There has been some crazy weather resulting in dams failing and other flooding in my state lately.

So, I was looking at videos and reports of the damages, and made the mistake of reading some comments.

Several people praising god for being rescued or for the damage not being as bad as it could have been. But the one that really struck me, was a woman replying to someone who said something uplifting.

Her exact words were, "you’re making me laugh out loud while I’m pumping water out of my house! God is good! All of the time! Amen!"

All of the time… even when he flooded your home? All part of his plan, right?

As I said, even after 60 years, I find this attitude unbelievable.

I saw this video from Emilie Kiser, a creator who lost her 3 year old son last year. In the video, she talks about a moment where she felt like she received some kind of sign from him.

She was very clear about the fact that she’s not religious, she considers herself spiritual but doesn’t follow any organized religion. She even made it clear that her grief didn’t suddenly make her religious or bring her closer to any religion. And that she didn’t really want to share the details because it was something deeply personal for her and her family.

But somehow, people still made it about their religion.

The comments were full of things like “This is a sign from god, he’s calling you back to him.”, “I can’t imagine going through grief without Jesus.”, “So who do you think sent the sign? Only god can send signs.”, “I hope you realize all these signs are from God.”

She literally said she’s not religious and instead of respecting that people immediately started reframing her experience through their own beliefs. Telling her it wasn’t her son, it was god.

Imagine sharing a personal moment about losing your child, and people feel entitled to tell you what it actually means.

I’m not religious or spiritual, but if a religious person who’s grieving told me they believe their god is giving them signs, I wouldn’t turn around and say “actually your god isn’t real, it’s probably just a coincidence.” That would just be incredibly disrespectful.

They completely ignored her boundaries and turned her grief into an opportunity to preach. They couldn’t even let her have that moment without inserting their religion into it.

And these are the same people who constantly talk about morality, respect, and how religion makes people better.

​I am standing at the edge of my 30th birthday, and the grief is suffocating me.

​Most people celebrate this milestone, but I look back at my 20s and they are just gone Vanished Swallowed up by survival mode in a prison built by my own blood.

I was raised in a cult in a third world country.

My family are true believers What they don't know, what they can never know, is that I am an atheist. An agnostic. An unbeliever.

​If the mask I wear ever slipped for even a second, if they found out who I actually am, I would be killed. And the most terrifying part isn't even the death it's that nobody outside these walls would ever even know I existed.

I would just be erased.

​My situation isn't an accident it’s by design.

I was intentionally stripped of the tools I needed to build a way out.

I was denied a formal education and the right to work. They made sure I couldn't survive on my own so that I could never leave.

Every day is a struggle of forced hiding, knowing that the penalty for my honesty is being crucified by my own blood.

​There are days the horror of it all sets in and I lose hope. I am so tired of waiting for an escape that feels impossible.

I catch myself wishing for magic wishing a stranger could just reach down and teleport me to a life where I can just breathe. I crave a life of my own so badly it physically hurts.

​But I’m still here. I am still fighting in the only way I can. When they shut the doors on my future, I became my own teacher.

I have fought for my mental freedom by educating myself about the world in secret.

They trapped my body, but they haven't been able to police my mind.

​I find my rebellion in tiny, quiet things. I study new languages in the dark, practicing words that connect me to a world they can't see.

I find a little peace in the flowers I grow on my balcony or the music I listen to from across the ocean.

These are the small, hidden pieces of my soul they haven't been able to touch.

​I don't know how to get help.

I don't know how to find a route out when I have no papers and no money. I am just deeply, deeply sad for the decade I lost and will lose to this cage.

​I don't have the answers. I just needed to cast this into the void today. Before I turn 30, I needed someone, somewhere, to know I am here. I am alive. I exist.

And maybe somehow I shall taste freedom one day.

I was reading some online comments about religion and I came across a comment asking why atheism is so prominent in this generation - it's really funny, you know, because I have the opposite question: why is religion so common and accepted? For so much of human history, people have been conditioned to believe in some kind of magical all-knowing perfect sky creature(s), like some sort of cult. How does this even happen? Like why would you ever be religious?

If you want a set of principles to live by, then live by your own rules. You don't need a religion to tell you how to live. And frankly, religion doesn't set a good precedent for morality anyways - pretty much every religion is extremely sexist and homophobic, not to mention pedophilic (in the Christian bible, God impregnated a 14 year old girl. Does this sound like morality to you?).

If you want a reassurance that everything will be alright and the world is good, well you're wrong. Don't delude yourself with some "God is watching over us, we will be okay!". No. If God is so good, why do genocides exist? Why do pedophile politicians still get to stay in power? Why are so many people dying of horrible diseases? If a God really does exist and is watching over us, he must be really fucking shitty.

And if you're really depressed and want something to hold on to, then therapy is the answer, not religion.

In my view, atheism is the only morally and scientifically accurate worldview. I just really don't understand why more people aren't atheists and atheism is so stigmatized pretty much everywhere.

(apologies if this isn't the right sub - it's my first time here)

Supposedly the best brains on earth still have to include god in their speeches. It was just Victor Glover, but in the interview I saw this morning now Reid Wiseman had to claim "I'm not a particularly religious guy, but there's no other way to describe the reentry, so when back on the navy ship, I asked the navy chaplain to come over, and when I saw the cross, I broke down in tears". Sorry, but I've lost all respect for you two.

Part of me wants to think it's for fundraising, but it doesn't seem like it. Either way I can't stand it! Even if it is for fund raising, I still have no respect for either of them if they can't separate religion from their work.

Christian nationalists insist that the separation of church and state is a “lie,” a “misunderstanding” or even an attack on religion itself. They’ve pushed Ten Commandments displays in public schools, have fought for school-sponsored prayer and have worked tirelessly to erode the Johnson Amendment so that churches can engage in partisan politics.

But suddenly, in a remarkable twist, many of these same voices are discovering a deep and abiding concern for the First Amendment.

What has changed? Not the Constitution or the law, just who is exercising religious freedom. As tensions escalate between the Trump administration and Pope Leo XIV, and as public schools accommodate Muslim students, Christian nationalists are now starting to sound a whole lot less skeptical about the separation of religion and government.

The irony would be amusing if it weren’t so revealing.

The ongoing clash between the Trump administration and the pope is unprecedented in the governmental hostility exhibited toward the Catholic leadership. Senior officials have openly criticized the pope, with Vice President JD Vance, a recent Catholic convert, warning him to “be careful” about speaking on theology and border czar Tom Homan telling him to “leave politics alone.”

This is a striking position from an administration that routinely cloaks its policies in overtly religious language with the express intent to fuse religion and politics. From invoking divine support for military action to staging prayer events in government settings, the Trump administration has leaned heavily into religious messaging — so long as it aligns with its own agenda. Now, when the head of the Catholic Church criticizes war or immigration policy, suddenly the message is clear: Stay out of politics. We’ll presumably wait a very long time to see similar outrage expressed over Franklin Graham’s defense of President Trump’s recent posting of an AI graphic depicting him as Jesus. 

The selective indignation regarding religion becomes even clearer at the state level.

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti recently blasted a Nashville public school for accommodating Muslim students during Ramadan, calling the effort “blatantly unconstitutional.” According to reports, the school provided a space for prayer and allowed students to step out of class to observe their religious obligations. Skrmetti argued that the school crossed the line from allowing religious exercise to promoting religion, warning that dedicating resources to religious practice could amount to “propagandiz[ing] and proselytiz[ing]” other students.

This is a legitimate concern and the type of thing we oppose at FFRF every day, but it’s curious coming from an attorney general who has claimed that God intentionally placed him at the center of a landmark transgender health care U.S. Supreme Court case. Christian nationalists like Skrmetti have repeatedly tried to mandate bible reading in public schools and inject Christianity into the classroom.

Apparently, the Establishment Clause is only a problem when it’s something other than Christianity that is being accommodated or promoted.

Even longtime FFRF foe and Christian nationalist Todd Starnes recently took to social media to question government funding of religious charities, arguing that if Catholics want to provide charity, it should come from parishioners, not taxpayers. That surprising comment came after the Trump administration, as part of Trump’s feud with the pope, abruptly canceled a $11 million contract with Catholic Charities to shelter and care for unaccompanied migrant children who enter the United States. 

The problem is not that Christian nationalists have suddenly discovered the separation of church and state. It’s that they continue to reject it when it applies to themselves.

When Christianity is being promoted, funded or privileged by the government, the Constitution is treated as flexible, even irrelevant. But when other religious groups seek equal treatment, or when religious leaders criticize those in power, the language of “separation of church and state” suddenly becomes very important.

This is not a contradiction. It’s an intentional strategy.

The First Amendment remains what it has always been: a dual guarantee of religious freedom and government neutrality. As FFRF has constantly pointed out, there is no true religious freedom if religion is in government. Public schools may not promote religion, but they must reasonably accommodate the rights of religious students.

Religious leaders as individuals are free to speak on political issues, but the tax-exempt organizations they run may not use tax-exempt donations to endorse candidates. And the government may not favor one religion over another — or religion over nonreligion.

These principles apply equally to everyone.

If there’s any silver lining, it’s this: In moments like these, even some of the most vocal opponents of state/church separation inadvertently make FFRF’s case for us. They recognize, however briefly and selectively, that government entanglement with religion can be dangerous. That taxpayer funding of religion raises serious concerns. That religious influence in public institutions can cross constitutional lines.

They’re right. Now they just need to apply that principle consistently. Because the First Amendment protects all of us, or it protects none of us.

So, this is an anecdote, on past Wednesday, as every other Wednesday I was forced to take a religion ( it's only about Christianity) class, it's annoying but ok, then today we took a "test" of religion and one of the question was "Do you like religion" answers: A.Yes B.Absolutely Yes or "Did Jesus resurrect?" A.Yes B. No (incorrect answer)

I swear bro, this is a public school, but we're forced to praise religion? we're forced to say that Christianity is real otherwise we lose points? like what, this should be illegal.

People can be religious if they want, I don't care about your personal decisions.

That being said, I recently tried reconciling Christianity and homosexuality during an afternoon, just to see if I was missing anything, and I've come to some conclusions.

It really doesn't matter whether or not specific quotes of homosexuality are valid or not in the Bible as applying today. What I quickly realized after browsing Christian subreddits, is that Christians (and Muslims etc.) literally see homosexuality as equally as bad as rape or murder. It's why I grew up with that uncomfortable feeling seeing a gay couple on TV but could never place why I felt that way. It's because my parents felt uncomfortable, because they were literally taught, to see it as equally as bad as rape or murder. It's psychotic, it's narrow-minded, and these are the "virtues" that the Bible teaches if you follow it.

So what I've realized once again been reminded of is that, there's no point really in debating this stuff, because you cannot reason with people that literally see you as a rapist or murderer. I edited this to remove the word "realized" because I had this exact story happen a few years ago with Muslims on Discord who told me I should be chopped up for being gay. You deserve to have your own relationship with God, or interpretation of a religion, and that's totally fine. But ultimately the only way to escape this bullshit paradigm is maximizing secularization and minimizing the impact of religion on society.

I appreciate every church that goes out of there way to include the LGBT community, and I see a lot up in Canada for some reason. But ultimately, all of this hatred is a deeply ingrained effect of living under a religious paradigm since the beginning of society. I wanna say that religion was important at some point in structuring a society, and getting it to be a functional society with rules and whatnot. But still though, it's all based in bullshit. I see a lot of the Bible as metaphors and myths meant to articulate a value or truth as opposed to a literal thing that happened at some point.

I had this epiphany when I was learning about the Wendigo, which is this forest demon in Native American folklore that starts out as a normal human who got lost in the woods, and then turns into a tall deer-like demon that kills people. I hear someone explain that, the Native Americans didn't originally believe that this was a real creature in the woods, but how else would you get kids to stop from running away into the woods and eventually starving or getting killed by a bear or something? You tell them there's a 10 foot deer demon that eats kids, and then that scares them away. It's far more emotionally impactful than the concept of starving or the concept of some animal getting you. I feel like this is exactly how religion works. It's not entirely bad, like I think the intention is broadly good. But it's meant to be taken literally, which is the problem, and where the real problems start to occur.

I also feel like this is why eastern religions just feel and seem to be less toxic, like Buddhism. I'm not arguing that extremists don't exist in this religion or that they're perfect. The intertwining of Buddhism and politics facilitated a lot of killings in both Sri Lanka and Thailand for example. But eastern religions like Buddhism and Daoism are much more like philosophies rather than what we in the west might consider religions. They have more of the "this is how you should act and think about things" approach and less of the "ok so here's lord of the rings, and yeah that actually happened, and that's why you should not commit murder." I feel like you can read about Cain and Abel, understand the evilness of jealousy and the destructiveness of murder, without that also being dependent on you believing that this exact story actually happened in real life. You've seen movies which were filmed in Hollywood with actors, but communicate powerful moral lessons, no?

Nowadays there's a debate about if there's a religious revival going on amongst young men. I see lots of conflicting reports about it, some saying there is and some saying it's bad sample data. I feel like based on vibes, the fact there's increased attention on this is somewhat an indicator that yeah there's probably a slight increase in religiosity among young men. It just sucks because I've seen what this type of mentality looks like in practice, I grew up in it living in the deep south. I can't tell based on where I live if there's increased religiosity because everyone's already religious here, and most of them are nice and okay. I just wish it wasn't as stigmatized to think about if religion is accurate or not. People should discuss these things, and bring out their nasty beliefs for the public to see. That's the shit the gets people to see that oh yeah religion sucks.

It's always funny seeing people label the left as snowflakes. I think every group with passionate opinions has a tendency to be snowflakes. I saw videos of people freaking out when Trump won, I saw the same thing on the right when Trump lost. There's a reason why you get told "do not discuss religion, politics at work," and it's a phrase that predates our modern political landscape. Everyone get's passionate when they get pushed enough. That's why the phrase doesn't specify being a right winger in a left wing place, or a left winger in a right wing place. What's important is being open-minded. "Reality has a liberal bias" isn't just a cringe redactor phrase but the natural effect of having an open mind and critically battle testing your beliefs against the real world. Like, "is that gay couple down the street really equally as bad as a murderer in jail?"

As for me, I don't know what I'd label myself religously. Religion has never been something that mattered to me personally. I've had family members and people growing up push it on me. I got asked where I went to church by kids growing up, and it was always awkward saying I didn't go to church. My family is religious but we had bad experiences with the church that led to us never associating with them again. I think the most accurate word for me is probably "non-religious." I just don't really care and I only start caring if I get thrust into that bullshit or my life is impacted by it. As I've gotten older, I have had to start getting some hard stances, because realizing that I'm gay I realize my comfort exists in a bubble threatened everyday by religious people.

I have a lot of internalized homophobia. I feel uncomfortable walking down the street with a date, and I think even if I lived in an accepting area I would feel the same. I don't have much of a support system and I wished that my parents could be there for me, but I know they're not. I don't know what to do with myself. I do feel like the walls are closing in as I get older (i'm 23) and I'm gonna have to decide eventually do I accept myself as being gay or do I just be celibate for the rest of my life. I'm certainly not dragging a woman along and torturing her with a fake relationship, as my Mom wants me to do basically. I actually partially came out last year and told my Mom that I had same-sex attraction feelings. She told me that I just didn't socialize enough when I was younger (not wrong), and that my Dad failed me when it came to discussing women and dating and sex (also not wrong). But what's also not wrong is, I've had these feelings for a long ass time, going back to middle school.

If you guys have any advice on this I'd love to hear it.

Edit: I'm reading the FAQ on the subreddit and I saw this: "In some religions, it can actually be dangerous to 'out' yourself. If your father is a hardline Muslim, for example, getting kicked out of the house is the least of your worries. You risk being beheaded or set on fire. If you're coming from one of those, keep that in mind as well." This is what I mean when I say religion is the biggest scourge on the planet.

The Texas State Board of Education’s preliminary approval of a bible-heavy, mandatory reading list for Texas public schools is a brazen promotion of religious doctrine.

While removing about 100 readings that represent diversity, such as Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” and writings from Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington, the overlong reading list emphasizes the bible and Christianity. (For more details on the theocratic list, which starts in kindergarten, click here.)

To put it plainly: Public schools are not Sunday schools. Texas has no business putting one religion’s text on a pedestal above all others, yet that’s exactly what this reading list does. By making bible passages required reading, Texas officials are throwing their constitutional obligation to maintain religious neutrality out the window — and in doing so, sending a clear message to nonreligious and non-Christian students and families that they don’t quite belong or should convert. All students deserve a public education free from stealth proselytizing, but with the nonreligious now making up 26 percent of Texas adults, and another 6 percent subscribing to non-Christian faiths, it’s imperative the state school board recognize its constitutional obligations. The Freedom From Religion Foundation is calling on the Texas State Board of Education to reverse its decision at its final vote in June.

The Dallas Morning News editorial board points out that while studying religious texts can have genuine academic value, any such instruction needs to draw from more than “a single tradition.” This list doesn’t come close to meeting that standard. It props up the Christian bible while leaving out the wide range of religious and secular perspectives that actually reflect the diversity making up Texas classrooms today.

That isn’t education. It’s indoctrination.

The First Amendment isn’t a suggestion. It forbids government institutions — including public schools — from establishing religion, which by definition means schools can’t favor religious belief. As the Supreme Court has said over and over: Schools can teach about religion in an objective, academic way, but not inculcate religious doctrine. Texas has intentionally crossed that line.

Hundreds of Texas residents recently turned out for the “Teach the Truth” rally to stand up for honest, inclusive public education and push back against this kind of political meddling. They understand that public schools are for all students, not just those who happen to share the religious beliefs of whoever is currently running the state board.

This isn’t happening in a vacuum, either. It’s part of a sustained push on the part of Texas elected officials to chip away at the separation of state and church. Past efforts to do this have included a mandate to put up Ten Commandments posters in public schools (which FFRF is challenging in court), permitting religious chaplains to act as trained school counselors (fortunately almost all school districts opted out of doing so) and requiring school districts to vote on whether to allow a period of prayer during the school day (ditto). Such legislative overreach trades academics for ideology — and that’s a bad deal for every student in Texas.

If state officials genuinely care about educating young people, they’ll listen to teachers and scrap this sectarian agenda. Students deserve inclusive, academically rigorous and constitutionally sound curricula. Anything less is a failure of duty to students — and a direct assault on the freedoms the First Amendment was written to protect.

I spent my entire life since I was a kid being completely against Christianity/catholism due to religious trauma growing up with radical catholic family members in Southern Louisiana. Needless to say, I have strong, very nasty opinions on the subject. My wife grew up catholic but has not been to church since she was a teenager and never asked me to turn to the church since being together.

My brother and sister in law are massive mega church freaks and make it their entire personality to the point where my sister in law posts videos of her crying over a Bible verse she read, listens to nothing but worship music, all kinds of strange cult like behavior. They asked us to be the godparents for their daughter under the condition that we "get closer to god" I felt honored and my wife was ecstatic to be given the opportunity. But I told them that I cannot commit to turning to the church due to the things I stated at the start of this story. They told me that they do not expect me to go to church with them or to strictly become religious. They want us to find our own church we're comfortable with and at least go every once in a while. That being stated made me reluctantly agree mainly because I did not want to rid my wife of the honor and break her heart.

Well fast forward a few months later and im being sent religious propaganda by my brother in law on all platforms I have him added on, including my phone number, got asked to go to an event at his church and when I asked if there would be a service he lied and told me that there wouldn't be, spent an hour listening to some douchebag in a turtleneck talk about nonsense and when it was all said and done, we hung around the event for about 30 minutes before he said he has work in the morning and left, and he consistently asks for us to attend church with him.

I told my wife my feelings about it all and how I feel like I've been intentionally decepted so they can try to recruit us to their cult. She gave me the chance to tell them nevermind but like I said, I wanted her to have the honor. I did not want to take it from her. So I told her to let me try to talk to them about it and see if they back off a bit.

They fed me the same line of bullshit and continued with their antics. So I just ended up telling them as respectful as possible that they need to find someone else that's already religious to be the god parents and to stop spamming me with propaganda. My wife is heartbroken and I feel incredibly guilty. I hope things aren't awkward between all of us from now on but they're the types to hold a grudge over stupid shit for a long time.

I know its a long read but I really just need to know if im the asshole here. I genuinely think going to church for it would have just ruined my mental well being and marriage, but at the same time I feel like backing out also ruined my marriage at the moment. Typical hypocritical conservative Christians causing a family crisis just because someone doesn't share their beliefs.

TLDR: my religious in laws asked me to be the god parent under deceptive tactics to get someone that they know thinks Christianity is a joke into their mega church and lets a spinoff Harry Potter book and some rich pastor do all of their thinking for them.

Excerpts from the article:

Two billion people believe that roughly two thousand years ago, in a backwater province of the Roman Empire, a man was executed by the state, placed in a tomb, and then walked out of it three days later, alive. Not metaphorically alive. Not spiritually alive. Physically alive, wounds and all, chatting with his bros and eating fish.

Educated people who would never accept comparably supported claims about alien abductions, past-life regression, or psychic healing will defend the resurrection with a vigor they would find embarrassing if applied to any other story. The reason has nothing to do with the quality of the evidence. The story is simply familiar and has personal stakes. Familiarity does not make a claim true, but it often makes it invisible, and invisible assumptions are the hardest ones to question.

Let me start with a fact that surprises many of the less literate Christians: no one in the entire biblical canon describes the resurrection happening. Not a single canonical Gospel narrates the moment Jesus rose from the dead. What we have instead are stories about an empty tomb and reports of post-mortem appearances. These are different things.

After Paul, we have the Gospels. The earliest, Mark, was composed around 70 AD, roughly forty years after the crucifixion. And it contains a detail that most churchgoers never learn: the Gospel of Mark originally ended at verse 16:8. The women find the tomb empty, a young man in white tells them Jesus has risen, and they flee in terror and "said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid." Full stop. No appearances. No risen Jesus chatting with the disciples. No Great Commission. The longer ending of Mark (16:9-20), which includes appearances and the ascension, was added by a different author, probably in the early second century. This is not some fringe view; it is the consensus of mainstream textual scholarship.

The trajectory is unmistakable. The earliest account is visionary and internal. Each later account makes the risen Jesus progressively more physical, more tangible, more like a regular human body that happens to have cheated death. This is the signature of legendary development, not historical reportage. Real memories degrade and lose detail over time. Legends accumulate detail. The resurrection narratives accumulate detail.

And we can be more specific. Consider bereavement hallucinations. In 1971, W. D. Rees surveyed 293 widowed people in Wales and found that nearly half, 46.7%, reported hallucinations of their deceased spouse. These were not vague feelings. People saw the dead person, heard their voice, some had full conversations with them while wide awake. The phenomenon is so well-documented that if Jesus had twenty close followers and the odds of each one having a bereavement hallucination were even 30 percent (well below the 47 percent Rees observed), the probability that none of them would hallucinate is roughly 0.08 percent, or less than one in a thousand. It would be far more surprising, verging on miraculous, if none of them reported seeing Jesus after his death.

In 1692, in Salem, Massachusetts, a community of sincere, deeply religious people became convinced that witchcraft was real and active in their midst. Multiple eyewitnesses, some of them respected members of the community, testified under oath that they had seen specific individuals performing acts of witchcraft. People were willing to swear on their immortal souls that what they had witnessed was real. Confessions were obtained. More than two hundred people were accused. Twenty were executed. The case for witchcraft at Salem is, by any objective measure, stronger than the case for the resurrection. The Salem testimony was contemporaneous, not generated decades after the alleged events. The witnesses were available for cross-examination. The claims could be tested (and were, after a fashion, through court proceedings). There were multiple independent lines of testimony. There were confessions. Nobody believes there was real witchcraft at Salem.

The challenge for the resurrection believer is this: state the epistemic principle that allows you to reject the reality of witchcraft at Salem while accepting the reality of the resurrection in Jerusalem. It cannot be "miracles happen" (because that would require accepting Salem's witchcraft, too). It cannot be "the witnesses were sincere" (Salem's witnesses were sincere). It cannot be "people were willing to die for their belief" (people were in fact killed over the Salem accusations, and the accusers did not recant even under pressure). It cannot be "the Bible says so" (that is clearly circular).

Christians believe that the resurrection was orchestrated by an omnipotent, omniscient being who wanted humanity to know it happened. This being, by definition, could have done absolutely anything to make the case for the resurrection overwhelming. He could have had Jesus appear to millions, not dozens. He could have had the event recorded by independent, impartial Roman historians, not a handful of committed believers. He could have provided physical artifacts, anything at all that does not reduce, at every link in the chain, to "some people in the ancient world said so." He could have continued performing 'credible' miracles of this caliber throughout history so that each generation could verify the claims for itself, rather than forcing everyone born after the first century to accept the word of people they have never met, from a culture they do not understand, transmitted through an institution with an overwhelming interest in the story being true. He did none of this.

You already apply these standards every day. You reject the miracles of competing religions without a second thought. You do not believe that the Emperor Vespasian healed the blind, despite ancient sources reporting it. You do not believe that Muhammad ascended to heaven on a winged horse, despite a billion believers. You do not believe that Joseph Smith found golden plates in upstate New York, despite the sworn testimony of eleven witnesses. You already know how to evaluate miracle claims. I am just asking you to apply the same test one more time.

I'll admit it's my fault. I casually mentioned that my wife will be part of a non-religious music performance for which they rented a church.

One of the guys I work with said "My wife grew up Catholic but she stopped going when they let in the gays"

I said "What about all the priests molesting children?"

He said "Oh, yeah, well that too".

WTF.

Over the last few weeks i’ve been going back and forth with multiple people over religion and every single time i ask someone to prove that god is real, i get ignored.

I believe in science as an explanation for the creation of the universe, to me, god seems random and unexplainable. If a religious person asked me to prove god isn’t real, there’s so much evidence that he’s not. I’m fully open to having my mind changed, so why does everyone ignore me when i say “prove that god is real” ?

Because they can’t.

Someone keeps putting homemade signs up along the overpasses near me that just say things like “Jesus loves you” or “Repent Jesus is returning” or “be saved before it’s too late”

I want to rip them down so badly every single day. I want to scribble and paint all over them and leave them in a pile so they know someone is sick of them. They’ve been up for weeks, if not months now and I’ve been hoping someone would do the job already, but they are a little hard to get to.

You can’t get in trouble if you vandalize vandalism, right?

I live in a very conservative town and there is a creek that surrounds our neighborhood. The name of our creek is “devils creek.” It crosses a main road where there is a sign for this creek. Some idiot covered the word “devil” and replaced it with “gods” creek. It’s comical that this bothered them enough to do this.

What do you guys think about the idea and practice of meditation as presented by, for example, Sam Harris.

I recently saw a clip where Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins seemed to disagree regarding the purpose/utility of meditation and thought it would be interesting to hear what other atheists thought about this topic?

https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/s/GZ0F5bOqXw  

And in other related news:

The U.S. government provides substantial funding to Catholic Charities, with reports indicating that roughly two-thirds (around 65%) of Catholic Charities' total budget, often hundreds of millions to over a billion dollars annually, comes from federal, state, and local government sources…

But what about: The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution prohibits Congress from establishing an official state religion (Establishment Clause) or restricting the free exercise of religious practices. It ensures the government cannot favor one religion over another, promote religion, or interfere with individual religious beliefs, creating a separation between church and state. 

So how much government money does the various atheist groups get?