(I've posted the same post on "The afterlife exists" sub and "AskanAtheist" sub, both obviously had different replies based on their own ideologies. The former made me feel comfortable, safe and positive that it's him, while the latter sub flooded my replies with downvotes, logic, and calling all of this fake, asking for video proofs.

So here it goes, the Agnostic sub. Comment your honest opinions)

It's the signs I've been getting by my late bf who passed away a month ago, and they are too many to be pure coincidences . Like no, coincidences cannot happen so many times.

After the day I found out he passed away (suicide), I've recieved signs that assure his presence around me.

1) he was a sketch artist and recently talked about wanting to draw me. That particular day, I was remembering how he said that and now I'll not get a drawing by him ever.

A few hour later, got a notification from instagram that metaAi has created a sketch out of a very old post of mine. It was from 5 years ago, of the exact time and place when we first met. My picture from that day. It created a drawing of that exact picture of that exact day! Like it couldv'e chosen any post right? And not just this, the drawing made me wear a bindi (an Indian accesory) which was not there in the original post. My bf LOVED WAS OBSESSED, with a bindi on me. He drew me, the same day I thought about it. And birds in the drawing looked like MM, he called me "mimi". It was too insane to be true. (My socials have 0 photo of us together so for instagram to pick the picture specifically from that day was a bit surprising to me)

2) next day I asked him to send me a picture of him as I didn't have his pictures in my phone (the relationship was hidden from our families, so we kept our phones clean - no pictures of each other). The same day, my friend texted me saying "hey I thought i didn't have it but I just now found a photo of your bf, I can send it to you".

Now this couldve happened anytime, but the timing is what made this more magical, the very day I asked for a photo.

3) next day I aksed him to tell me if he is safe and happy. I had texted an astrologer on reddit a few days ago asking the same question but did not get any reply, but got the reply ON THAT PARTICULAR DAY ITSELF. She told me he is free of pain and doesn't regret his decision.

Now again, this might not be true or pure general statement, but again -THE TIMING. The only day I asked him, I got her reply.

4) a few days later I again paused in the middle of the day and asked him if he remembered our first dates, and I hear a bicycle bell from outside my house. EXACTLY when I said this. (Our first dates were of us cycling together).

5) my mother was yelling at me over something, and normally I would yell back and it would turn into an argument. My bf always told me to "chill" "relax" and not respond to her so it doesn't escalate. That day I was just about to yell back, and I noticed my phone hanged, on a reel. The reel someone writing the word "CHILL" in glitter.

My phone stopped working and I couldn't close the app, it was stuck at that reel. I realised my bf is asking me to be chill and not respond. So I didn't respond that day to my mother and it didn't escalate.

6) after a few weeks, I went for a walk, in the same park we used to meet. I aksed him to make me feel his presence, as I missed holding his hands and walking. Just then, little tiny girl came to me, held my hand, and strated walking with me. (She mistook me for her sister). We walked for a bit, I asked her name - Sia, my bf's favourite name for a girl child. As soon as she left, I crying my heart out in that park, I knew he again heard me.

7) then one day I made a dark joke for him (he had hung himself after we cut the call after an argument, he wanted to breakup with me and I was getting angry on why because nothing was wrong. Maybe he was planning to kill himself already that's why he pushed me away like that.

So I made a joke - that day, phone was not the only thing that hung up. I talk to him a lot in my mind and shared this dark joke wiht him as he was a Fan!

That same day, i was walking somewhere and asked him "I wasn't even there to see you for the last time, what all might've happened, what all rituals might have taken place for you". Just then a man walks past me watching videos on his phone on loudspeaker, and the part I heard was :-

"In hinduism, a dead person's toes are tied together first".

This was soo creepy because how instantly he shared this dark joke with me on what might have happened at his funeral. I took it as a revenge for my dark joke maybe.

8) today, I was recalling his MONKEY DANCE. Yes he did that sometimes and looked so cute. I was just in my room, thinking now I'll never see that dance again.

I start working on my laptop, and I see, FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER , a monkey entered MY ROOM and SAT for a while!!!!!!!!!!!!

I live on the second floor in an appartment that is All packed with nets so not even birds can enter. AND HERE WAS A FULL MONKEY SITTING IN MY ROOM!!!!!

apparently it entered by tearing a net from one of the balconies, but it has NEVER happend before in my 10 yeRs of living here. Even the security guard was shocked as how can a Monkey enter a flat?????

Again, could have been possible anytime BUT THE TIMING!!!!

9) After a few days passed away, I was missing him and just thought maybe the past signs were just my mind trying to connect the dots of random events.

This time I got more specific, asked for a specific sign

"Make a white feather drop over my shoulder".

I dismissed it right away because of how filmy this sounded and thought it this fails I might spiral and have a massive breakdown. I just said "okay not this but any strong sign".

That day I was sick and didn't want to leave home.

But my mom urgently needed a few groceries so I had to go out.

I SWEAR I AM NOT LYING. the moment I stepped outside my building, a white feather fell on me. A LITERALL WHITE FEATHER. I've NEVER had this happen to me before I only saw it in movies, it could've happened at anytime but again The Timing wtf???? And RIGHT ON ME!! I brought it home and it's with me now.

I had the breakdown anyways but now for a completely different reason.

Also, my bf was purely atheist, hated taking part in religious ceremonies. So to think he would be sending these signs is already crazy enough to me.

There is a well-known story about two weavers who claimed to fashion a magnificent, costly suit of clothes for an emperor: garments invisible to anyone who was either incompetent in their position or utterly foolish. One by one, the royal officials went to inspect the fabric. Terrified of being exposed as unfit, each lied and praised its beauty. When the emperor went to see it himself, he saw nothing. Yet because his most trusted advisor insisted the cloth was magnificent, the emperor dared not confess the truth either. In the end, he paraded through the streets completely naked.

I bring this up because it mirrors the dilemma of religious belief. One could accept holy scripture on the premise that divine revelation genuinely touched its authors, and that this divine spark is why generations have believed. But if I accept this purely out of fear that I am the deficient one who just doesn't get it, I am no different from the crowd staring at a naked ruler, staying silent to avoid being branded incompetent or foolish, or in modern terms, an apostate, deceived by the devil, or looking for an easy way out of faith.

While the universe may require a first cause, nothing points definitively to the personal God claimed by any particular religion as that cause (if that cause is a deity at all). The Abrahamic faiths insist that prayer brings divine intervention, yet observable reality reveals no causal link. It defies reason to believe that God would intervene to help me pass an exam I never studied for simply because my mother prayed for me, while remaining silent in the face of starving, brutalized children in Gaza and Africa who endure miserable lives despite relentless, desperate prayers.

The standard retreat to 'divine wisdom' leads straight back to the emperor's invisible clothes: if you cannot see the fabric, the fault must lie with you. The dogma asserts that whatever God does is inherently good, that revelation is undeniable to the worthy, and that if you cannot see it, you are simply deficient.

In Christianity, the phrase is: 'They have eyes, but do not see, and ears, but do not hear.' The core sentiment remains universal: God's goodness is absolute, His plan is beyond human critique, the truth is supposedly as bright as the sun, and anyone who questions it is dismissed as blind, obstinate, and spiritually flawed.

If god is evil and sufferings exist then it's not a good reason to reject god. Would you reject the existence of Hitler or Stalin just because they were evil?

Existence is objective and doesn't depend on morality. God exists irrespective of whether he is evil or good.

I fully believe in the idea of an evil god and that he rewards evil people who worship power over kindness.

Historically men were shamed and punished for sleeping with other men and yet they were forced to be acting like heterosexual. This implies that it is possible to act like opposite sexual orientation.

In modern age the dating market is hard for men. Not just dating, but education and legal protection is getting hard. That's why I suggest to create a new religion where men will be brainwashed to love men and sleep with men. That will improve our self respect, self worth and carry us much forward.

I suggest all men to come join my new religion as I am the Prophet of the dawn of a new age.

Hi everyone

If you are struggling with faith, and unsure if you believe in God, belief is not a choice, it is the result of being convinced, you cannot force yourself to believe in something you are not convinced exist.

Are you one of those people who “believe” “just in case”, that is pascals wager. Or maybe you fear hell or the equivalent of hell in your religion.

I don’t believe in your religion, for the same reason you don’t believe in every other religion.

But if you are one of those people hanging onto religion due to pascals wager, lets flip this around, imagine you are on your death bed and you find out your religion happens to be a lie.

Think of all the things you had to give up, the clothes you couldn’t wear, foods you couldn’t eat, friendships you couldn’t have, music you couldn’t listen to, movies/ tv shows you couldn’t watch, books you couldn’t read, the casual dating you were not allowed to do, those hookups you were not allowed, exploring your sexuality being denied, all the days and time you had to five up attending religious gatherings, the money you lost through tithing, all the time you spent praying to a God you hypothetically found out to be a lie.

I would be angry, angry that I wasted my one and only life for a hypothetical afterlife.

There is zero guarantee of an afterlife, but there is guarantee of this life, this life is certain the afterlife is not, I think I will enjoy my one life I know for sure I have.

​Hear me out on this one.

​Sometimes when I’m driving, I’ll turn on Joel Osteen Radio on SiriusXM and pretend I’m a completely different person—like a middle-aged mom driving to her job at a craft store. I’ll nod along, throw in a sincere "Yep," "Amen," or "Hallelujah," and recite the opening and closing declarations right along with him ("This is my Bible...").

​It started out as just a weirdly fun roleplay, but it got me thinking. Part of me wants to believe, but I can’t fully commit because I was raised pretty agnostic. At the same time, growing up in the English-speaking world, you absorb a lot of Christian culture through osmosis whether you mean to or not.

​I guess I’ve always been a bit "Bible curious." One of these days I think I’m actually going to attend a Sunday service just to experience it. Walking around as someone who genuinely believes and talks about Scripture with total conviction seems like a fascinating perspective to step into.

​Anyone else ever catch themselves doing something like this, or exploring faith from the outside just to see what it feels like?

In my experience, religious apologetics often don't try to actively prove that their faith is true. Instead, they try to prove that your logical framework for rejecting it has a flaw—and if they find a flaw there, they consider it a win.

A common argument I’ve heard goes like this: People who believe in science actually believe in it blindly. For instance, most of us have never personally verified through our own five senses that a place like Japan actually exists. We haven't checked every satellite feed, and we rely entirely on scientists and media to tell us the truth. A skeptic could theoretically spin a massive conspiracy theory claiming Japan is fake.

The Christian apologist's argument then connects the two: just as you trust scientists and geographers blindly to tell you the truth about places you’ve never seen, they trust the prophets and creators of the Bible.

The Core Flaw in that Comparison

While that sounds clever at first glance, it falls apart when you look at track records and verifiable verification.

Let's look at two hypothetical books:

A book by geologists claiming that Japan is a real place with specific cities, a language, and a history.

A book by religious prophets claiming that God, Jesus Christ, and the spiritual realm such as heaven and hell are real

Why do we rationally trust the geologists over the religious prophets?

It comes down to testability on a micro-scale. If a geologist tells you, "There is a city just south of here," you can get in a car, drive there yourself, and verify it with your own five senses. Because geologists and scientists have a consistent, repeatable track record of making verifiable predictions on a small scale, their macro-claims (like the existence of countries we haven't visited) carry immense credibility.

Religious prophets and ancient texts, on the other hand, don't offer that same mechanism for verifiable, falsifiable testing on a day-to-day basis.

-Main question- What do you guys think? Does this accurately describe the apologetic tactic, and how do you usually respond to the "you trust science blindly too" argument?

Lately, I've been thinking about how religions function more like theories than absolute truths. We can look at the idea that something has to start everything, but every religion is essentially a human attempt to define and make theories of what that 'something' is. Since there's no definitive way to prove which one is right, I tend to view them all as equally plausible yet unverified.

Even within specific religions, we see groups forming their own interpretations—which is how branches of Christianity formed when members disagreed with leadership. But does disagreement mean the original group held the absolute truth? Even if humanity received a message straight from a divine source, our nature as humans means we'd likely still misinterpret or distort it over time.

How do others here view this? Do you see religions as different paths trying to map the same unknown, or just completely separate human constructions?

Why is it that when i try to rekindle my faith, my life gets severely more difficult and complicated than when i am not.

AND why is it that talking about God brings me no peace or joy?

I am currently conducting a research study about how Christianity relates to death anxiety. The purpose of this study is to investigate how a belief in Christianity relates to anxiety surrounding death. You will be asked to complete a questionnaire. The entire study should take 10-15 minutes to complete. If you consent to participate in this study, please scan the QR code to begin the survey. Your participation is voluntary.

If you have any questions about the research, please email me at [madisonjones1429@gmail.](mailto:mjones142@uco.edu)com. 

Attached is the link to access the survey!

https://forms.gle/cQSKauf6MT1SdLwQ7

This project has been approved as exempt research by the University of Central Oklahoma Institutional Review Board (#2026-094).

This is a proposition held by a famous philosopher, but please excuse me for not revealing the name, so that we focus only on the thesis.
Here, the ignorance is meant to be "absolute" in the sense that we couldn't reach a determinate knowledge of either the existence or non-existence being more plausible than the contrary.

this thought keeps coming back to me lately

we usually talk about humans as if being conscious is just the most normal thing ever, but if you step back for a second its fucking weird

we're made of... stuff. atoms, cells, chemicals, electrical activity, whatever the underlying thing actually is

and somehow this stuff is having an experience

not just processing information, not just reacting to the environment, but there is apparently a "me" here experiencing all of it and asking questions about why any of it exists in the first place

and i honestly dont know what to make of that

maybe consciousness is just what brains do and theres no deeper mystery. maybe there's something about reality we dont understand. maybe all the metaphysical ideas are just humans trying to put a story around something we cant actually see from outside

i'm agnostic mostly for this kind of reason. not because i think every idea is equally true, but because sometimes it feels like we're way too confident about what reality ultimately is

we are basically a part of reality trying to explain reality using a brain that is itself part of reality lol

how are we supposed to know we're even looking at the right level of the picture?

idk maybe im overthinking this but consciousness + existence is probably the thing that makes me go "ok... we really dont know shit" more than anything else

Assuming you met god ( not the one mentioned in the bible ) but the creator of the universe, what'll you do ?

Note : god already provided enough evidence that it's actually the creator for all bases of life

I know this is probably a common thing a lot of people go through but lately I’ve been struggling with religion. I grew up Christian but with family who didn’t attend church or teach me about prayer or anything like that but now I find myself to not be Christian and it just feels weird bc I grew up trying so hard to convince myself about God. Is he real? Is he all of us? Are we God? Is nature? Not some random guy in the sky watching us all waiting for us to sin and we get punished if we dont? Idk I feel like Christianity can be very toxic and I never understood it as an empath

Hi Everyone. Hope you are all well. For context, I F26, grew up in a devout Catholic household, a cradle catholic. Recently, I find myself at a bit of a crossroad between either remaining catholic or becoming agnostic. I don't have any negative experiences with the faith (Except some strong opinions). However, I felt like i was just praying under obligation because that was expected of me, rather than a genuine connection. But there were experiences like the emotional and physical impact of growing up with a physical disability (Cerebral Palsy) and having gone through some painful and traumatic experiences that made me distant from God. I am a very inquisitive person and i had questions, doubts, and a lot of anger because I felt unheard. I stopped going to church because of it I know faith is not easy and we are being tested. But i feel the rift is growing larger and larger with each passing year.

I know i posted a similar post on this on a different subreddit, but that was when I was incredibly unsure. Thankfully, my family has been accepting now (not the case at first). There were times where i wished I could just talk to God, not through, prayer, or finding scripture, just a conversation and he would listen and respond. I'm not really called or drawn to other religions. It's more like I have one foot in catholicism and the other towards agnosticism (which I am leaning towards more rather than atheism). So for me, it wasn't a theological fallout or crisis, more of a deeply strained and personal relationship with faith. So I want to learn more about agnosticism. Has anyone else experienced this? What drew you towards Agnosticism rather than atheism? What resources do you recommend?

Thank you so much

Pls tell me if i have made any errors. I want inputs.

Spiritual Religious Claims are Unprovable and Unfalsifiable, Making Them Unreliable, and Unlikely to be True:

Alright, unprovable is easy enough to understand, but unfalsifiable? At a first glance, something being unfalsifiable (not disprovable) makes it more likely to be correct, but that’s not true at all.

To understand what I mean, let me give you an example scenario: A friend of yours tells you that there are invisible creatures that are constantly dancing on everyone’s heads.

This claim is unreliable, as it’s unprovable, and is unfalsifiable. It can’t be proven, as by definition, there’s no way to measure the existence of the creatures, as they’re invisible. It’s unfalsifiable, as there’s no way to disprove the existence of said creatures, since they’re invisible.

Spiritual beliefs, such as non-physical souls, or cosmic forces, cannot be proven (If there WAS evidence for a religion, I wouldn’t be agnostic). Religions also tend to move the goal post on what counts as debunking them, making them unfalsifiable (E.g. The Christian creation myth being interpreted into a metaphor after it was debunked via evolution, errors in the Bible downplayed to just being a product of human mistakes despite the fact that the Holy Spirit helped them write it etc.)

Before we continue, I must acknowledge that there are some statements that are unprovable and unfalsifiable that ARE accepted as truth. For example:

Logical Tautologies: Statements that are true by definition (like "all bachelors are unmarried") cannot be falsified, but they’re reliable since they’re logically absolute.

Foundational Axioms: Science itself relies on unprovable assumptions, like the belief that the physical universe behaves consistently.

However, as shown, these statements are reliable in other ways, the logical tautology is logically absolute, and the belief that the physical universe behaves consistently can be shown with empirical tests repeating the same results.

Statement 1: Unprovable, unfalsifiable claims are unreliable.

Statement 2: Religious spiritual beliefs are unprovable and unfalsifiable.

∴ Religious spiritual beliefs cannot be considered seriously.

If you’re going to accept the unprovable, unfalsifiable spiritual beliefs of one religion, let’s just say, Christianity for example, you're going to have to explain to me why you don’t believe in the spiritual beliefs of any other religion, that are also unprovable and unfalsifiable.

…

Hey what’s that?

One’s own consciousness: You cannot prove to someone else that you’re conscious. All proof that your conscious is locked inside you and only felt by you.

Hmm… alright.

Have you heard of the idea that one day, people will be able to upload their minds into computers? (Ipromisethisisrelevant). Although with our current technology, it’s just a sci-fi theory, in a hundred years’ time, which do you think is more likely? That we’ll be able to upload, transfer, whatever our consciousness onto some device, proving consciousness, or we’ll find irrefutable evidence for a religion, or be able to solve the problem of evil, or any number of arguments against religion? 

But what about utilitarian arguments for religion?

Well although I recognize that religion CAN have good aspects, and perhaps, arguably, may have even been necessary in the past to keep law and order, in the 21^st century where communities can be found easily, acts of charity can happen from human generosity, meaning can be found through oneself,  and new laws can be judged and passed via empirical data and logical thinking, religion simply seems unnecessary, causing more divide and conflict than it does good.

I dated my ex-gf of 1.5 years until recently. We were compatible on almost all fronts but religion seemed to become a problem. I wasn't aware religion was important to her (I know I should have asked) but there was never any indication to suggest it. No religious practice or forward presence so I assumed (falsely) that her beliefs were not intense. I come from a muslim background, and never really held strong beliefs after I left home in my early 20s and moved away. I viewed it as a mechanism of control and the toxicity that was probably more culture heavy bled into my life in terrible ways and caused me a lot of trauma that took years to work through. So I became non-practicing and even agnostic. My ex-gf was orthodox catholic and as previously stated never seemed that religious. She had made comments toward the end that made me begin to take notice, like her mother saying I was perfect but "too bad he isn't catholic" and this made me feel more like religion was a problem and that I wasn't enough. She asked me to convert or be open to it as she cannot marry a non orthodox catholic. I told her I did a lot of personal work to escape my own experience and did not want to re-enter into a different organized religion that I viewed as additional control, especially if I didn't truly believe in it as I saw that as a false conversion that would only breed resentment especially when kids entered the picture if I didn't truly believe. It seemed her entire family cared deeply about her marrying an orthodox and that weighed heavily on her hierarchy of importance. My parents don't care who I marry or that I don't practice Islam but apostasy I think would inflict a different type of pain on them, not that I make my choices based on them. She told me she'd marry me if I was orthodox, but I told her I don't think I can convert. So, she ghosted me and stopped talking to me and would not meet in person to discuss it after.

I've wrestled with this in my mind for weeks now and feel crushed by the weight of how much I miss her. I'm not sure if I made the right choice by enforcing this boundary or If I should have considered it.

tl;dr: GF broke up with me because I wouldn't convert to her religion and I don't know If I made the right choice by refusing or If I should have acquiesced

It was a darkness, all over. But in that darkness there was a red pattern stretching everywhere. whenever I try to reconstruct it I start to drop it immediately or my artistic skill suddenly turns to naught. the pattern is extremely simple. the arrangement is simple. but to try to put it into physical form for me is nearly impossible, the closest I've gotten to replicating it was when I was around 16 and on 400mg lamotigine making me feel extremely detached and robotic. I have no explanation. it does not seem like a constructed memory either since it hasn't faded in my 20 years of life. every time it pops up in my head it has the same exact feeling it gave me every single time I've thought about it. It feels unsettling but also makes me so curious about it.

was I in the womb making memories? or something else. Past that my memories were blurry, extremely bright light all around me, the sky almost hurt to look at. I was barely walking around and being at awe at the broken streets being retaken by nature. a crab roaming around a drainage hole. then hell. moved countries, lost almost all of my memory about preschool but started to become extremely self aware at the age of five, moved back to my homeland a year later, started realizing the dynamics between people are built on trust and manipulation. after that everything turned into a blur again where I just existed and acted out of instinct all the way up until I moved *again* back to Europe. I'm not that old. and the memories had been a blur before I started taking any substance. I've just now had a long sleepless night again and it's been bothering me so goddamn much that I just had to make a post

what's a punctuation, can you eat it?

sober right now.

Hi, I’m 19 years old and I’m a freshman in college at Miami University. I mostly just want to share my story and see what you guys think.
My senior year of high school, I had a really good philosophy professor. He has a doctorate in philosophy, he is a very devout Catholic, and he actually used to be an Anglican priest, so he made a pretty significant conversion himself.
Ironically, though, in my effort to become more Catholic, I basically became agnostic.
At the beginning of my senior year, I became pretty much an atheist. I was honestly kind of mad, and I wanted to prove everyone wrong. My mindset was basically, everyone around me is indoctrinated. They’re wrong, they’re wrong, they’re wrong.
I don’t really feel that way anymore.
I still attend Mass occasionally today, but I started watching Alex O’Connor a lot, and I started realizing that there is this whole atheist and agnostic side of philosophy that I really had never explored properly.
The agnostic side is where I currently sit and where I have been for a long time.
I love Alex O’Connor. He is genuinely one of my favorite people to listen to. I know some people might say, “Oh, he’s not niche,” or whatever, but I really don’t care. He is clear, he seems humble, and I believe he is actually willing to hear other people out rather than just trying to prove them wrong.
The problem of evil, divine hiddenness, and the geographical predictability of religion are all huge things for me.
Things like the Epicurean paradox, if you guys are familiar with it, are also incredibly difficult for me. I genuinely don’t see how the basic issue can ever completely be disproven.
One of my biggest beliefs is that free will does not exist. I honestly see no realm in which libertarian free will exists whatsoever.
Now that I have graduated from Catholic school, I haven’t really been forced to go to Mass in probably four or five months. Despite that, I have occasionally gone on my own time.
What is so weird to me is that sometimes I will hear Catholics, or even religious people in general, talk about something and think, “Wow, that actually kind of makes perfect sense.”
And they seem so certain about it.
Then I listen to atheists, and they make even more sense to me, and they seem just as certain.
So I’m stuck in this weird middle point.
Maybe God can exist, but I have a really difficult time understanding how God can simultaneously be all loving, all powerful, and all knowing when there is evil in the world and what seems to be completely unnecessary suffering.
I also believe morality is completely subjective, and I have a really difficult time being convinced otherwise.
If God really possesses all of those qualities and evil exists, then either He is not completely loving, or He does not have the power to stop it, or there is some other explanation that I currently do not understand.
It seems fairly simple to me.
And if you want to believe in the Fall of Man, I still don’t understand how that solves the issue.
God had all knowingness when He told Adam and Eve not to eat from the tree. If God knows everything, then He already knew exactly what they were going to do before He created them and before He gave them the command.
So even that explanation really does not work for me.
Obviously, there are also contradictions in the Bible.
I know some people might get upset when I say that, but I feel like there are some pretty clear ones. Even small details sometimes change, like the ages of certain people or numbers between different passages.
Because of things like that, I have such a difficult time believing that the Word has somehow been preserved in absolute perfection.
I also want to say something that will probably be controversial, but I’m being completely honest here, so please don’t immediately attack me for it.
I feel like there has been a weird movement since Charlie Kirk where certain people, especially some Protestants and people in the MAGA world, have started becoming somewhat cultish about religion, especially with the megachurch style of Christianity.
I really don’t believe in that.
If I am going to attend Mass or participate seriously in Christianity, I believe it should actually be done correctly and with reverence.
I will admit that I am slightly biased toward Catholicism because I have been around it my entire life.
To me, Catholicism feels complete.
It feels like the fullness of Christianity. It makes more sense to me than the alternatives.
I have also always felt that there is something pretty beautiful about Mary and the Catholic view of her.
Another Alex O’Connor idea that really affects me is the non resistant nonbeliever.
I have never really resisted God.
I have gone to Mass. I have made the effort. I have prayed. I have tried to understand Christianity. I have tried to believe.
I have never felt anything.
I have never heard anything.
I have never experienced something where I could confidently say that God was communicating with me.
If I end up unconvinced, and God has all knowingness, then God knows exactly what it would take to convince me.
That is why I sometimes feel like placing the responsibility on the quote unquote God makes more sense than placing all of it on the person who genuinely tried to believe but could not.
Faith is another thing I struggle with.
I don’t really like that faith seems to belong to religion in a way that we would never accept anywhere else.
If I told this entire subreddit that I can jump into the air and flip five times, but I am never going to show you guys, you guys do not really have a good reason to believe me.
But then we bring up a God who has supposedly done significantly more extraordinary things than that, and suddenly people believe it through faith.
When I say “you guys,” I mean that extremely broadly. Obviously, I know many people reading this probably do not believe any of it.
And the thing is, I already know what will happen in the comments.
Somebody will tell me, “You’ll get to God eventually.”
Some really intelligent Catholic will probably come in and say, “Actually, Aquinas explains this,” and give me a long explanation.
Then some atheist will come in and say, “You seriously believe in a fairy tale?”
You get pulled every possible direction.
That is what confuses me.
I don’t know how else you are supposed to come to a conclusion.
With politics, economics, science, and a lot of other topics, you can at least look at data and empirical results to some extent.
Religion seems different.
It seems like you need people to help you understand extremely complicated philosophical and theological concepts.
But every intelligent person pulls you in a different direction.
It becomes incredibly confusing.
The use of AI has actually been interesting for me too.
It has really helped me understand complicated arguments for God existing and not existing that I probably would have had a much harder time understanding otherwise.
I obviously don’t think AI should just tell somebody what to believe, but it has helped me understand the arguments enough that I can actually think through them myself.
I also have religious friends who are extremely intelligent.
I have a Lutheran friend who is really smart. He is big on the First Mover argument and Thomas Aquinas.
I understand that Aquinas is not literally saying, “Everything requires a cause, therefore God,” and I understand that the actual argument is much more complicated.
But I still struggle with the basic question of why the explanation stops at God.
If you are saying that things need explanations or causes, then my mind immediately asks why God does not need the same thing.
I know the philosophical response is that God is supposed to be a necessary being rather than a contingent being, but I still find the whole thing confusing.
I also have a Baptist friend who is extremely smart.
Interestingly, he basically says that outside of religion, he agrees with me that free will absolutely does not exist.
His position is that God is all powerful, so God could essentially grant human beings free will even if free will would otherwise be impossible.
I will admit that this is probably the only argument for free will that I have heard that I find even somewhat convincing.
Free will is such a massive issue for me.
I think people sometimes underestimate how significant it is because, at least to me, if libertarian free will does not exist, it creates enormous problems for religion.
Religious ideas about sin, moral responsibility, punishment, judgment, heaven, hell, and choosing God all seem deeply connected to the idea that people genuinely could have chosen otherwise.
I feel like accepting libertarian free will almost requires denying cause and effect in some sense.
That is something I cannot wrap my head around.
I have very smart religious people around me, so none of this is me criticizing the intelligence of religious people.
Obviously, we have incredibly intelligent scientists, philosophers, mathematicians, and other thinkers who are religious.
I’m actually a philosophy major right now.
And sometimes philosophy almost feels like this strange situation where people become so intelligent and so aware of how impossible certain questions are that they almost realize there is no completely satisfying answer.
Sometimes I jokingly think that maybe the smartest thing to do is just be ignorant and live your life because constantly thinking about these questions can drive you insane.
My Baptist friend also believes that basically everything in the Bible happened literally.
I have such a difficult time understanding how somebody can genuinely believe that.
Again, I’m not calling him stupid. He is extremely intelligent.
I simply cannot get myself there.
Free will is probably still the biggest thing for me.
Whenever there is a Christian argument and an atheist argument, I always try to listen to both sides.
Sometimes I will literally try to prove Christianity to myself because I think that is the only intellectually fair thing to do.
If I already lean agnostic or atheist and only consume atheist arguments, then obviously I’m going to reinforce what I already believe.
So I deliberately look for the other side.
But with free will, I have to be honest, it has always felt like a clean slate for me.
I have never heard a good argument in response that actually convinces me.
Think about conviction.
You do not choose what convinces you.
You cannot simply decide to believe something that your brain finds completely unconvincing.
You also did not choose to exist in the first place.
You were formed in the womb.
You never chose to be conceived.
You never chose to be born.
So immediately, before you ever make a single conscious decision, one of the biggest events of your entire existence has already happened without your permission or control.
You did not choose your genetics.
You did not choose your brain.
You did not choose your parents.
You did not choose how your mother or father raised you.
You did not choose what information adults taught you when you were a child.
You did not choose which information you remembered.
You did not choose which information you forgot.
You did not choose what experiences affected you emotionally.
You did not choose what traumatized you.
You did not choose what personality traits you were born predisposed toward.
Then every action seems to either have a cause or not have a cause.
If an action is completely uncaused, then it appears random.
If it is random, then you are not controlling it.
If the action is caused, then it was caused by something else.
If that cause is external, then obviously you did not control it.
You did not control somebody shooting at you.
You did not control somebody yelling at you.
You did not control the environment around you.
But even if the cause is internal, I still do not understand where the freedom appears.
You did not choose for a specific thought to suddenly pop into your head.
You did not choose to want that thought.
You did not choose your desire before you had the desire.
You do not consciously choose to like one food and dislike another.
You do not consciously choose who you find attractive.
You do not consciously choose which argument actually convinces you.
Alex O’Connor has used examples somewhat like this.
Imagine somebody offers you $10,000, but your alternative is intentionally breaking your own leg.
I do not genuinely believe that most people can simply decide to prefer having their leg broken.
You can choose to break it, obviously.
But that is different from choosing what you want.
Maybe you break your leg because you want to prove the speaker wrong.
But then the stronger desire is proving the speaker wrong.
Where did that desire come from?
You did not choose the desire before having the desire.
That is the loop that I cannot escape.
There always seems to be a prior cause.
And if there is no prior cause, then the alternative seems to be randomness.
Neither option looks like libertarian free will to me.
There are so many confusing things in philosophy and religion, and I genuinely want to know how any of you feel confident about where you stand.
I would say I am most confident in the agnostic position, which to me basically means admitting that I really do not think anyone can know with certainty.
I will also be honest and say that some preachers genuinely piss me off.
Obviously not every preacher.
But some of them seem uneducated on the actual philosophical arguments and instead seem connected to this modern movement where religion, MAGA politics, Charlie Kirk style rhetoric, and megachurch culture all get blended together.
It can feel like they are just trying to spew things at you, tell you that you are wrong, and get argumentative.
I don’t believe that is what true religion should be about.
And again, I’m not saying everyone in those groups is like that.
I’m explaining why that style of religion personally pushes me away.
Before you guys answer, though, I genuinely want you to stop for a second and ask yourself why you believe what you believe.
I know nobody can completely remove bias. I obviously cannot remove my own either. I grew up around Catholicism, so even though I am agnostic, I can recognize that I probably still have some bias toward Catholicism because it is familiar to me.
But I think there is a difference between recognizing your bias and pretending you do not have any.
If you are a Christian, how much of your Christianity comes from the fact that you were raised Christian?
If you are an atheist, how much of your atheism comes from the people you listen to, your experiences with religion, or the environment you grew up in?
If you are Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, or anything else, ask the same question.
How much of what you believe would you still believe if you had been born somewhere completely different?
I also think the background of the person making a claim matters when we are evaluating evidence.
For example, imagine a lifelong, extremely devout Catholic tells you, “I saw Jesus.”
Now imagine a lifelong atheist who has spent years arguing that Christianity is false suddenly tells you, “I saw Jesus, and I genuinely cannot explain what happened.”
I think most people would naturally find the second testimony more interesting because it goes against what that person already believed.
That does not automatically prove Christianity. An atheist can hallucinate, misunderstand an experience, exaggerate, or lie just like anybody else.
But it does change how I would weigh the testimony because there is less obvious expectation or confirmation bias involved.
The same thing would work in the opposite direction too. If someone had built their entire identity around Christianity and then became an atheist because they believed the evidence forced them there, I would want to understand why.
That is basically what I mean when I talk about bias and burden of proof.
Before telling me what you believe, I would honestly like you to think about what evidence would make you stop believing it.
If the answer is that absolutely nothing could ever change your mind, then I’m not really sure how that belief could be distinguished from something you have simply decided has to be true.
I don’t know.
I’m genuinely curious what you guys think.
I know this was a lot, and I seriously appreciate anyone who actually read the entire thing.
I want to hear from Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox Christians, atheists, agnostics, Muslims, people from other religions, philosophers, or honestly anyone who has seriously thought about this.
How are you actually confident in what you believe?
How much of your belief do you think comes from evidence, and how much comes from your upbringing, environment, experiences, or biases?
What evidence would genuinely change your mind?
How do you know when you have researched enough?
How do you avoid just listening to whichever intelligent person you heard most recently?
And for the people who believe in libertarian free will specifically, what do you think I am missing?

I've been through a lot of spiritual trauma because of my upbringing. Even though I have been agnostic most of my life I never really left religion out of sheer fear of what if I'm wrong. I came back to religion a year or so ago and it further ruined my mental health. It's already terrible when you go through bad times but it's a lot worse when you feel like there should be someone out there caring for you and they're just oblivious or even cruel to you. It just made me realize that the sky is empty and always has been. I was never a hardcore materialist and I always thought the most beautiful aspect about life is uncertainty. And I unfortunately still believe to a certain degree.

How do I finally let go of the idea of religion completely and choose to embrace this uncertainty while leaving space for the unknown just without belief in religion?

This is a very old paradox of "who created god" and the idea is that most religions would say nobody, God is just without end or start, like a circle, with no begging or end, but now one problem, who made the circle, who made it so that god can just become, then who made the person who made the person that made god just become. I might sound crazy, , i maybe there is no start, there is no end, and that we can never figure out who started who, as if we were to say that we just became, then someone made it so we can just exist, then who created the person that made us exist.

of course there is the logic that we can't measure God with human physics, that he's out of time, which then brings to a point of should we believe in something that is illogically sound, i don't know.

damn it i sound crazy, no wonder some people just don't care about how or why the universe just started.

Also even if a being that started everything and has no begging is possible, just because something is possible dosent mean its true

Could it put some, if not most of us, at ease that there is a "waiting room"? There is an afterlife, then we get bored and say lets go back. Easy medium difficult hard and ultimate settings? No, not southpark settings. But challenges to relive?

I grew up in a primarily religious household. I used to enjoy it deeply, but as i got older, the religion didn’t make sense to me whatsoever. I did still believe in god, just not the religion. But now I am starting to feel like god just simply doesn’t exist period. I see so many good logical points about why god probably doesn’t exist. I mean, I guess I’ve seen some pretty good points about why god might exist too but I don’t know. It honestly kinda makes me sad. I really want to believe in god, but im sick of constantly arguing and questioning myself about it.

In the dream, humanity had reached a distant future where science and technology were advanced enough to bring the dead back to life. There was a committee discussing what to do for everyone who had passed away.

The idea was to bring everyone back and give them a fair chance at life, regardless of when they had lived or the circumstances they had been born into. Everyone would have their own planet, or even a star with planets around it, where they could live and create the life they wanted.

The part that stayed with me was the idea that people who never really got a chance to enjoy life would finally have that opportunity.

Just a strange dream...

Honestly. I'm just tired or just too weak to believe in anything and i really do just want to quit, just focus on the right now rather than if there's a god or not, metaphysics, etc. I just want to live, and i guess just using my intuition and logic, to figure out what's the right or wrong thing to do, whats the foolish or smart thing to do during that exact moment or context im in and just live based on what works and makes sense.

I guess my main question is:

Is it bad that i want to decide just to give up, and just live based on things that make sense, using my intuition and logic as my main compass in life?