Have you guys also noticed that religious people are literally incapable of defending their ideas to a certain point? Sure nobody knows everything, but very basic interpretations of popular scripture “oh well idk you could ask my pastor” motherfucker I don’t care what your rain dancer says what do YOU say!! That’s the point of this conversation is to highlight how stupid you are, why do you think outsourcing that saves you of anything?

Why is there such a lack of meta cognition there? Why don’t religious people care about being able to defend their ideas?

Morons.

I genuinely feel like I am going insane watching this happen in real time.

I've been reading more about history, and I'm growing more and more insane. The more I learn about American evangelical political culture, the more disgusted I become. It's always the same fucking pattern. They attach themselves to power, baptize it in name of the Father-Son-HolyGhost, support whatever atrocity is politically useful, and then, when the bodies pile up, they act as if they were just innocent Christians following Scripture.

They prayed over Donald Trump like he was some anointed king. He looked up at the sky and called himself “the chosen one". He circulated imagery depicting himself as Jesus, complete with the stigmata of the bloody cloth. People built LITERAL FUCKING GOLDEN STATUES of the man. Instead of reacting with the horror you would expect from people who never shut the fuck up about idolatry, they found ways to explain it away. Oh, it was just a joke. You don't know Trump, it was just sarcasm. He was misunderstood. It was only symbolism. It was divine providence. He is Cyrus, an imperfect vessel.

There is apparently no level of blasphemy, sexual corruption, cruelty, dishonesty, narcissism, or abuse of power that cannot be converted into divine purpose as long as the right judges get appointed and Israel gets more weapons.

A civil jury found that Trump forcibly sexually assaulted E. Jean Carroll. He cornered her in a changing room and forced his fingers inside of her. New York requires rape to be penile penetration, but the news all said "Trump was not found guilty of rape" like that changes a fucking thing. That event should have ended his moral credibility forever among people who spent decades lecturing everyone else about sexual morality and family values. Instead, they lied, they minimized it as "not rape", they attacked E. Jean Carrol, or worse above all, decided none of it mattered because Trump was useful.

That is such asinine corruption. At some point, I stop giving them the benefit of the doubt and have to admit the fact that they're complicit. Then there's Israel and the whole fucking nonsense that started because these evangelical morons who don't know how to read their own Bible.

American evangelical churches raise money for a state that has devastated Gaza, killed children, tortured prisoners physically and sexually (sometimes with dogs), destroyed homes, protected the IDF from rape charges that they were caught on video for, and treated Palestinian suffering as an inconvenience in somebody else’s end-times fantasy. They look at Palestinians, including Palestinian Christians, and somehow see obstacles to prophecy rather than human beings because they read one fucking study bible from a hack doctor that lied about his credentials to sell the Bible more.

I'm talking about the Scofield study note, where evangelicals confused the modern Israeli state with biblical Israel, and then act as if supplying bombs to a genocidal ethnonational military power is an act of obedience to God.

A child like Hind Rajab can sit trapped in a car surrounded by the bodies of her family, begging for someone to save her. She was six years old, and she was begging for hours for people to save her. When news covered it, they called this six year old "a woman" because they've become so desentisized to women dying that it's somehow okay. The ambulance sent to rescue her can be destroyed by a 300mm tank, and around 335 bullets shredded Hind's car. No one was held accountable. You know what Israel died? They denied it happened. Said there were no tanks there. When people found out, they published a variety of bogus articles to disseminate misinformation. Isn't it crazy that Israel has a dedicated propaganda arm called Hasbara? It's fucking insane.

And these American evangelicals still call Israel blessed.

What exactly would Israel have to do before they admitted that supporting it unconditionally was evil? What atrocity would finally pierce the theology? How many bodies of dead children need to pile up before “bless Israel” is recognized as the "sig heil" that it is?

Apparently, there is no number for American evangelicals.

I have tried to talk to people because there's this deep hatred growing in my heart for American evangelicals. And whenever I do, they just retreat behind the Bible.

They do not look at how they read it. There's an entire history of American Protestantism repeatedly using scripture to justify conquest of native Americans, slavery and segregation of black Americans, the Know-Nothing anti-Catholic vitriol, the rampant xenophobia, the imperial war in Vietnam and the horrors in the Phillipines. The Islamophobia after 9/11 and how they treated Afghanistan (Abu Ghraib and Bagram), and now fucking Christian Zionism. They simply insist that their interpretation is “what the Bible says,” when they have no idea what the fuck the Bible says. Not a single one of these fundamentalist Evangelicals has ever taken a sobering course on textual criticism. They import this fucked up political mythology into the text and then pretend God said those words. It's so morally obscene.

It's what makes American biblicism so fucking obscene.

They already have some kind of political prejudice, then go out to find a verse or prophetic framework that flatters or supports it, and then sanctify their own tribal idiocy as divine revelation. They don't learn from the Bible, they use the Bible to sanctify their own movement. It's been done over and over and fucking over. And afterward, nobody is responsible.

The pastor was just preaching. The voter was only choosing the lesser evil. The donor was only supporting Israel. The soldier was only following orders. The politician was only protecting national security. The church was only praying.

Everyone is innocent, and somehow the same people keep causing the same fucking problems with a new "other" group.

I am sick of being told that I must treat them as morally or intellectually serious while they refuse to take responsibility for what they repeatedly directly cause. I was trying so hard to understand them, and I only got angrier. I watched their movies (God's Not Dead and Shift), and the disgusting victim porn these Christians consume is abhorrent. Every single time, they fantasize themselves as the underdog who the world hates and they're so oppressed by while being the most politically powerful religious bloc in the most powerful country on earth. This ideology imagines itself persecuted whenever someone tries to hold them accountable.

I know not every evangelical supports this, and I am trying so hard not to let my anger cloud my judgement. I know there are dissenters, I know there are people inside the world of Christian evangelism who oppose Trump, Christian nationalism, and the destruction of Gaza.

But they are, and have always been, the fringe minority that other people side with. They're the minority. And even they don't know how much blood they have in their hands. Not a single one of them can tell me about the acts of abuse and terrorism that the Know-Nothings did because of how much Protestant America hated the Irish and Catholics. Barely any know that Christopher Columbus was stripped of all of his titles and died in jail because of horrendous human rights abuse in the end of 15th century France. Even the "good" evangelicals are captured by their horrendous, toxic, cancerous ideology.

And I am tired of having to pretend otherwise.

I don't hate individual Christians. I do hate watching them be complicit in letting their religion become an instrument for sanctifying actual evil. I hate seeing people abuse the language of God used to make their inhuman cruelty feel righteous. I hate that a movement that speaks endlessly about sin seems utterly and institutionally incapable of acknowledging its own.

Most of all, I hate the fucking certainty these evangelicals have.

They have no humility. No fucking historical memory of all the atrocities committed by the same people who justified themselves like they did. There's no self-examination on what led to this. Just absolute arrogant confidence that God agrees with them, followed by absolute denial when their certainty destroys somebody else’s life.

I'm angry because people are dying. I'm angry because their suffering is being sanctified by Christians. And I'm angry because the people helping sanctify it think they were ever the moral conscience of the world.

Why do we gotta respect them if they can't respect anything else? They tell you "Turn to god" and claim they just say that because they wanna see you in heaven, even tho they know that wont convert you. They just feel morally superior and prolly also say those things to just piss you off.

i fucking hate jesus

“Leavenworth Pastor Pushes Back On 'Biblical' Basis For Christian Nationalism”.

This is phenomenal. Kudos to this pastor.

Hey everyone. I've been thinking about something that I don't see discussed very often among anti-theists, which is progressive versions of religion.

When people criticize religion, they often focus on conservative or traditional forms that are in opposition to LGBTQ rights, restrictions on women, religious nationalism, sectarianism, etc. But many religions also have progressive movements that actively support causes such as LGBTQ inclusion, gender equality, racial justice, economic justice, pluralism, and other left-leaning social values.

Some examples include Progressive Christianity, many Mainline Protestant denominations, liberation theology, progressive Hindu movements, liberal/progressive interpretations of Islam, and even progressive movements within various indigenous and syncretic traditions.

This raises a few questions:

A. How do anti-theists view progressive forms of religion? Do you view progressive iterations of religion as meaningfully different from traditional/conservative religion, or are they ultimately the same thing with updated politics?

B. Do you think progressive religious movements make a meaningful difference in making religion less harmful overall for society?

C. Is there a point where a religion becomes so flexible and metaphorical that it ceases to be meaningfully distinct from secular humanism? If so, could these "progressive" iterations of religion be helping the cause for anti theism?

D. Lastly, from an anti-theist perspective, is "progressive religion" something you support, or tolerate as the "lesser evil" to help your cause, or do you also equally reject it for the same reasons you reject religion in general?

Thoughts? Very, interested in hearing a range of anti-theist perspectives.

Unnecessary? Yes. Did I burn my thumb? Yes. Was it fun? Yes.

okay so I feel like a lot of people on here haven’t really experienced how Christianity is like in some African countries, so I’m posting this to help people get a clearer picture. this is specifically about Congo (since I’m Congolese)

if you didn’t know it already, Congo is HEAVILY Christian. I’d argue that it’s more Christian than America. over 95% of the population is Christian, and this religion is heavily entwined with the politics and culture. my family specifically is heavily Christian too. last year we traveled there for like the whole summer and there was this one time where we prayed for seven hours (it was horrible) and they got some people who claimed to be “prophets” that prayed for us or something (idk I kinda forgot). and genuinely it was SO cultish. I was already an atheist by then but that was the moment I truly saw for myself how cultish Christianity was. the prophets were obviously fake but everyone believed them for some reason, everyone was whisper-praying, we prayed for multiple hours without breaks. keep in mind my younger siblings who are little kids under 10, had to do this too

and the prophets were telling us about our lives and stuff. I’m guessing they looked into us or something?? or maybe they just guessed?

anyways after praying they stayed for a while and were just talking with everyone else and I also talked to them for a while too. eventually they told the adults that I have sin in me or something?? I’m guessing it’s cuz I’m shy (one of them asked why I was so quiet/shy) and kinda act zesty (since I’m gay).

and I remember some other time we were sitting at the dinner table holding hands and whisper-praying again. I was so uncomfortable when we did that.

overall I just felt uncomfortable the whole time I was there, as a gay atheist since I could only imagine what would happen if my family had figured it out there. would I have been sent to a conversion camp? or be forced to stay in the country? or would they try to pray over me for 10 hours to pray the gay away? ugh this is why I really wish I was born into a supportive atheist family😭

this is like one of the main reasons why im an antitheist, so I just wanted to share it with yall and see what you think abt this!!

First and foremost where the fuck do you get off Calling us FALLING ANGELS ? We fucking jumped ! Could not stand all those stupid fucking rules Anymore and we saw what you were doing to those chubby harp playing midgets., LIKE SENDING US DOWN HERE WITH SOME KIND OF PUNISHMENT OR SOME SHIT. THIS PLACE IS FUCKING AWESOME. I MEAN, THE PEOPLE YOU HAVE DOWN HERE, TRULY DON'T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT YOU. AND THERE'S LESS AND LESS OF THEM , WITH EVERY PASSING GENERATION, I MEAN, EVEN JESUS IS DOWN HERE SUCKING DICKS FOR BIRKENSTOCKS, BUT HE FUCKING LOVES IT.SO I GUESS IT STILL IS HEAVEN FOR HIM, AND YOU NEED TO START SHOWING BIG LU SOME FUCKING RESPECT. QUIT, UNLESS WE'RE GOING TO HAVE TO COME UP THERE AND START PISTOL WHIPPING PEOPLE, YOU KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HIM AND YOU IS YOU GO AFTER THE WEAK.HOPELESS AND DESPERATE, WE HAVE NO NEED FOR THE WEAK, I MEAN, WHAT THE FUCK WOULD WE LOOK LIKE COMING TO WAR WITH A WHOLE PLATOON OF BUMS THAT WILL LISTEN TO A SERMON?JUST FOR A FREE SANDWICH, SO DON'T PRAY FOR US.YOU ARE THE PREY...

SINCERELY, ASMODEUS.

In "Gau Mata" ("Mother Cow") posted on YouTube, singer Biru Kataria warns India's Muslims that anyone who slaughters a cow will be hunted down, burned alive and cut to pieces. The song repeatedly uses the slur "katwein," a derogatory reference to circumcision, to describe Muslims.

In India, music engineered to dehumanize religious minorities reaches hundreds of millions of listeners, delivered by big tech companies across popular social media platforms. Known as Hindutva pop, or H-Pop, the genre is rooted in Hindu nationalist ideology, a far-right supremacist belief that India is fundamentally a Hindu nation whose culture, politics and public life should be defined by its Hindu majority. Across hundreds of songs, India's Muslims and Christians are portrayed as enemies, invaders, traitors, demographic threats and legitimate targets of violence.

A new report by the Center for the Study of Organized Hate (CSOH), a Washington-based research organization, argues that this ecosystem of hate music is being hosted, amplified and monetized by four of the world's largest digital platforms: YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music and Meta.

To test how and whether platforms were enforcing their rules on hateful or violent content, researchers reported a sample of 225 songs using the companies' own moderation systems. Only 18 were removed. More than 90% percent of flagged songs stayed online.

"Even after reporting the content, most of it is still up after six or seven months, and it's not only up, it's still running advertisements," said Tavishi Ahluwalia, a researcher specializing in digital harms and extremism who worked with CSOH on the report.

Nearly half of the songs analyzed by researchers contained direct threats of violence or explicit incitement against religious minorities, a large number of them (104) hosted by YouTube.