Atheism
Community Guide
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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.
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You have a limbic system, a parietal lobe, etc. You don't feel connected to anything? No people? Communities? Games?
Inner experience doesn't matter to you, even if science-backed?
Even if you don't feel any sense of connection to anything at all, you'd still be human, but you'd probably be diagnosed as a psychopath.
I don't feel connected to anything bigger than myself. I feel connections with other humans. I feel connections with animals. Unless you mean other humans who are physically larger than I am, I do not feel any connection to anything bigger than myself.
So I guess I'm not human.
By "bigger than one's self" I mean things like community, family, etc. A group of people is larger than one person. Or nature: you're a part of the universe at large, and are ontologically connected to it in a variety of ways. You're part of ecological systems bigger than yourself. Life and death and all that naturally implies. You don't feel in any way connected to anything beyond your own body that's larger than you? Not your source in space, your inevitable demise, or even this community?
I don't feel emotionally connected to groups or "the universe at large." I feel emotional connection to individuals.
I think you're playing semantic games here. Feeling connected to individuals in a selected group is exactly what I mean when I say a feeling of connection to a community. You're trying to tell me your brain does not make you feel connected to any system of which you are a component?
And if your answer is "no," a human incapable of sensing that they're part of a system doesn't negate how natural it is, generally.
You said an emotional connection. Of course I'm part of many systems. That doesn't mean I have emotional stakes in them.
Exactly. I'm only talking about the things your limbic system responds to. Spirituality concerns inner life, and emotional stakes are part of that. Emotional stakes in systems of which you are a part, is human. That can be connections to other components of that system, or some other aspect of that system, but a sense of connection is a sense of connection. Spirituality concerns itself with these inner, emotional experiences. Not all humans are or necessarily should be concerned with these experiences (though mental health can benefits from awareness in this area), but the limbic system/parietal lobe are demonstrably involved with these experiences, and it's an odd argument to say you don't have these common, human structures, or any relevant experiences.
In short, I'm not calling you subhuman. I think we just haven't yet found common ground on these terms.
Spirituality =/= superstition
Emotional connection is an inner experience (a phenomenon of our bodies), and caring about inner experience, including its relationship with systems outside the body proper, is quite human.
I’m a big fan of the sun, but I don’t have any illusions that it’s my friend.
I really don’t see how an emotional connection to something bigger than my self would do anything valuable. If I did, I would just be religious.
This has nothing to do with something like thinking the sun is your friend 😅 That sounds more like superstition than mere spirituality.
(I mean, the sun will destroy you given the chance lol... some friend!)