#angry atheist

[andromeda3116]

gah now i'm getting On My Shit about the discworld again and like i've said what i want to say about the witches and the watch but there's also small gods like i will never be over small gods i finished it and i was like... has this... has this healed some of my religious trauma?

if you've never read it, the plot is thus: on the disc, gods get their power from belief. therefore, the more believers a god has, the more powerful they are. and so, there is this god -- om -- who has risen in power, who has a country devoted to His worship, which hunts down and slaughters heretics and infidels, to whom people pray multiple times a day and make pilgrimages to His holy city, which has a huge citadel and huge structure of a complex religion devoted to his worship. and, on a whim, He comes down one day to see how things are going.

and discovers that he has no power.

that, in this country of millions who profess to worship Him with all their hearts, there is only one person left who actually believes in Him.

and there's a lot of meat there, and a lot more plot to delve into, but the core theme ends up boiling down to this:

can you forgive your god for how they failed you?

and do they deserve that forgiveness? how can they earn that forgiveness?

because ultimately, the forgiveness that the messianic archetype is embodying is not that of the god's grace, but of the people's -- to forgive their god his absence. to give their god another chance to be their god.

and whether or not you, in the end, can forgive, it gives you the language to realize that this is what you were asking for with your last prayers. whether or not you can ever go back, whether or not there have been other reasons since that have convinced you further, it gives you the language to accept that your god failed you. and it is not your fault.

this book speaks loudest, perhaps, to those of us who left our church with grief, not with anger. with hurt betrayal, not with the fires of defiance.

it didn't change my lack of religious belief, but it helped me conceptualize my feelings about the church, the things that went deeper than intellectual arguments. about that sense of betrayal, that hurt, that twisted-up knot within me that it had built, and it gave me the mirror within which i could see that i had been failed by my beliefs. it wasn't that i hadn't believed enough, it was that my belief had been betrayed by the absence of an answer.

there have been other reasons since then that have cemented my atheism, but small gods made me stop hating the church i used to love, because it made me recognize why i hated it so much and said "you're not wrong, it didn't have to be this way. you were betrayed and you were failed and you can let it go, now."

[sulumuns-dootah]

So I went to church today...

and yes, while the priest was talking I opened up WHB. I tried a 10 pull of Solomon seals bc hey, it would make for a funny post if I got Belphegor right there in the pew (didn't happen tho T-T) and then tried 10 key pull to try my luck to get Beel Attacker (also didn't happen x.x).

But what did however happen, was that I started clearing some stages from the Seraphim stages in Dark Sanctuary and Michael is open rn. At that exact same time the priest started thanking/calling out saints and one of them was Michael. And then cue in me, looking down at my phone to see Michael getting destroyed by 4 Levis.

[audreyrose7]

[oldfatwarlock]

Long story short, I hate that I ever was a Christian. I wasted most of my life on it, and all I got was fucking trauma.

[towards-toramunda]

Scratching my brain thinking about how interesting and frustrating and illuminating a conversation about the gods from all of taliesin’s main campaign pcs would be

[crime-scene-psychic]

Bold of my parents to get mad at me for saying "Jesus Christ" a lot growing up when THEY'RE the ones who let me watch Back to the Future on repeat

[captainjonnitkessler]

Just saw a post that was like “Christofascists don’t actually hate atheists, because atheists are culturally Christian and therefore don’t represent a threat to their worldview, sure they may hate you and exclude you and want to refuse you service and bar you from holding office but you’re not discriminated against the way religious minorities are :)”

Anyway the internet was a mistake and I’m logging off forever, goodbye

[im-the-j-in-anthony-j-crowley]

Options for God in the third season of good omens

Good omens having God as a real and tangible being is one of the most complicated things that occurs to me. Because I feel like she's going to show up in season three in some form, I feel like it's something that quite a few of us expect to happen.

And we have three options. She takes a stand against Aziraphale, Crowley and humanity. In favor of them. Or she stays as a narrator/outsider point.

I am an atheist. In fact, I'm worse than an atheist. Because I have this stance based entirely on contempt, that even if there were a more powerful being, I would not praise them. Because I refuse to worship someone who sees the misfortunes in the world and lets them happen. So...

The first option, against them, is the one that continues my line of thinking. Even existing, it is not worth it. And I would hate it.

I hold that line of thinking because I 100% believe it doesn't exist. I am an atheist. And I despise the idea of "greater good" that allows you to justify labeling people as unsalvageable, unforgivable (what Crowley calls himself, yes) and damnable.

God being real and taking a stand against them would confirm my worst nightmare in terms of the existence of a higher being, basically. It's a disgusting idea and I don't think it's something that people who believe in a god deserve to see in such a beautiful show.

In the event that God took a position in favor of them, we would have that confirmation that the plan was always to learn these things. That the goal from the beginning had been to learn to know right from wrong. And that the divisions are wrong.

God taking a stand for them would be confirmation that this was the right choice. And I feel that would be incredible.

I also think it's unlikely to happen, because to do so would be to sort of lose the closeness of the series.

The series feels extremely relatable even despite the fact that the main characters are immortal and extremely powerful beings. But God telling them they did the right thing (as beautiful as that would be) would take away from that.

We're not going to get that confirmation. And I feel like the only way for the series to maintain the very important lesson it's giving... is for them not to have it either.

God works in mysterious ways. And it should remain mysterious.

So basically I'm saying that I hope god is kept as a storyteller, maybe we (as viewers) could get confirmation that that was what she had wanted all along. That that was her plan. But I think the series would be much more meaningful if the characters don't get any confirmation.

You just have to do what's best for everyone, without waiting for confirmation that that's the right thing to do.

The only conformation should be knowing that everyone is a little better off after that.

[knowlesian]

whenever i watch midnight mass i am always struck by the contrast between bev and annie in their last moments

annie who meets the sun with faith and leads what’s left of her congregation in song, even knowing what they’ve done and that she is about to die because of it

and bev, who finds no fellowship and no forgiveness because she has never actually wanted to cultivate the first and she doesn’t think she’s done anything in her entire life that she might need forgiveness for, not even from god

[communistkenobi]

the next target of niche online discourse ire should be people who call themselves rationalists. I cannot think of a more 14-year-old-atheist way to describe your beliefs

[philsmeatylegss]

A huge underlying view among many terfs that frustrates me beyond belief is Islamophobia. I have seen countless of posts from Terfs using the stories of abused Muslim women as an excuse to say the whole religion is oppressive and sexist. I have seen so many posts about how hijabs and burkas are oppressive and women who choose to wear them are working against women’s rights. They often imply that most of, if not all, Muslim men are violent in the name of religion. They fail to make the obvious connection between the fact that there’s a huge difference between fascist governments using Islam as an excuse to oppress women and actual Islam and Muslims. Ofc women should have the right to chose if they want to be religious, if they want to cover up, if they want to take on a submissive role. No one is denying that. The reasons those rights are taken from women, often in the Middle East (which is what terfs often reference), is the fault of the government, not the religion. Yeah, there are abusive men who will use Islam as an excuse for their actions. Just like there are Christian men who will use Christianity as an excuse for their actions. Same goes for pretty much all religions. People covering up their abuse under the guise of religion is not limited to just Islam. It happens in most religions. It’s happened pretty much since religion started.

It’s just so ignorant and out of touch and you know they have never spoken to a Muslim person. If they did, they would know Muslims are the same as Christians and Jews and atheists and so on. It’s not some evil curse. It’s a religion that mainly focuses on peace. And to demonize it, using the horrors women have faced as an excuse is just so messed up. Most people on the internet haven’t realized there’s a big difference between a religion and people using that religion as a coverup for their shitty actions. The existence of governments using Islam to persecute women is because of bad people, not Islam. Terfs just want one group of people to be declared bad so they can blame everything on them. They claim to want to protect all women, and then condemn an entire religion. They talk about horrid treatment of women and blame religion rather than the perpetrators. It’s a very common belief a lot of them hold and I never see it mentioned and it just really pisses me off.

[p1ckthep01son]

my losing jesus story will never not be deeply hilarious to me. i literally just . learned that you could be gay in real life like all of the time not just in your imagination or in the sims or whatever like you could just be gay in real life. and i immediately went "okay yeah. that explains everything." and instantly became an atheist. 9 years (almost at that point) of catholic education, good old fashioned indoctrination, down the drain in like one afternoon of hanging out on the internet.

[audreyrose7]

I don't want to focus on the negative, but I found this on atheist-tok and it's too important to not share. The truth about Christianity has to get out there, even tho it's hard sometimes. It's an evil cult, focusing on control, sin, guilt and purity. If you're religious and you have even the sliver of doubt about what the Bible says, or what your church says, please get out! You deserve better, you deserve freedom! I can't tell you it's easy, because it's not! But to live without the chains of Christ is a freedom that is worth it 🩵

[ofekma]

I hope that I don't make any Arab of Muslim person feel bad. Not in the sense of "I can't be islamphobic because I am a Good Person™", in the sense of that I do have a lot of complicated feelings right now but I don't want any of those to be hatred for people who are not like.... Actively killing or getting people killed.

I'm sick and tired of being scared and sad and angry but I don't want those feelings to lead to other people getting hurt.

It's not easy and fun to be an Arab or a Muslim nowdays too. I know that. They don't deserve any harm. I'm sorry if I made anyone feel like they can't be safe around me.

[fellhellion]

Mentally ill about the way Shadowheart laughs off Tav answering “Yourself?” in response to her question about who she never thought she’d find herself caring for post rescuing the Tieflings. Like, it’s not that she can’t be selfish but just OUGH. The way Shadowheart sees herself as inextricable from her purpose as a Shar disciple here, to the point where she can’t recognise blindly accepting sanctioned pain like what happens to her hand as a form of not caring for Shadowheart, the person.

[slaughterlmao]

i hate how religion affects ppls lives and they dont even notice a thing. they let beliefs and superstitions pull the strings and they obey every single rule they made themselves. they live in constant fear and are not even able to make decisions or to have certain thoughts. you are not "free" or "spiritual" if you believe in shit you are weak. fuck you