Atheism

By dying, on August 21 Dr. James Dobson, evangelical thought leader, anti-gay activist, and staunch defender of child abuse, did the only good thing he ever did with his life.

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His most famous work, 1970’s Dare To Discipline, stands as both his entry into the  public consciousness and as an early salvo of his views. It endorses hitting toddlers as young as two and three years old (pg. 40 & 41, et al)*. It praises trauma bonding–which is classified as a form of abuse by many actual practicing psychologists, for the record–as a genuine expression of parental love (ch.1 p.2,  pg. 23), bemoans the lack of stick-beatings in the classroom (ch. 3, pg.81) and spends a good deal of a book on raising children decrying the ACLU (pg. 87), the  agency of women (pg. 39 & 40, et al), birth control (pg. 146), and most if not all  expressions of human sexuality (ch. 5). 

A follow-up, 1978’s The Strong Willed Child, begins by recounting a time he beat the shit out of his dog (p. 11-14)  and goes on to extol the virtues of doing the same to children.

It's honestly fucking disgusting how they'll swarm people going through their lowest points in life as an opportunity to "convert" someone

I have considered myself an atheist since high school but I feel like I have been forming my own beliefs about how the universe works and I'm curious about if there are others who think like me.

I have started thinking about free will a lot and how I don't believe we actually have it (depending on what you want to define free will as.) This has caused me to think about how in reality we are not much different than a rock. We have just as much agency in our decisions as a rock does when it is pushed down a river. I've thought about our perspectives and why we see life like we do. What if we are just appendages of some greater energy based being kind of like cells are a part of us. We have cells in our body that are a part of us and perform tasks, but we cannot really manipulate them freely. What if life is like that but the other way around. Energy cannot be created or destroyed and it powers everything. The neurons in your brain are powered by energy it gets from glucose. I feel like everything sort of works like a puppet to this greater energy and when we die maybe we just realize we are a part of it. It feels like I have almost stumbled on my own relgion, but I am willing to accept that it probably isnt really like this and I am not intellegent enough to truly understand how everything works. Its just what I like to believe

Hi, I come from a very Catholic family but never really believed in God. I slowly took distance from religion and now I'm exploring atheism.

Recently found a video about how the "fine tuning" argument was one of the more difficult for atheists to answer.

But thinking about it the argument is the same theists apply when they don't know the origin of something. Since the origins of humankind, we always filled the gaps of the unexplained with the supernatural, specially when there's an apparent order or improbability in this case.

Science might not know why the universe is like it is, but the improbability of it doesn't prove intelligent design.

Edit: Thanks for all the answers, very good points in the comments, and sorry I'm replying so late and didn't explain what the argument is:

The fine-tuned universe is the hypothesis that, because "life as we know it" could not exist if the constants of nature – such as the electron charge, the gravitational constant and others – had been even slightly different, the universe must be tuned specifically for life.[1][2][3][4] In practice, this hypothesis is formulated in terms of dimensionless physical constants.[5]

Taken from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-tuned_universe

Some more context - in the 1970s the Watchtower, which is the organization in charge of Jehovah’s Witnesses, made it official policy that married people couldn’t do oral or anal. However - those acts also didn’t count as sex, so if your husband fucked another woman in the ass, or had sex with an animal, it wasn’t “adultery” and you couldn’t get divorced, until they changed that policy later.

Keep in mind too that “disfellowshipping” means that no other Jehovah’s Witnesses could talk with you - no contact with family or JW friends, who are probably your only friends because you aren’t supposed to really socialize out of the religion. They just changed that policy (and now they say people are “removed” and you can talk long enough to invite someone to church) because it’s so fucked up that the Australian government took away benefits over it.

Just imagine though. You’re raised in a culture where you’re so sexually repressed that giving your husband a blowjob would put your salvation at stake, you walk in on him fucking an animal and absolutely everyone you’ve ever known and been close to turns on you!

This is from Raymond Franz’s Crisis of Conscious which is free/easy to find online. Written by a guy who was on the “Governing Body” of the cult.

Oklahoma’s top Senate leader said an inquiry is underway following “a bizarre and troubling situation” where two board members reported that they saw naked women on State Superintendent Ryan Walters’ office television. Senate President Pro Tem Lonnie Paxton, R-Tuttle, said the inquiry is being led by the Office of Management and Enterprise Services and “leadership at the agency is working through proper channels to initiate the investigation.”

Is it the beliefs? The dogmatism? The epistemology? Something else?

Why would churches endorse pedophiles and rapists? Hmmm I wonder...

I rejected the christ story around age 8. I told my mother that it seemed like a fairy tale. She got pretty upset.

I'm a history nerd, so maybe this won't apply to you. But learning about the early stages of christianity has been a lot of fun for nearly two years. Who'd have thought, right?

If you enjoy reading and learning and you dislike the hold that religion has on society, you might enjoy learning about the earliest stages of the church. There's so much material. The starter that I'll recommend is The Passover Plot. I've become way more radical after this, but I think this might be a good bridge for readers who are beginning their exploration. Hope you enjoy!

The story began in early 2017, when Abigail Piland was born without any obvious problems. But when the midwife who helped deliver her checked back the next day, Abigail didn’t look healthy. The midwife told mother Rachel Piland to take the child to a hospital because the baby “could suffer brain damage or die if not properly cared for.”

Rachel refused, insisting “God makes no mistakes.”

Days later, Abigail was dead. (Rachel and her husband Joshua then prayed for Abigail’s resurrection. Surprise: That didn’t work, either.)

A medical examiner later attributed the death to “unconjugated hyperbilirubinemia and kernicterus,” both jaundice-related problems that were treatable. Abigail never had the chance to see a doctor when blood was coming out of her mouth, or when she wasn’t eating, or when her skin became further discolored. All because her parents put more trust in God than someone who could actually help.

I mean samatha/vipassana or whatever.

I encounter things relevant to atheism sometimes when I meditate.

Source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13501735/Syrian-refugee-murders-Westernised-daughter-18-honour-killing-dumps-canal-started-dating-local-Dutch-boy-wanted-stop-wearing-headscarf.html

A Syrian refugee who fled to the Netherlands has reportedly confessed to murdering his 18-year-old daughter and dumping her body in a canal before fleeing the country in an apparent admission note sent to a Dutch newspaper.

Father-of-nine Khaled al-Najjar, 52, wrote in an email sent to De Telegraaf that he had killed his 18-year-old daughter Ryan al-Najjar, urging the publication to report 'I am the one who killed'.

The confession did not specify exactly why he had decided to murder his daughter, with al-Najjar writing only that he was 'very angry with her', adding: 'The reason is between me and the judge. I will read that in court'.

But neighbours and friends suspect Ryan's death came as the result of an honour killing, with one claiming they had previously sheltered her when she had fled the family home in fear of retribution from her father.

Requesting anonymity to prevent any backlash, they told De Telegraaf that Ryan had a Dutch boyfriend, wanted to stop wearing a headscarf and had been beaten by her father who disagreed with her adoption of a Western lifestyle.