There is this strange idea that atheists are just rebellious against God because they don’t want to be responsible for being moral, kinda like disobeying your parents and sneaking out to party.
Also, lots of theists assume atheists used to be religious, they don’t really consider that people are raised without religion sometimes.
Yeah, the first one is really frustrating.
No, I don’t need the threat of everlasting punishment to be moral. I’m a secular humanist, and the idea that the only reason you’re not evil is because of threats of going to hell is way scarier than just being kind because it’s the right thing to do.
That we despise people who have religious faith. I don’t despise people with religious faith - I despise what religion does to people who have faith.
Honestly I am mostly bothered by the “reddit atheist” stereotype. Most of the atheist even on Reddit, that I have met, even in Reddit, were as annoying or pleasant as everyone else. But it feels like if you oppose religious nonsense as it gets pushed in your face online, “everyone” thinks you are some radical who hates all e.g. christians, while in reality you might intentionally buy some handmade crafts for the local church to support some charity and support your elderly local community by rewarding their social efforts.
Absolutely. Just because I think religion is stupid and don’t want it shoved down my throat everywhere I go, doesn’t mean I dislike the people spending their time on it.
People who don’t keep religion to themselves and start bothering me or others with it (Jehovah’s witnesses and whatnot), they bother me and I do dislike those few
I don’t care what others do with themselves in the privacy of their house, or what goes on between their ears.
I take a very big exception, however, when people try to tell me how to act and live based on their own scriptures.
A person’s religion only affects them. It defines what they can or cannot do.
It doesn’t affect me in the least, nor should it ever do so to any degree.
I shave my neck
I live in a country that is on the surface quite ateist and nobody is openly religious, not even Muslim immigrants.
So i really got nothing.
Where is thi magical land?
That we have to have faith to be an atheist. Complete nonsense, of course.
Faith and belief are the root of all evil.
It is obvious if you look at the core definitions:
- belief is the uncritical acceptance of a premise when no evidence for or against it exists or is immediately available.
- faith is the uncritical acceptance of a premise despite the existence of evidence that invalidates it.
Both of these are used to make people ignore reality in favour of fantasies and lies. Because if something was a verifiable fact grounded in reality, it would require neither faith nor belief.
That you are enlightened, not by a phony God’s blessing but by your own intelligence
Not believing in anything, which is very true as people just replaced “believing in something bigger” with “numbing depression with consumerism”.
But there can be atheist christians (like, they should be if they read the damn bible) and you can be spiritual and social without believing in some random interpretation of other people thousands of years ago, word by word.
That we’re smug knowitalls that just goes around looking for logical debates.
That it’s a religion. Except for a few groups, which I find kind of strange, being an atheist is the lack of religion and belief in a god. It’s not a religion or anything like a religion and so often I see atheism discussed by the religious in religious terms l, as a monolith, and other ways that just totally miss the mark.
Atheism is not the lack of a belief in God. Is the belief that there is no God. Agnosticism is not a religion. Atheism is.
Most atheists are agnostic. The terms are not mutually exclusive. They describe different concepts.
If religions and beliefs are like the different broadcast channels you see on TV, you get Atheism when you turn the TV off.
It’s easier to group it up as a religion for information purposes, the amount of atheists are relevant if someone’s researching which religions people believe in.
Not parent poster, but I don’t think that’s what they were getting at.
Atheists are often generalized in the same way one might make generalizations about Catholics; the problem is that, while Catholics share a common set of beliefs and values (generally) based on doctrine and scripture, atheists don’t necessarily have anything in common about their beliefs or values, aside from an absence of theistic belief.
That we “hate” god. I don’t in believe in a god, how the fuck could I hate something I don’t think exists? It’s moronic
That’s always weird. Like, do we hate the Easter Bunny too?
I’m not an asshole to every single religious person that exists. It’s only when someone brings up pushing religious ideologies that I get pissed.
I know that’s a big one.
Or that we’re “godless heathens” because not believing in a god somehow means not having morals.
Or that we’re “godless heathens” because not believing in a god somehow means not having morals
The scariest thing is someone claiming that only religion imparts morals and ethics.
Because if the only thing stopping a person from raping and killing and causing pain and anguish is the religion they have… dude, THEY ARE the monster everyone needs to be afraid of.
My own morals and ethics aren’t forcibly imposed on me by an outside force, ready to snap apart and break off with the smallest of stresses.
No, it is built up inside of me via empathy and understanding and personal experiences, and is therefore a core part of my being and far more immune to corruption or breakage.
And then how many pushy religious people actually follow the good moral lessons from their beliefs, anyway? Like American fundies are so judgmental. Even my quiet, meek Catholic grandmother is so judgmental.
Perhaps that anyone of any religion is not also atheist.
Anyone in any theology believes in only their deity, but doesn’t believe in the hundreds of other recorded, historical deities.
Even the theists are atheists.
A-the-ism. “A”, lack of/without. “The(o)”, god. At it’s core atheism means that you don’t believe in god, any god. So no, believers can’t be atheists because they believe in at least one god.
Believing/disbelieving whatever story about the existence/nonexistence of “god” (or anything else) matters not one whit to me. This obsession with stories that you people share. I do not share it.
That “you gotta be obsessed with stories like me” stereotype.
Well said Dr Satan.
Like almost any marginalized group, atheists get caricatured by their most vocal members.
I probably would have become atheist a decade sooner if I hadn’t associated it with the logocentric, Western chauvinist, and plain old bigots who first represented atheism to me.
There are plenty of us who aren’t obsessed with religious debates; we don’t hate religious people; and our cultural, political, and philosophical ideas are not frozen in 18th Century Europe.
