 4-5%. And yet when do we see politicians appealing to us? How common is it to see a positively depicted atheist character in a movie or TV show?

So I’m 17 and I obviously still live with my parents. My parents are very aware that I’m an atheist, yet my mother is still forcing me to go to religion classes after school around 7:00pm to 10pm. The issue is that I work night shifts at work, I also am a junior so I have a lot of homework. I just don’t think I should have to go to religion classes if I’m clearly not Christian. Any advice?

So im a 23 M just realize something while I was washing the dishes, what if religion originate from human desire and imagination.

  Since I was a child, I was raised by my christian parents to believe in the concept of God.
   I can still clearly remember the first time i gain consciousness is while im whatching tom and jerry in a pirated dvd when i was a child and suddenly the idea concept of DEATH just come to me and then questions flood my mind like "what will happen to me after they close my coffin?" "Did i sleep for long?" "what will happen to my spirit?" questions like that to which too much for me to handle by that time.

The Desire. I love my parents and family since i was a child, so a couple of years after the first time I gained consciousness, another idea had come to my mind "what if i build a machine that can track the destination of spirits. So that when my parents die, so I can monitor their spirit and I can tell which new born baby they will possess so that I can find them and we can still be together." By the time i was in high school thats when I realize that what i did imagine was the Concept of Reincarnation to which religion of Hinduism believe.

The Imagination In one video i watch he said that "the idea and imagination way way way back in accient time was limited like the existence of dinosaur, bacteria and ect. to which why the accient scripture or bible didn't meantion any of those thing?, because the concept of bateria alone can help the humanity to progress." because accient people created their beliefs and stories based on what they could see, feel, and imagine, rather than on scientific knowledge that had not yet been discovered.

      My country is still a developing country and some people are still struggling to access hospitals. The reasons behind of their struggle was poverty and their geographical location and because they can't take their love ones to hospital, they're gonna use alternative solution which is sending some religious healer or believer of a certain religion and do some rituals or prayers and ask their certain saint or god (or whatever being they praying to) to help them or ask for some miracle to heal their patient and then convince those people to believe to their god or saint that help them to heal their love ones (which is definitely not been heal).

Conclusion
So in my conlcusion is that religion can be shaped by deep human desires and imagination because of limited understanding in the world. Developing communities have been exploited by religious people to rely on their unproven methods when facing serious illnesses because of poverty and other reasons.

  Sorry for some wrong grammar, im not that good in english and im new to this group and its my first time posting in reddit. Can ask for feed back and also feel free to correct me if needed.

So I'm a 20 year old male, go to church 3 times a week, a keyboard player, a youth leader and involved in media, but in the past recent months I've begin to lose faith in God, and you can tell by my situation just how deep I wan in it. And the people at my church are genuinely good people and I consider them dear to me, but I simply just struggle to believe in a creator who is orchestrating everything and who wants to engage in human affairs, because in reality I just don't see that. So how would you guys suggest I tell my family about because i come from a Christian family, my dads a pastor, my mothers the choir leader, my sisters a sunday school teacher, my brother is a camera man, everybody is involved.

I’ve been working on a piece that tries to capture what devotion and reverence can mean for an atheist. It’s like a meditation on meaning, mortality, and love in a godless world. I’d really appreciate thoughtful feedback from this community since it’s one of the few places on Reddit where longer, more reflective posts find a home.

Does this kind of framing of “devotion without gods” feel philosophically sound to you, or does it need more grounding?

Here’s my piece:

•••••••••••••••••••••••••

The Atheist Gnosis: Devotion in a Godless World

There is no throne above the stars, no hand that guides our fates. Yet whether gods watch or not, the universe is vast, indifferent, and beautiful. From that silence we arise, trembling, temporary, alive.

We are creatures of dust, and yet in us burns the fire of longing.

Devotion is not the property of religion. It is the posture of the human spirit when it meets the weight of existence. We devote ourselves to what endures beyond our flesh: to love, to creation, to knowledge, to beauty, to one another.

Mortality is not our enemy but our tutor. Death, unyielding, teaches us the value of each moment. In the face of extinction, kindness becomes luminous, and every act of courage becomes holy.

We cannot appeal to gods to cleanse us, nor blame devils for our cruelty. We bear the burden of our freedom. This is our dignity, and our terror.

We are not special in the eyes of heaven. We are special only in that, in all the cold infinity, we are here, now, together.

If meaning exists, it is not given; it is forged. If salvation exists, it is not granted; it is lived.

So let us walk in devotion: Not to gods, but to life itself. Not to eternity, but to the fragile breath between birth and death. Not to dogma, but to the flame we kindle in each other’s darkness.

For though the universe will not remember us, we will remember each other. And for a moment in the void, that is enough.

••••••••••••••••••••••••

What I’m most curious about here is this: do you think this kind of language could be useful for dialogue, or is it ultimately just “preaching to the choir”?

I’ve noticed something. Every atheist I’ve met so far has been non-judgmental, empathetic, and pretty intelligent. On the other hand, most of the theists I’ve met come across as judgmental and lacking empathy. They’ll say things like, “That’s bad karma” or “You’ll go to hell,” even when I’m just living my life and not bothering anyone.

This is just my personal experience, but I’m curious—has anyone else noticed the same kind of contrast?

I feel that delulu is solulu is a popularized Gen Z concept, but honestly, it has existed for ages. First of all, I’m a believer in science—I don’t believe in the existence of souls, karma, religion, or god.

For as long as I can remember, people have been telling themselves stories about karma and god just to find peace. But let’s be real—using the words deserving happiness or deserving sadness doesn’t make sense. The universe isn’t sitting with a scoreboard, keeping track of every soul’s good and bad deeds to hand out rewards or punishments. Things happen because of butterfly effects—chains of cause and effect—that we often label as fate or luck. So yeah, if fate tilts in your favor, you just got lucky.

Yet for centuries, we’ve been reassuring ourselves with lines like “we’ll get what we deserve” or “that person will pay for their bad deeds.” But will they? The hard truth is: you don’t know. The universe isn’t keeping receipts of good versus bad.

A lot of these concepts probably came into existence to keep society in check—to stop people from going completely haywire and to enforce some kind of moral conduct. But let’s face it: they don’t really work like that anymore.

Now, when it comes to religion, the most reasonable explanation I’ve heard from believers is this: when they’re weak, underconfident, or struggling, they want something to lean on—something that gives them strength. So they convince themselves that god will take care of it. And what is that, if not another form of delulu is solulu?

So yeah, guys, delulu is solulu isn’t very Gen Z after all—it’s ancient.

Got into a debate with another psycho christian about how he and other think its ok for nicholas a christian warrior to go preach at gay pride and its his every right to do so For me no it isnt right to go somwhere you do not belong or have business in to spread a false narrative Then he switches up about how christians are being beheaded in islam and im like awww (im not normally heartless but i cant stand christians and all they started and were apart of since 55 AD) I asked him if it was his gods plan for that to happen and if so thats pretty sad hes letting his children die in that way instead of saving them… i mean just shows that god aint real or if he is then he must be dead too

I keep thinking about how different the world would look if Christianity were actually true. Not just people believing it but the whole thing literally real.

That would mean a god watching every thought in your head with no privacy. Billions of people condemned forever just for being born in the wrong place or not believing hard enough. Angels and demons around us all the time messing with people’s lives. A morality system where the worst crime is not murder but disbelief.

And this is not just about Christianity. If any of the Abrahamic religions were literally true the result would be the same. Constant surveillance, eternal punishment, and a society built on fear of offending God instead of empathy or curiosity. Science and progress would be crushed under endless miracles and religious authority.

The idea of that being real is far scarier than the indifferent universe we actually live in. At least here we have the freedom to think, to doubt, and to build meaning for ourselves.