atheismvids

[atheismvids]

Famous Atheists

Ernst Abbe (1840-1905)

Together with Otto Schott and Carl Zeiss, he laid the foundation of modern optics. Abbe developed numerous optical instruments.

By a generous scheme of profit-sharing he virtually handed over his business to the workers.

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Joseph McCabe (1945). A Biographical Dictionary of Ancient, Medieval, and Modern Freethinkers. Haldeman-Julius Publications. Retrieved 7 April 2013

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Masterpost of Ex-Muslim Resources

Dare to Doubt

Free Hearts Free Minds (provides mental health support to ex muslims in muslim majority countries)

Secular Therapy

Sabatina EV (an ex-muslim organisation in Germany)

Ex Muslims of North America

The Ex-Muslim: The premier destination for Ex-Muslim commentary

Exmuslims of India (ExMIN)

Council of Ex Muslims of Britain

Committee to protect Muslims and Ex-Muslims (CPME)

Atheist Republic

Faith to Faithless

Faithless Hijabi (for ex-muslim women) 

Books

Unveiled: How Western Liberals Empower Radical Islam - Yasmine Mohammed

Infidel - Ayaan Hirsi Ali

The Apostates: When Muslims Leave Islam - Simon Cottee

Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out - Ibn Warraq

Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now - Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Nomad: From Islam to America: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations - Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Understanding Muhammed and Muslims - Ali Sina

Youtube Channels

Ex Muslims of North America

Mimzy Vidz

Apostate Prophet

Infidel Noodle

Hassan Radwan

Sherif Gaber

The Ex-Muslim

Exmuslim Scandinavia

Ex-Muslims of Norway

ExMuslim TV

Some info about islam, muslims, and ex-muslims

How to help ex-muslims

Misogyny in Islam

Homophobia in Islam

More Muslims are leaving Islam

Hijab is not empowering 

Forced Hijab

How to take off your hijab

Muslim beliefs

Muslim extremism

How to survive Ramadan

Tips for ex muslims on social media

How Islam views non-muslims

Iran’s secular shift

This is all I could find for now. If you know of any more resources, please let me know and I will add them to this post  

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quitmormon.com (a pro-bono legal team that helps people resign from the church) is fundraising to get a full-time paid lawyer and provide free mental health services to people leaving mormonism (especially LGBTQ+ people and our allies)

link to send support:

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Weird questions for atheists (2/?)

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To be purely secular requires practice and attention. A surprising moment like a sneeze [e.g., “Bless you!”] can demand an improvised response. Bodies and their habits can betray secular people like me who are not properly trained.

Late one evening at the same conference in Amherst, I spent a couple of hours at a bar with the conference organizers and some of the older student leaders who were also graduate students. We had drunk enough that we were in our feelings, so to speak, and we were talking about the experience of being an outsider, which all of us shared. A secular humanist conference in a suburb of Buffalo is, after all, probably not where people who grew up fitting in are likely to find themselves.

Dan, a former Christian and a leader of a secular student group in Illinois, tried to express to us how fortunate he felt to have a college degree and be in graduate school despite having grown up very poor.

He stumbled over his words on his first attempt, and then he did so again. Watching his mouth pantomime a word, I suddenly realized what Dan was avoiding: he wanted to tell us that he felt "blessed." I spoke up and said that it can be hard to find secular words for how we feel when we speak a language and live in a culture that are so thoroughly organized around Christianity. Everyone agreed. But when I suggested that this Christian saturation makes it acceptable to use Christian language sometimes, my sense was that no one else felt comfortable using the b-word.

—Joseph Blankholm, The Secular Paradox: On the Religiosity of the Not Religious

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The Right to Non-Christian Secularity

About ten days ago, I wrote a series of posts regarding the difficulties Jews and people of other minority faiths encounter in western society when it comes to having our holidays respected and recognized. I got a lot of feedback from Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Jains, etc. echoing my sentiments (some of which was absolutely heartbreaking), and I have additionally seen a variety of other posts on the matter that underline my point. When reading all of the notes and comments relevant to these posts, I noticed a very similar theme reappearing time after time:

“I didn’t take off for X holiday because I’m not that religious, but the scheduling was very inconvenient for my more observant friend or family member.” 

Indeed, I had previously quoted former MLB player Gabe Kapler, who once made the justification to play baseball on Yom Kippur by saying: 

“I am not really a practicing Jew. It would be selfish to be a practicing Jew on only one day.”

It would seem that many people have been led to believe that observing a Jewish or Muslim or Hindu holiday is cheating unless you are sincerely devout. 

Well, I have a special message for those people: 

YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO NON-CHRISTIAN SECULAR OBSERVANCES

This is important, so I’m going to say it again: 

YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO NON-CHRISTIAN SECULAR OBSERVANCES

Think of all the times you have been chided by secular Christian friends for not celebrating Christmas.

“It’s not really even a religious holiday anymore,” people will tell you. “It’s just a nice time for families to get together and celebrate.” 

Well, guess what? So is Rosh Hashanah. So is Eid. So is Diwali. 

A secular Jew might not want to go to synagogue on Rosh Hashanah, but that doesn’t mean they don’t want to fly home for Rosh Hashanah dinner to be with their family. 

A non-practicing Muslim may have lost interest in regular religious practices, but that doesn’t mean they don’t still look forward to Eid celebrations.

A lapsed Hindu can still have fond memories of celebrating Diwali as a youth, and want to continue on with their family traditions. 

There is no written rule that says only people from Christian backgrounds can be non-religious and still celebrate their cultural holidays. There is no law that says only Christmas and Easter can be boiled down to family dinners and fun festivities. 

BEING A SECULAR PERSON FROM A MINORITY FAITH DOES NOT INVALIDATE YOUR RIGHT TO YOUR OWN CULTURAL BACKGROUND. 

It doesn’t matter if you haven’t prayed in years or don’t believe in God. If you want a day off for your holiday, take it. No matter what, it’s still yours. 

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Atheists don’t need a reason for why we don’t want to be called “cultural Christians” the fact that we don’t want to be called that is reason enough! When it comes to every other group on this site they are allowed to identify however they want and outsiders don’t get to define them but when it comes to atheists who are ex Christian that rules doesn’t apply for some reason!!! Fuck that!!

Anywhere outside of this site, "cultural Christian" is a *self-identifier* used by people who don't identify as Christian but still feel a connection to the Christian culture they were raised in.

And people try to justify calling individuals "cultural Christians" with "oh, well I don't mean you're ACTUALLY a Christian, I just mean you need to acknowledge that Christianity has influenced your culture and so you need to unpack some of your beliefs!"

Which is true! But it's true of EVERYONE. So if you wouldn't feel comfortable calling an American Jew or Muslim a 'cultural Christian', maybe YOU should unpack why you think atheists are uniquely vulnerable to social influence and therefore subject to being forcibly identified by a religion they've explicitly rejected.

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It's tough to be a black atheist. Derek's experiences and feelings are very common, especially among black ex-christians.

While these hosts don't really seem to grok the historical weight behind black christendom, I love that they ask questions about how to be better allies and provide community resources.

Unfortunately, the Black Freethinkers group no longer seems to exist, and the Crommunist Manifesto is no longer being updated. Black Nonbelievers is the current largest organization I could find focusing on black atheists.

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Similarities between being aro/ace and being an atheist:

Huge contingent of people who don’t believe we’re marginalized and don’t belong with the rest of the [queer community/religious minorities]

“But [religion/sex] is what makes us human!”

“It’s so sad that you’re missing out on so much :(”

“Oh, is it because you were traumatized?”

“So you’re basically [Christian/cishet] right?”

“Passing privilege” aka “You can’t be readily identified as “other” so you must not face any systemic discrimination and if you do try to talk about discrimination you’ve experienced then you’re just playing Oppression Olympics”

Other [atheists/aspecs] playing respectability politics and throwing the rest of us under the bus (”Oh I’m not one of Those [angry bitter atheists/prudish celibate aces], I love [religion/having sex]”)

Online communities got absolutely destroyed in the 2010s to the point where it’s still hard to find decent ones

Heavily stereotyped based on internet depictions that have little in common with the actual communities

“This is a white person thing”

“This is just a rebellious phase, you’ll grow out of it”

The dawning realization that media didn’t make that up and people actually do [believe/feel] that

Lateral aggression exists from other marginalized groups via [anti-atheist sentiment from religious people/amatonormativity from queer people] but nobody ever wants to address that

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one thing i notice about tumblr religious discourse is that people have a really strongly pro-religious bias, in that they’ll extremely broadly define what is “religious” but very narrowly define what is “atheistic” or “irreligious”, which is very bizarre to me. like, when it comes to what is “atheistic” or “irreligious”, people will go like “um actually you celebrate christmas so you’re actually a christian” or “well this survey says only a small percentage of this country identifies as a ‘convinced atheist’, which means the rest of the population must be very religious” or “well it says they’re ‘agnostic’, which means they aren’t actually atheists” (even tho agnosticism is literally “i don’t know what’s out there and i don’t care to find out”, which is much closer to “irreligious” than it is to “religious”)

but when it comes to defining what IS religious, people are like “if you grew up in a christian country you are culturally christian, sorry”, and it’s like, that’s ridiculous! it’s like people are trying to forcibly categorize people as religious against their will, even when they’re very clearly not! what’s up with that! literally no atheist has ever gone like “well you celebrate international workers day, and communism and socialism are associated with atheism, which means you’re actually an atheist”, so why are people so bent on “if you celebrate christmas, you’re a christian”? it’s so nonsensical to assign personal identities like that to people who don’t want it and very clearly aren’t it!

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re the last reblog, i was way nicer about being an atheist before i got people calling me a "christian atheist", speculating wildly on my trauma and using it to patholgize me, telling religious abuse survivors their abuse was a privilege, and straight up telling me what I believed.

i think religious people will see someone who is openly nonreligious and just forget about the basic respect that should be due to anyone and their personal beliefs because they consider us such an inherent threat to their existence.

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I bring a 'you should critique all institutions' energy to the party that people don't like apparently

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Ok, at a time of year when it's not remotely topical, I'd like to share my opinion on the whole "is Christmas secular" debate. The answer is, unsurprisingly I think: it depends on what you mean by secular!

In general, secular tends to be used to mean something like "religiously neutral". This is what we mean when we say "secular government", for instance. This contrasts with, e.g., explicit atheism, which might technically fall under some dictionary definitions of secular, but which we don't as often refer to that way. So the question is, then, what is religious neutrality? Here's where I think the trouble is.

On one reading, "religiously neutral" might mean "absent of religious symbolism or associations; wholly irreligious". On this reading, Christmas is obviously not secular. It started out as a celebration of Jesus's birth! Insofar as it contains elements of various pagan traditions, an exaggerated but not untrue fact, those too are obviously religious in origin. The actual Christian-ness of a given Christmas celebration will vary, but it's essentially never absent (and it's hard to imagine how it could be so). Christmas is plainly not irreligious.

Another reading of "religious neutrality", though, refers more narrowly to a lack of ownership by a specific religious tradition. This is the sense in which something like meditation is secular. Meditation has a prominent place in a number of religious traditions, and indeed you will be hard pressed to find a treatment of meditation which is truly absent the influence of any of this history. Even among practitioners of meditation in the West, who largely don't adhere to any specific Hindu or Buddhist doctrines about it, you'll still find most exponents borrowing at least some amount of terminology and/or a pastiche of symbolism from such traditions. Meditation is secular in the sense that it is an element of many different traditions, and of the practice (religious or otherwise) of people of many different backgrounds, such that no tradition can unilaterally claim it. It is not secular in the sense that it is absent religious content or associations in all or most cases.

Christmas, I think, is something of an intermediate case. It is certainly much more localized to the Christian tradition than meditation is to Hinduism or Buddhism. That said, it would be sociologically dishonest not to acknowledge the vast numbers of people in the West with little or no Christian affiliation who do in fact celebrate Christmas. This includes both non-religious descendants of formerly Christian families, and a certain number of immigrants from non-Christian backgrounds (e.g. some East Asians) who may celebrate Christmas as a form of wholly secular-minded cultural assimilation. This coincides with a gradual recession in the amount of explicit Christian symbolism present in your average American Christmas celebration, driven in part (I think) by a general rise in irreligiousity and at the same time by the ever-increasing corporatization of Christmas.

These non-Christian observants to Christmas typically don't assign religious meaning to it, and typically shift focus away from the religious aspects of the holiday onto forms of practice that don't have much of anything to do with Christian doctrine at all.

If you look at basically any tradition, you will see a long history of flux, of cross-cultural borrowing, and of adaptation to new contexts and new ideas. I think, if you have a general model of how this happens, it's easy to see that in modern day America (at least) Christmas is participating in this very routine process. It is undergoing a shift away from the strictly Christian status it has had in this country in the past, and into a new cultural niche, in which it's practiced by many people who are not and have never been Christians in any meaningful sense. This should not be surprising—it happens all the time.

Now, of course, this is not to say that people should be forced to celebrate Christmas if they don't want to! A lot of the people who are most ardent in saying "Christmas is not secular" are people of non-Christian religious backgrounds, who have had the rhetoric of a "secular Christmas" used against them to force them into a practice that goes against their religious beliefs. This is, flatly, not ok—in the same way it would be flatly not ok if someone tried to force you to practice meditation with the argument "meditation is secular". I am absolutely on these people's side in this context.

On the other hand, to insist that there is some inherently Christian essence in Christmas that it retains no matter who is practicing it and how is incorrect. It ignores the way traditions change over time and are borrowed and adapted to new ends. In this sense it is not a sensible sociological position.

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I don't know how to explain to people that if you respond to "But Christmas is secular!" with "Christmas can't be secular!" you are making the same fundamental mistake the first person made.

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Some people will think my childhood must have been a wonder-less, data-driven wasteland, where all decisions were based on cold logic and the sky was just a God-shaped hole. I would however, like to set the record straight: I never felt the absence of religion in my life. My parents are two of the most moral and ethical people I’ve ever met. There was love everywhere, as well as stories and community and tradition, and we always, of course, celebrated Christmas.