Atheism
Community Guide
Archive Today will help you look at paywalled content the way search engines see it.
Statement of Purpose
- This is a support and conversation community for people who don't believe in gods.
- Superstition hucksters have no reason to subscribe or post here at all.
- If you are looking to debate or proselytize, options will be linked lower in the sidebar.
Acceptable
- Honest questions or conversations.
- Discussions on parenting or advice.
- Struggles, frustrations, coming out.
- Atheist memes. We can have fun!
- News headlines relevant to atheism.
Unacceptable
Depending on severity, you might be warned before adverse action is taken.
- Anything against site rules.
- Illegal and/or NSFW material.
- Troll posts and comments. There will be no attempt to explain what that means.
- Leading questions, agenda pushing, or disingenuous attempts to bait members.
- Personal attacks or flaming.
Inadvisable
- Self promotion or upvote farming.
- Excessive shitposting or off-topic discussion.
Application of warnings or bans will be subject to moderator discretion. Feel free to appeal. If changes to the guidelines are necessary, they will be adjusted.
If you vocally harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathizer or a resemblant of a group that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of any other group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you you will be banned on sight.
Provable means able to provide proof to the moderation, and, if necessary, to the community.
~ /c/nostupidquestions
If you want your space listed in this sidebar and it is especially relevant to the atheist or skeptic communities, PM DancingPickle and we'll have a look!
Connect with Atheists
- Matrix: #atheism:envs.net
Help and Support Links
- Freedom From Religion Foundation
- The Secular Therapy Project
- Secular Students Alliance
- Black Nonbelievers
- The Clergy Project
- Atheist Alliance International
- Sunday Assembly
- Atheist Ireland
- Atheism UK
- Atheists United
Streaming Media
This is mostly YouTube at the moment. Podcasts and similar media - especially on federated platforms - may also feature here.
- Atheist Debates - Matt Dillahunty
- Rationality Rules
- Friendly Atheist
- Making Sense with Sam Harris
- Cosmic Skeptic
- Genetically Modified Skeptic
- Street Epistemology
- Armored Skeptic
- NonStampCollector
Orgs, Blogs, Zines
- Center for Inquiry
- American Atheists
- Humanists International
- Atheist Republic
- The Brights
- The Angry Atheist
- History for Atheists
- Rationalist International
- Atheist Revolution
- Debunking Christianity
- Godless Mom
- Atheist Freethinkers
Mainstream
Bibliography
Start here...
...proceed here.
- God is Not Great (Hitchens)
- The God Delusion (Dawkins)
- The End of Faith (Harris)
- Why I Am Not a Christian (Russell)
- Letter to a Christian Nation (Harris)
Proselytize Religion
From Reddit
As a community with an interest in providing the best resources to its members, the following wiki links are provided as historical reference until we can establish our own.
view the rest of the comments
You mean virtual particles? I’m not a quantum physicist, but I believe that virtual particles are a math trick for describing the behavior of quantum fields, Quasi-particles describe an excitation of fermions. I think. We’re getting to the edge of my knowledge there. As far as I know though, no one actually BELIEVES in virtual particles. They know it’s a trick to make calculations easier.
Even very rational people are heavily invested in their faithful belief in free will. It’s useful sure, but that’s not a reason to believe in something. It’s got to be true too.
Quasiparticles and virtual particles are different. Both would work here, but I'll use quasiparticles for an example. (Also note that the explanation is extremely oversimplified.)
Imagine that you have a chunk of some semiconductor. It's neutral, so it has the same number of protons and electrons.
Now let's say that you remove one of the electrons. Since an electron is negative, now the crystal is positively charged, by +1. And there'll be a hole where the electron used to be. But the electrons that stayed behind won't sit pretty: they'll see that hole, where that electron used to be, and they'll say "IT'S FREE REAL STATE!". One of them will migrate to that hole, filling it but creating a new hole elsewhere; another electron will migrate to the new hole, creating yet another hole elsewhere; so goes on.
You have two ways to describe this:
The first way is a descriptively more accurate explanation of reality, but it's a hassle. The second one is kind of bullshit; but it works, since the make-believe particle behaves a lot like a real particle would. It's useful.
Free will is in the same bag. Descriptively, our decisions depend on a very messy interaction between millions, perhaps billions of variables; some from nature, some from nurture. As such, free will is bullshit; it doesn't refer to anything real. But it's still useful as a concept when dealing with ethics, morals, law, and other matters, so it gets a pass.
That's a fallacy called "appeal to authority", given that the truth value of a proposition (in this case, "free will exists") does not depend on who utters it (in this case, some "very rational people").
Didn't they say the same thing about fields, potential energy, imaginary numbers? Just a math trick.