Atheism

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/12341752

Alabama’s supreme court ruling that frozen embryos are ‘children’ is a chilling example of the Republican party’s extremism

In a case centering on wrongful-death claims for frozen embryos that were accidentally destroyed at a fertility clinic, the Alabama supreme court ruled last Friday that frozen embryos are “children” under state law.

As a result, several Alabama in-vitro fertilization (IVF) clinics are ceasing services, afraid to store or destroy any embryos.

The underlying issue is whether government can interfere in the most intimate aspects of people’s lives – not only barring people from obtaining IVF services but also forbidding them from entering into gay marriage, utilizing contraception, having out-of-wedlock births, ending their pregnancies, changing their genders, checking out whatever books they want from the library, and worshipping God in whatever way they wish (or not worshipping at all).

All these private freedoms are under increasing assault from Republican legislators and judges who want to impose their own morality on everyone else. Republicans are increasingly at war with America’s basic separation of church and state.

Humanism, atheism, skeptics, and rationalists, oh my! A very detailed and clear history of the important figures and movements in atheism

The state's highest court reversed a judge's dismissal of the case involving embryos destroyed by a wandering Mobile hospital patient.

In this episode, I speak with Anthony Magnabosco a founder and the current Executive Director of the nonprofit Street Epistemology International, an educational organization that is committed to addressing dysfunction in public and private discourse by encouraging rationality through civil conversation. Anthony has been involved with Street Epistemology since 2013, and has given dozens of talks and workshops at conferences and events domestically and internationally. Many of his conversations have been uploaded to YouTube and demonstrate how Street Epistemology can be applied to a variety of claims including ones that are spiritual, political, or societal.

cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/8583718

If you feel like there was some big mistake when you were created, then let’s just be brutally honest and say that we don’t share the same definition of God.

“God doesn’t make mistakes.”

Like making people trans, right?

“No not like that.”

Sun Feb 4 19:12:09 2024 UTC by Early_Particular_962

I was never a particularly religious person, I would call myself a Muslim because I had been told that was what I was, I never accepted it myself. My partner I would say the same about, he and his family were a little more traditional, in that they’d fast and pray etc. he would otherwise do whatever he wanted anyway, smoke, drink, sex, etc.

as our relationship went on for longer, it was important to him that I be more Muslim, in fact he had discussed with his friend whether he should give me an a ultimatum of doing that or he’d leave me. Retrospectively, I wish he had the balls to do that then. We did talk, and he did say that he would prefer if we were both more Muslim, to which I clearly remember saying, 1) I need to read the Quran myself in a language I can understand 2) not gonna half ass it if I were to, so I’m not there now anyway. 3) who I am as a person, a woman, a feminist, I will always find it hard to worship a male god or a male a prophet.

Time went on, this conversation came up and went because like I said neither of us were religious or practicing in our lives or times. The more he would ask, the more I would bring up things like how he doesn’t himself know what the Quran says cos he’s only ever read it in Arabic, and had it translated back by Islamic teachers, or has been told by other people.

So eventually, I read it in English myself, I found several copies in English translation. Another thing I think is important to mention about me is that I am a die hard feminist, the oppression I grew up with under Islam combined with the country I came from, molded me into a woman who will not allow for misogyny or sexism to slide from anyone in my life, not my parents, family, friends etc. So imagine me, a woman before I am anyone’s daughter, opening up the surah about women and reading that essentially men were made first and then women after to be it’s “mate”. I of course, raised this to him, and asked if he genuinely and truly believed this was the case and the purpose of my being, to which he had nothing to say. I told him this book talks a lot about slaves, which he found pretty shocking himself.

Anyway, I gave it another chance, read some more verses and Hadith’s and it just gets worse. The entire ideology is based on the complete dominance, subjugation and oppression of the female sex by the male. The things I have learned about Mohammed and the Quran will haunt me. So when, I raised this to him again, he tells me stuff about misinterpretation and etc whatever other bullshit Muslims say when they’re faced with facts and figures. I also raised surrah 4:24 about how u can rape ur slaves and he just tells me he doesn’t believe in that, he couldn’t say it was wrong. Just that he didn’t think it was right.

When he could not say the words “Mohammed was wrong” it was over for us. As a woman, and a person alive not in 6th century Arabia I just find it hard to relate to the thing he invented and the people who follow it.

Also I’m in a fairly vulnerable mental health state and have been for awhile, I think learning about the Quran and putting 2+2 together to realize that this was why my life and all the other women in my family’s lives have all been so, so awful, was just the final straw. I am completely broken that this sick ideology destroyed my life, my family, now it stole the love of my life from me, I don’t know how to cope with the fact that he chose a man who lived 1400 years ago that married a girl so young when she went to his house she took her toys. When I insisted our children will not be Muslim, he told me he will teach them good and allow them to question the bad, but that’s awful too! Because you’re leading them to believe something that is so flawed, so they can learn the things I’ve learned? The terrible things I’ve learned? I don’t think he has anyone else to blame, I loved him enough to read that book and he did not love me enough to condemn a 6th century rapist.

How can I cope? Was I wrong? How do I move on? My family have me on suicide watch and they won’t let me go home but all I want is to be alone because no one understands that is the worst thing he could’ve done to me, I’d rather he had cheated.

Edit: I left out we were together for 4 years, met in uni and so in total we’ve known each other for 8 years and were big parts of each others lives as friends and then a relationship, so we knew each other very well, I knew he was somewhat more religious than me and he knew I hadn’t given Islam more thought than “that’s been pretty shit for my life” we’ve been having these discussions for at least 18 months. In that time he never learned a thing about Islam but asked me plenty to do that. And all this is still very recent also, this all went down Monday and Tuesday.

Edit 2: I just want to say I am so grateful and thankful to each and every one of you all for all your kind words. After a life time of gaslighting it is such a relief to know that it was never me or my family, it was always the religion.

Wed Jan 17 16:55:57 2024 UTC by CrazyPaya234

On an alt because my brother knows about my main, and I don't want this attention to come towards my parents and make it to my grandparents [somehow]

I never had a relationship with my grandparents from either side of my family. On my father's side, they died before I was born, and on my mother's I barely ever saw them. And when I did, it seemed as though they had no intensions of speaking or interacting with me. I was at home for the longer weekend because my parents needed help cleaning out the attic, and in one of the old boxes there was a old picture of my grandmother and my mom when she was younger. The picture got me thinking about why my mother's grandparents always had acted so strange around me, as if they were avoiding me entirely. I brought the subject up to my mother while we were cleaning up the attic, and she told me why. She told me that my grandparents had always been hyper-religious, specifically catholic. This came as no surprise as I had deduced such from various mannerisms they had shown in the little time I had meet them. She finally said that the reason my grandparents didn't want to be around me was because I was left handed.

WHAT.

She explained further that the left-hand had been interpreted as the devil's hand as a catholic superstition. Because of this, my grandparents had always been wary of me, which grew out to them avoiding having a relationship with me entirely. I'm at a loss for words as to how these insane traditions continue to be prevalent in religious circles, especially in older individuals. It saddens me that despite how Christians often claim to be a welcoming community to all people, that many exclusive and elitist traditions continue to be practiced. I hope as time goes on, we open our eyes to realize how absolutely batshit insane these traditions, and maybe religions as a whole, really are.