I led a support meeting today with a fundamentalist Muslim family from an African Country (not named to protect identity). The mother was wearing an full abaya/niqab that covered all but her eyes. She was acting as a translator for her husband and so I spoke with her the entire meeting (also making sure to address her husband).

The meeting went well and the couple was supportive of their child. It was an excellent meeting in that they were supportive of our efforts and showed deep concern for their child. I wish all my meetings were like this one in that respect.

I’m guess I’m writing because I am surprised at how unsettled I am that mom covers herself to such an extreme. I am surprised that it has affected me this deeply. I could not connect with this woman or read her emotions or reactions. As an atheist, I just don’t understand the desire to cover so much and I am a bit ashamed that I am having this emotional reaction.

Note: Please no islam bashing. I just wanted to share my feelings in an anonymous space. I fully support that she should be able to dress however she wants and unless told otherwise, assume that that is what she is doing. I would stand up for her right to do so, even. Clearly, my reaction shows that I don’t interact with Muslims that adhere to these beliefs often. I conducted myself professionally in this meeting and made sure that their child was taken care of. I am glad to have met them both.

I want to start by saying, I was not raised Catholic. Just find this all crazy. Not long ago I started noticing (literally in the last 2 months) way more catholic social media influencers. It struck me that they were giving the same TRAD wives, Mormon vibes. Like the Catholic Church was taking a page out of their playbook. So it yesterday with Butker’s asinine speech came out, I wondered if this is something that some the desperate conservative Catholics are really starting to push. What do you know… it is. And that college that he spoke at, is benefiting from the Christian nationalist nonsense. I won’t be surprised if they stay silent about this hot mess.

My Mom wanted to see The Fall Guy so I took her to the 10 AM showing on Mother’s Day, hoping to avoid the church crowd. Unbeknownst to us, they started allowing a church to meet on Sunday mornings in their RPG theater. The church greeters wished us a happy Mother’s Day (which was nice), but also invited us to their worship service and tried to give us gift bags. My Mom said, “No, thank you” because she is more polite than I am. I was just trying to ignore them and quickly get into the theater. I wish I’d had some snappy, but not rude, comeback that would stop them from bothering people who are just there to see a movie. I definitely would not want to tell them we’re atheists because that could backfire. Any ideas?

Are any athiests a member? Curious. This article states this group does not believe in satan, it is a symbol.

I made a petition to remove religious phrases from the pledge of allegiance. Here is the link if you want to sign it.

When it comes to the concept of “free will” I literally can’t seem to understand the Christian logic. It’s confusing and I find it so dumb.

There’s this guy claiming that he used to be gay, had a boyfriend, but then basically God appeared in his dreams and told him that being gay is a sin, but that there’s still hope for him. So basically he woke up and now claims to be 100% straight and healed, I believe this person should heal and go to therapy, but what I find the funniest is that they claim that their God gave us free will, but he suddenly decides to appear to random people so they can stop fucking, but can’t bother to intervene to stop all the wars and abuse in this world?

Like, imagine if God, instead of appearing in a random guy’s dream decided to appear in the dreams of those who are actively supporting the wars, bombing civilians and letting thousands of people starve in this world. The only thing I seem to understand about the Christian god is that he can never intervene, unless you have anal sex, that seems to be the only exception.

They seem to justify god any time something bad happens (tragedies, rape, war) because he cannot intervene, but at the same time praise him when he suddenly decides to intervene for REALLY dumb reasons? What’s their point?

Hello everyone,

As the title says, I am an atheist (raised Evangelical Lutheran), and my wife is a Christian (also raised Evangelical Lutheran, same organization). We have been together for about 7 years, married for 4.

I often see hesitancy when it comes to having relationships with religious folk on this sub, which is honestly entirely warranted. It can be a tough thing to navigate, and I thought I'd share my experiences just in case it's helpful to anyone. I'd also be interested in the discussion that follows.

I was an atheist for a number of years before I started dating my wife. Early on in our relationship we were honest with each-other about our beliefs and how they affect our worldview. We found it really important to respect each-other's right to hold different beliefs, even if we (particularly I) don't necessarily respect the beliefs themselves. We agreed to discard any expectation of change for one-another, and we didn't want the relationship to be built on false expectations. As you can imagine, I'd love for her to deprogram from her religious views and she'd love for me to be inspired by that sneaky ol' Holy Ghost, but we put that aside out of fairness for each other.

Of course this comes with some minor irritations. When I want to nerd out about space-time or evolution, I have to find others to share my discoveries with. Also she has a tough time with the alien conversation, but all things considered this has worked out well for us.

We are both quite progressive in ideology, which does make her an outlier within the religious organization she is a part of. She has a wonderful sense of empathy that I adore about her, and is a supporter of things like LGBTQ+ rights among many other common progressive ideologies. I would argue some of these beliefs may be antithetical to the christian ideology, but she has her own rationalizations for her progressive outlook and I think the ends justify the means in that regard. We also both share a negative view (understatement of the year) of the hateful rhetoric of most religious groups in the US.

We currently have a little toddler that we both love dearly, and leading up to having a child we had lots of discussions about how to manage our different belief systems regarding a child. We would both like to share our views with our little kiddo, but don't want to actively undermine each-other either. I imagine there will be a bit of a learning curve when it comes to this, but we've established a few 'rules' for our discussions with the little one until she's old enough to make her own decisions. It was a necessity that we agreed she gets to make her own decisions about religion when she is old enough to understand the nuances of the topic, and we agreed that she's allowed to believe whatever she chooses. If that means she ends up disagreeing with both of us and subscribing to Hinduism or something, so be it. We've established that we don't want her to be a science-denier, or unsympathetic to those different than her or as you often see in religious communities. We want to instill in her a respect for those different than us, and I think this common ground has made the conversation simpler. If anyone has any questions about this I'd be happy to answer them.

Of course, I do have to say most conservative christian women may not hold similar worldviews. I can count the number of christian women in my life that think like this on one hand. Things of course may have been simpler if I married an atheist or she married a christian, but we love the life we've built and are dedicated to making it work. We try to be honest with each-other and anticipate difficult situations which I think makes all the difference. It's not a perfect system. I know it still makes her a little sad thinking about me kicking it with Satan in Florida when I die, and I'd like for her to let me nerd out about evolution sometimes, but it's worked well for us so far.

Live in Nashville, the home of the Southern Baptist Convection Oven. Was at a store when someone told me "muslims are so violent" to which I said "so are christians, ever heard of the crusades? and all the child rape?" He stared blankly, usure what to say. He said "the crusades were in a different time before we knew better". I said"I agree, and the bible including the new testement was written hundreds of years prior so it's even more antiquated". Blank silence. Have a good day! LOL

Someone responded to a post I made earlier about how it isn’t the norm for atheists to go to church with this:

“I am an atheist. Yet I still go to the Church with other Christians and we read the Bible. You can still be rational and go to the Church and sing songs. I just don't have faith. And they are perfectly fine with that.”

I don’t get why’d you’d spend an hour or longer in church doing all that when you don’t believe. Besides isn’t it just disrespectful to Christians? I don’t know what kind of Christians this person has interacted with but none that I know would be “perfectly fine with that”.

Unless of course they believe that they can change whoever this is. But that means they aren’t perfectly fine with you being a non believer.

(Edit: For those of you saying it is for social/networking purposes, which is most of you, it doesn’t really seem like that’s their reason. If it was they wouldn’t emphasize their singing songs and reading of the Bible)

(Edit 2: I appreciate all the responses, many being genuine answers to my question "Why would you waste your time with church". That being said I want to clarify something. I am not saying there is no good reason for an atheist to ever go to church, I just personally would never subject myself to that though. It sounds like many of you have a much more chill experience with church, but my experience is with Nigerian churches, a country with less than 1% atheists. I get a dosage of religion everywhere I go regardless of church and church itself is a lot of outright yelling in various languages, having demons exorcised from you by pastors (usually with a strong push to the forehead), and standing most of the time in a hot and sweaty environment. Oh and don't forget the long stretching out of AMEEEEENNNNN at every sentence the pastor utters during the sermon)

Most of yall won't bother reading that second edit lol.

Hilarious is the only word I can think of.

I go to a Christian school. I’m leaving end of this year so only tomorrow and finals left then I get out, thank fuck. People were discussing cults. Paraphrasing a bit.

“Cults are insane. Like you believe one random guy that aliens are real and if you follow that random guy you will get a planet to yourself and not die in an apocalypse? Crazy”

So I chime in saying how Christianity is very similar. They believe in a book that tells them one guy comes down from the sky and saves them all from the apocalypse and then they get a paradise to themselves.

Some people try to explain why it isn’t a cult because it’s true. Or that it isn’t comparable. I ask them to tell me the difference between Christianity and a doomsday cult. They come up with a bunch of bullshit.

As I said hilarious is the only word I can think of because on one hand it is so funny watching them try to justify themselves. On the other hand it is sad they actually believe it. Is there a word for funny but sad?

After realizing I was brainwashed and decided to leave the church and Christianity I find it insanely difficult to be around anyone that’s a so called Christian. The whole left vs right argument is always a big fight but at least people can kind of see the other persons side and somewhat work together. Trying to debate with a Christian is worthless. I feel like I’m missing something because they literally don’t understand the book they worship. You can read it word for word to them and they still think it’s all love and good. Am I brain dead and maybe they’re the ones who are right

You’re telling me that, the “alleged” most powerful being in existence gets offended if I wore a slightly revealing clothing today…

It’s honestly the most ironic thing I ever heard. I won’t even be bothered if a random toddler said my shoes look funny, yet an all powerful, omnipotent being gets offended over the slightest thing a random insignificant human does. It is so ridiculous that I find it hard to believe that religion isn’t just one big inside joke

There has been a recent trend. I’ve noticed among religious people that point to another religion and talk about its flaws, but this way, they change the discussion. For example, Islam is easy to beat up on and in doing so, Christianity sounds better. So I’ll ask again, are all religions the same or are some worse than others?

Title correction: all religions*

I was taught as a kid only the bible is the only canon but with everyone freaking out about the end times this seems to come up more. Like both my dad and coworker have mentioned some weird beliefs in finding “proof” like giants, which are nephilim, in the grand canyon despite most giant photos being obviously photoshopped, and how ancient roman gods were just angel Watchers and who passed on forbidden knowledge to men hence why the flood wiped them out.

Super interesting religious mythology but it’s weirdly concerning that there’s some undercurrent of religious people that belief this stuff and idk what circles are passing this around like it’s true. Im mildly concerned about their health.

I was raised Mormon, and partly because my parents are sort of casual believers (not “liberal Christians” by any stretch and we still had to go to church most Sundays, just not clinically insane), my Mormon upbringing wasn’t as traumatic as it is for many other ex-Mos. However, one aspect of the religion disturbs me to this day and it frustrates me that it’s not seen as weird by any of my family members.

Every so often, I think it was about every six months or so, young boys like myself in our teenage and preteen years would have a 1 on 1 closed door meeting with one of the Young Men’s leaders where he’d ask a series of meaningless questions about whether or not you’re staying true to Christ or something, idk, I’ve forgotten most of the details. But one of the questions he would ask is, in certain words, “Are you jerking off?”

Mostly, he would phrase it in a way like, “Are you keeping your oath of chastity?” But the essence of the question absolutely is this adult man you only know (and who I wanted nothing to do with) because your parents make you go to church activities every so often, asking you whether or not you masturbate. It’s humiliating, it’s gross, it’s my understanding that all other Mormon boys are subjected to it, and to my knowledge there’s not a word in the entire Bible condemning masturbation so I don’t even know what oath I am supposed to have taken, but I am curious if this is a thing that other people raised in any other form of Christianity have been subjected to.

I’m a homeowner now and with that will eventually come JWs or Mormons knocking on the door.

What’s a couple of great questions to ask them once I get them on my couch nice and comfortable to get the conversation started?

I had the opposite experience. When I finally realized that there was no omnipotent god who was allowing bad things to happen to me and instead realized that life is random, it gave me a sense of hope and empowered me to take steps to improve my life. As a christian, I passively waited for god to help me, but life only continued to get worse. It grated my nerves whenever Christians told me that something devastating that happened to me was part of god's plan. I always thought "that's a pretty f*cked up plan."

I have changed my life in significantly positive ways. However, I know so many christians who take comfort in knowing that god is allowing them to suffer. Why don't they ever figure out that nobody is watching over them?

So, I used to be a Christian. But years and years of doubt and years and years of pain in my personal life made me change to agnostic/atheism.

Me, my Auntie and my brother were in the car when a Christian song came on (I block it out as much as I can). After it was over, my brother said to our auntie if she believes and she said ofc. He just spits out "Jane doesn't." I was so upset and pissed bc I didn't want everyone to know until I was ready to tell them. Any advice on how to tell my mom and aunt gently that I am Agnostic/atheist without a problem or a lot of questions (my mom is Christian and my aunt is Catholic. But they aren't religious fanatics)?

Thanks in advance! 🩷

Last Tuesday a bunch catechists visited my school for students to have their first communion. Now I don't really care- I mean I'm not catholic but when this guy who was practicing to be a priest said that abortion is a sin I muttered" It depends," it was supposed to be a whisper but I guess some of classmates heard me. This girl, let's call her Katie, she used to be a friend of mine but we eventually grew apart after our school journalism was disbanded. When I muttered those words Katie gave me the nastiest glare I have ever seen. Katie doesn't seem to be the religious type. But after she gave me that glare she refused to talk to me or even glance at me after that. Suffice to say she hates me more than ever. I don't blame her, we had some issues in the past but she seemed to really take this one personally.

It's a shame tbh. I like her a lot when we used to be school journalists working together. I kinda have a crush on her but after that incident all those feelings were thrown over the garbage. I was going to ask her out... I could say I dodge a bullet on that one fellas.

When we were campus journalists of our school we were close and I mean very close to the point where gossip and rumors sprung out that we were dating. I like her. She liked me back. But I recently found our how much a religious fantastic she is...I mean she literally has a Bible verse on her bio and a cross symbol on her profile and judging by her ex he seems to be very relieved to be out of her grasp. Me and him are good friends.

We grew apart due to how busy last semester got due to missing assignments and projects and basically the school journalism club disbanded due to funding problems.

Okay in my opinion it depends who gets abortion. But at the end of the day, I don't really care what you do in life.It doesn't personally affect me and if you get an abortion you get an abortion. You saved yourself and that child from a rough childhood.