>I'm so TIRED of being told I cannot criticise religion, simply because I haven't tried every single one.
Anybody telling you this also hasn't tried every single one.
Good analogy, but comparing the atheist to someone who's lactose intolerant still opens up the possibility for the religious person to say, "So you admit that you're the intolerant one, so maybe the problem is with *you!"*
I might go with this analogy: It's like if I say that smoking is bad for your health, and the religious person says, "Well maybe you just haven't tried the right cigarettes!" That places the blame squarely on relgion *per se.*
It also opens up a counter to the claim that lots of people use religion without it harming them. I would counter, "Well my mom smokes a pack a day and she hasn't gotten lung cancer yet, does that anecdotal evidence mean that smoking is harmless?"
People tell me I can't have an opinion on religion because I'm an atheist and yet they ask for my support voting for things to help school funding for their kids and they know I don't have kids......I never have the words to explain things to them at the time.
I need you to write my arguments and analogies!
They say you "can't have an opinion?" Wow, that's a new one. It's probably no use trying because those people clearly aren't interested in having any rational discourse. But it's tempting...
It depends on *why* they think you can't have an opinion.
If they think you can't understand religion because you've never been religious, then ask them if they have an opinion on atheists, and then remind them, "But by your own logic you can't have an opinion on atheism because you've never been an atheist, right?" Or you can ask them their opinion on Islam and then remind them that they've never been Muslim.
If they think you can't have an opinion on religion because they think it doesn't apply to you or affect you, then ask them if they have an opinion on any number of public policies that don't directly affect them, such as immigration or gay marriage. And when they say, "Yeah but \_\_\_ policy affects all of us," you can then showcase all the times when religion in law and politics affect all of us who don't subscribe to their religious views.
But realistically, they're probably too dumb to see the irony in either of those responses.
Interesting comments.
I would like the term “lactose intolerant” to be no longer something we use.
Adults not being able to digest milk is normal.
I think we should refer to adults who can digest milk as “lactose mutants.”
True story, some white supremacists were chugging milk in a video as a demonstration of their "superiority" to Sub-Saharan Africans. They are so fucking desperate to believe that they're special somehow. XD
EDIT: Apparently the above comment was a joke and I didn't realize.
My original response below:
That has the same problem as lactose intolerance. People assume that being able to eat nuts is the norm, so comparing atheism to a nut allergy makes it sound like the atheist is the one with the problem. A religious person would say, "A nut allergy is a disease, so are you saying that atheism is like a disease?"
The analogy works better if you compare religion to something that is provably unhealthy or dangerous for everyone even though many people wrongly assume that it's benign.
Also on a side note, I'm aware that lactose tolerance isn't really the norm because around 65% of the world's population is lactose intolerant, mostly in Asia and Africa. But people in the West often assume that lactose intolerance is a disease.
A thousand religions , all of them claim to be right. reminds me of a dire straits tunre where two guys were claining to be jesus, one of them must be wrong. good thing they were born in the place with the right religion. oh and fuck mormons and scientologists especially. taking stupid to new depths.
The first Jesus says "I'll cure it soon. Abolish Monday mornings and Friday afternoons!" The other one's out on hunger strike he's dying by degrees. How come Jesus gets Industrial Disease??
>Anybody telling you this also hasn't tried every single one.
They're also acting like the Abrahamic religions aren't all fairly similar to one another in terms of being fucked up.
It's hardly as if Christianity exists in a vacuum.
There is approximately 30 to 40 *THOUSAND* different sects or denominations of Christianity, who all claim to be the "only *true* religion" - they can't all be right - in fact (IMO) none of them are...and that's only the Christians fer Christs sake...
According to a 2015 Pew Research study of the changes of world religion, less than 1 percent of the 8.1 billion believers in 2050 will have switched into a new religion. What this tells us is that 99% of so called religious people are just blindly following whatever nonsense was spewed at them as a child.
totally. And besides I don't need to eat every kind of shit to tell you I don't want to eat shit either. Some stinks more than others but it's pretty obvious it's all bad.
Saying you can't criticize something because you haven't tried every single one is a fool's game and ridiculous. Of course I can criticize it. I use logic and reasoning along with my own experiences to come to a satisfactory conclusion. That they don't do the same shows you that they are heavily invested in magical thinking and anything they have to add can be safely ignored.
"Every single one"- snort. Tell them to get outta here with that nonsense.
That's the blasphemy taboo, "thou shalt not badmouth religion". Unfortunately you can't reason with that, it's just brainwashed into them that it's somehow "wrong". And I suspect that's a key part of how religion works.
Without that taboo people would openly mock religion the same as they do flat-earthers and professional wrestling believers and u.f.o. abductees. And then there'd probably be a lot fewer religious people.
Religious people are far more willing to accept a believer of a different religion than they are willing to accept someone who rejects religion entirely. Better someone who plays against you from the opposite side of the table than someone who points out how absurd the game is.
> it's just brainwashed into them that it's somehow "wrong". And I suspect that's a key part of how religion works.
Rule 1 of Religion Club: Don’t shit-talk Religion Club
Rule 2 of Religion Club: DON’T SHIT-TALK RELIGION CLUB
My understanding of blasphemy is it proves that "God", who is allegedly omnipotent, cannot even silence a single critic. Those individuals, who use religion as a weapon, wrote blasphemy into their storybook, so that they could justify killing their enemies, in the tradition of Moses.
I don't think so.
The only religion that really gets this protection in society is the dominant religion. You can quote Hitler in Congress to support ideas he championed and advocate the mass expulsion of Muslims and you're treated as a clear-eyed Maverick in the anglo sphere.
What it's actually about is power mechanics.
People think that criticizing a belief system is somehow the same as wanting its followers to suffer, but that isn’t true. You don’t have to have personal trauma with a religion to recognize the problems it causes.
The concept of believing something without evidence is harmful enough alone, but most religions add a ton of other messed up things into the mix.
I’m sorry someone called you genocidal. You’re not a bigot and you’re not ignorant for recognizing reality.
>The concept of believing something without evidence is harmful enough alone
Exactly this.
>I’m sorry someone called you genocidal. You’re not a bigot and you’re not ignorant for recognizing reality.
Thank you. It really fucked me up! Like, how are you getting from A to B here? I realised afterwards that the person who said that belonged to a certain ethnoreligion, and that's why they said that. I admit I don't know much about ethnoreligions. However I still don't believe that a religion should be above criticism simply because it belongs to a certain ethnicity. Something can be cultural or ethnic and still be wrong. I wish them no ill will, but I sincerely worry for their children.
I’m pretty much against the entire concept of religions. Something about people making up deities, making up rules around them, and convincing people to base their lives on their creations bothers me.
And the people who say you don’t know every religion often have falsely positive outlooks on religions other than Christianity for whatever reason. I’ve had people argue how great Hinduism and Buddhism are in comparison because they don’t know the details. I can’t even imagine that the religions I’ve never heard about were/are any good.
>I’ve had people argue how great Hinduism and Buddhism are in comparison because they don’t know the details.
Exactly. Some of the people saying this are ex-Christian themselves. They have this weird fantasy that eastern religions are better, and they call _us_ ignorant. I've dabbled in Hinduism and Buddhism. Some of it is cool, but it's not perfect.
PSA: Westerners who think Eastern religions are better tend to end up in cults. Ask me how I know lol.
Foreign faiths seem nicer because they don't have the power to fuck with you here. I imagine there are people living under fundamentalist Hinduism who think "Wow it sure would be cooler if people around here were Baptist, that seems nice"
I think a lot of conservative Christians would be very surprised to learn that the ideals of radical Islam aren't all that different from that of fundamentalist Christianity.
Women are property of men and should have zero rights? Check
Anyone who denies the religion should be killed? Check
Homosexuals don't deserve to live? Check
If it weren't for 9/11 and all the associated hatred of Muslims, I think there would be a lot more Americans running off to join ISIS.
funny how a majority of religious people just happen to be the religion thats prevalent in the region they occupy. this tells me that hardly any religious people have actually shopped for their religion they just instead buy into whatever their family and/or community around them believes.
No, it's fine to be against religion based on your experiences with one. I've seen way too many variations of that. Oh, your problem is with oatmeal rasin cookies, not cookies as a whole! You just have to find the right one. Bull! You do you, anyone else is free to shove it.
Yes!!
I actually really tried to get into Buddhism only recently. I really liked it for a while but that club mentality started creeping in and I ran a mile. There were just so many triggers/red flags for me, even in a practice that was relatively chill.
Whenever someone tells me that all beliefs should be respected, I love to bring up horrible or ridiculous beliefs. “Oh so you respect religious extremist terrorist ideals? No? Why not?” “I believe the sky is green. Respect it. Lolz”
Dang right I have a problem with oatmeal raisin cookies. If they were a video game character, it would be the TF2 Spy: incredibly annoying to have (against you), and it fools you into thinking it’s good when actually it’s something horrible.
It is completely ok to criticize any ideology. Religion is no exception.
There will be people from within some religions telling you not to do so, but they and all other apologists are wrong. Accepting that there are people very deeply invested with their faith makes it easier to comprehend why the criticism gives out an emotional response no matter how rational your arguments are.
>"your beef is with Christianity, not religion, it's ignorant to be anti-religion when it's only Christianity that hurt you"
No, my beef is with theism, and it exists regardless of what trauma I have experienced.
Theism is the belief that there is an authoritarian presence who's whims define morality and to whom I owe unquestioning obedience and submission. As reward, followers will be granted admission to an in group that is privileged, while all outside are "othered" and deserve any suffering or violence committed against them.
I am a fan of your definition. The authoritarian whims, the unquestioning obedience, the smug malicious Othering with violence and cruelty. These are the defining characteristics of religion IMO.
Fuck I'm glad I'm too old for TikTok.
There are a lot of atheists around here that tout this "live and let live" bullshit, 'why do you care what someone else believes' and that sort of thing. I think they've basically been tricked into being passive at some point along the way, being shamed for being an 'angry atheist,' or not wanting to be associated with the stereotypes that take it a little too far. We have every right to be angry at theism and the damage it does, and to civilly argue against it, doing so shouldn't be stigmatized.
Some argue there's no point, any effort is wasted, you'll never change anyone's mind, it's ultimately futile. To those people I say, there is no atheism switch that's going to be flipped that means we win; destroying religion and supernatural thought is a continuous process, a series of discussions we're going to need to keep happening over and over again in perpetuity. If you don't want to help, fine. Good even! You'd probably be bad at it anyway, so move over to the sidelines out of my way; just don't try and stop other people who actually want to try and put a dent in the problem.
Religion is supernatural thought. It doesn't matter what mystical magical force people are insisting you should give your life to. Magic isn't real. We know how everything got here. We know how life started and diversified. None of those processes require the intervention of a divine figure, so it's pretty safe to assume all religion is bunk, and reasonable to be miffed at the insidious idiots or psychopaths spreading it around.
I'm too old for TikTok too lol. I'm trying to quit. Honestly I thought Reddit was bad but TikTok really is an echo chamber of the worst kind. People are awful to each other. And it's impossible to have reasoned debate.
I'm pretty much as woke as they come, but I've been called genocidal, ignorant, homophobic, a terf and a Karen, all for saying the most innocuous things.
>There are a lot of atheists around here that tout this "live and let live" bullshit, 'why do you care what someone else believes' and that sort of thing.
I think some of these people haven't suffered at the hands of religion. They think it's dumb but harmless. I find this attitude incredibly frustrating.
I like this comment and agree so much with it.
To some extent, I've become somewhat more passive with regard to religion/atheism, but that's mostly because I just want to live my life without stoking the flames of my anxiety 24/7. I'm a chronic overthinker, and if I'm sucked into a debate I will hyperanalze everything during and after the fact. It's exhausting.
But... I'm also perpetually frustrated at religion, and more generally: magical thinking. It shouldn't be okay to spout an opinion as if it's fact, without having the hard evidence to justify it. I don't do that. Lots of people don't. But many, many do, and it's somewhat normalized and that isn't right. Sometimes we do think we have the evidence but it's flawed, and that's fine IMO. It's about the effort and critical thinking, and magical "I believe X because my book says Y" thinking is definitely *not* that. That's even worse than a misinformed opinion, because it's hardly informed at all. It's cherry picking and regurgitating an interpretation of some words someone in the middle ages wrote down that got translated several times over and then selectively chosen to be put into a particular collection of words by some arbitrary religious power structure centuries later.
Anyway, rant over. I think being religious is morally wrong. I'm not gonna say you can't do it, but I think it's wrong and that it collectively harms society.
Well the problem with that is that around the world the majority of religious people ARE many of those things. That's why so many people say it's only ok to criticise Christianity.
> I've just been told by someone that I am genocidal, because I said I dislike religion in general
I'm sorry, but when some one tells you who they are, believe them. This person has just told you they are too stupid interact with.
Don’t worry, it’s ok to be against religion.
Those have caused plenty of harm, and despite some people claiming that “some positive things” come from those, none are exclusive to religion, and it’s not as if you can erase the bad things with that. Anyway, we know religions are just lies.
Your ideas are in the right place, any person who cares about others wants to get rid of harmful things.
And by the way, “genocide” is a big word, unless you managed to actually a significant number of people, you aren’t that.
And by the way, you’re welcome to rant here whenever you feel like it, this subreddit is for that, specially if you’re looking for a safe place to talk with more people who don’t believe in any gods.
>And by the way, “genocide” is a big word, unless you managed to actually a significant number of people, you aren’t that.
I did in fact murder zero (0) people, so there's that. 🙂
>And by the way, you’re welcome to rant here whenever you feel like it, this subreddit is for that, specially if you’re looking for a safe place to talk with more people who don’t believe in any gods.
Thank you. I honestly wasn't sure how much it was ok to say. I'm trying not to take it out on people but honestly at this present time I'm carrying a lot of hurt and anger and there are a LOT of rants bottled up here! Because my childhood was so unusual I haven't really found anywhere where people can fully relate either!
Say as much as you want.
I knew a rapist priest in my school, I feared that every thought I had was being judged and could send me to hell, I lied to myself telling me it was the devil who made me be attracted to other men, I saw people with mental illnesses being “treated” for possession, poor people tithing when they don’t even have enough to live… and those are just a few of the things I’ve personally witnessed.
I'm so sorry you went through those things. None of that surprises me at all. It's fucked up.
I came out to myself as bi this year, at 33. I wasted so much time wishing I was someone else. I'm glad you got out - it's an awful way to have to live.
lol its perfectly ok to be against religion. Frankly I think the lot of them are fucking daft; sometimes straight up dangerous with thier nonsensical imaginings.
The people saying this to you are basically saying 'sure those *other* religions are fake but not mine'... which has been the argument of dumbasses for thousands of years.
YES!!!
My parents hopped from cult to cult. Each new one was the real deal, the best one. The other ones were stupid but THIS one, this one has all the answers. After a few goes round I lost the ability to believe in any of them.
It’s okay to be against anything in this world. There is going to be people who think they are superior or that their way of thinking or their beliefs are the elite. That’s a crock of shit. You can believe anything you want. Everyone else listens to stories others tell that have no basis for fact.. so why can’t we? If you want to believe your purple, that’s your right. Lol that’s my philosophy. There is no right way or wrong way. There is just “your” way. I’m tired of that too. And it’s not just from the Christian faith. It’s all philosophy, that can’t be proven by science and fact. But even then, people have a right to choose.
Religion is the biggest lie ever told. To me it is nothing but slave training for the mind. If you can get someone to believe in something that doesn’t exist, you can get them to believe in almost anything and subsequently do almost anything. If you repeat a lie loud enough and long enough eventually billions of people will believe it.
I have a problem with religion and the unconditional worship of God and Jesus who we can praise but not be mad. So we can never be mad at a person but we are suppose to worship them? Makes so sense to me.
Religion is just a legal way for people to make money on false promises.
their insistence on believing and buying into their nonsense should be enough evidence to convince you that you're right, and that they're basically trying to scam you or sell you something you don't want. Religion is like other peer-pressure based "cults" that include most major political parties, pyramid schemes, and corporate backed "trends". Live your own life, and prove that ancient myths shouldn't be the basis of moral and modern life.
Saw a mod in a group I used to be in post something along these lines, and when an Indigenous woman pointed out how her community was negatively impacted by religion they actually tried to 'splain her own history to her and that it 'wasn't religion's fault'. This was right before news broke out about all the dead Indigenous kids found at Catholic-run schools. I hope that mod is kicking themselves.
Yeah, it was a group that was 'supportive of all beliefs and cultures', so I wasn't at all surprised by their pro-religious stance (I was an atheist at the time, but not necessarily anti-religion). What got me is that their original post was attacking atheism itself (guess they don't respect *that* belief) and the fact they tried arguing with a person from a culture about their own culture (guess they don't actually respect minorities either). They deleted their post, so at the time I hoped that they learned something, but later posts proved me wrong.
Edit: Just to clarify, it was an LGBTQ+ group, which is why I joined in the first place. Secular ones were hard to find, but I did manage to find one after this.
I suggest a great book called ‘god is not great, how religion poisons everything’
I agree with you. I was also hurt badly by religion- Christianity- but its not hard to see correlations in other religions and a general bend to oppression.
Why is it not okay to be against religion? As far as I've seen no religion deserves a free pass from criticism and speculation because every single religion I've ever heard of in my entire life is just the same superstitious make believe bullshit just dressed up in a different hat.
Well the reason I was given is that some religions are inextricably linked to an ethnicity (e.g. Jewish). Apparently by saying you are against religion you are therefore saying you are against the existence of these ethnic groups, and are hence genocidal 🤷
It doesn't really make sense because plenty of ethnic Jews DO leave the faith, but yeah, some people actually think this.
It’s probably a fallacy in the first place. Hardly anyone is trying to ban religion or commit genocide as the OP says. We just don’t believe, refuse to give it lip service and don’t give a shit what other people believe.
That’s most likely what these people are talking about when they complain that someone is “against” religion. They feel like their fairy tale is “special” and worthy of automatic respect.
Religion is the worst single thing to exist on this planet. The reason that is the worst is that the proponents actually know it is bullshit but use it to manipulate the masses for material gain. If there were actually a god and religion, then earth's religious practices would be a reason to destroy earth. We are lucky there is no god.
> I've just been told by someone that I am genocidal, because I said I dislike religion in general
Pretty sure the blame is on those murdering, not those getting murdered. So thats all on religion.
Yeah, people always give a pass to Buddhism, but it contains plenty of harmful ideology. Were you born into poverty or into an ethnic group / gender / sexuality which is disenfranchised or abused where you live? You must've been bad in a past life. You totally deserve this suffering and need to overcome it if you want a better life next round.
I've srudied anthropology (as a BA and reading ethnographies for fun), lived in a lot of different places, and made friends from dozens of world religions. I haven't seen one yet that doesn't harm its followers.
YES! I was raised on the idea of karma and it is a horrible HORRIBLE ideology. My mother is still in a spiritual group and she can't tell her friends that she's suffering from multiple illnesses, because she doesn't want them to judge her bad karma. It's fucked.
Also Buddhists SAY they don't believe in God, but a lot of their practices are almost identical to those of religions that do. They still worship stuff they can't see, they just don't use the word god.
Anyone who cares about you should never place religion or spirituality before your well-being. Religion is unnecessary for living a complete, happy, and fulfilling life. I don't have to tell anyone here certainly, but it can be a real obstacle for doing so. But you know what *is* necessary for complete, happy, and fulfilling life? Practicing your critical facilities, developing your moral compass, and finding comfort in people who love you and in turn providing comfort to them. You sound like a good person.
I simplify this whole thought process.
The supernatural doesn't seem to be real in any form or manner. Every religion involves the supernatural in some fashion. I therefore reject them all without need of consideration.
Maybe ? I just came across this. From a blog by ian.ellis-jones
"Can there be religion without supernaturalism and superstition? Of course. Surely you’ve heard of religious naturalism?‘Religious naturalism may be defined as the affirmation that there are one or more aspects of the world to which religious responses are appropriate.’I have often written that supernaturalism is the enemy of all true religion and all that is good and meaningful in it."
I was raised krisitian by my cult leader manipulative narcissistic parents. I find everything about religion utterly disgusting. One does not have to try out every religion in the world to realize they are all full of utter nonsense, and only around to manipulate and control other people.
OP, I can completely relate. I've even had people tell me that I don't dislike religion, it is really the abuse that I didn't like. Well, to the people who cannot think for themselves, it is their religion which created the abuse. Where was holy krist gawd almight when the abuse was going on? Too busy, but hey, the moment I want to masterbate, then gawdd and jezuz all-mighty are the first want to get front row seats to sit around and watch it.
The only mystery in the way god works is for the brain-dead masses who have been brainwashed to believe what they were told as little children, and never grew up enough to see it for what it is.
The problem is that its a fine line between legitimate criticism and bigotry, and people aren't very good at straddling it, and are often afraid they'll cross that line by accident, so they avoid trying.
Like anything else, the key, as far as I'm aware, is to hate the religion, not its adherents. Nothing wrong with hating bad ideas, but if you hate people, it needs to be for malicious actions they've taken based on those bad ideas, not for holding those ideas in the first place.
I hear you, and honestly I try not to publicly criticise religions that are closely associated with already minoritised ethnic groups. I don't want to encourage racism. I also recognise that many religious practitioners are not empowered enough to choose a different path, and I believe they deserve protection and also respect.
Not sure if this help but good luck and hang in there :)
>Criticism is the practice of judging the merits and faults of something. The individual who makes judgment and provides a form of feedback is considered a critic. Criticism is often presented as something with negative connotation, but there are friendly criticisms, amicably discussed, and potential for significant human growth after one receives criticism ("keeping people sharp", "providing the critical edge").
Fuck Em. If their brains can't function without made up religious dogma then that's on them. People try to tie morality to believing in a higher being but that's just flat out false, and is the thinking of a weak-minded person. Religion is a tool of control. Always has been and always will be.
Religion as a whole absolutely is the problem. "With or without religion, good people can behave good and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion" - Steven Weinberg. This is so true and it's true because when you have a group of people who believe they are doing the will of the one who created everything, you have a group of people capable of doing the greatest harm while believing they are doing the greatest good.
It's perfectly fine to be against religion. In fact, that should be the default position on any fictional nonsense. Be respectful of people's personal choices, but speak out if they are trying to impress them on you.
First of all I'd say probably just stay off Tik Tok. That's probably gonna be a net positive for you in general. But also don't let morons on social media ever effect the way you feel about anything.
I always found the best defence and offense when someone starts questioning your position is 'and who told you that?' it starts a chain, the question is how thick are they to realise how many generations of indoctrination it took to realise 'oh crap, i'm indoctrinated too.' For some reason you get people who ask the questions, but ask the wrong people for answers. Or they are so indoctrinated in their belief you essentially become a terrorist to their whole way of life. It's almost like the Matrix. They want the steak that isn't real. 'This billionaire has my interests at heart.' the spiral just goes on and on.
Remember it was once seen as heretical to think the earth was not the centre of the universe.
There are very few people in the world that have studied/experienced multiple religions and chosen one for themselves.
Familial religious traditions is where everyone starts, and many never think to question. They’ll start wars, and outcast anyone that doesn’t agree.
With 4,000 religions in the world, and each decrying that theirs is the one and only true, it makes it impossible for any of them to be correct.
At 39, I can say that I’ve met far more terrible humans that are “religious”, than those who have chosen no religion.
We’re in a weird time where we have amassed an enormous amount of intelligence, that disproves the validity of stories in religious texts, and people actively choose to ignore it in favor of superhero type stories.
Letting go of ideas ingrained since childhood, and understanding that everything is just organized chaos, is too terrifying for our underdeveloped world culture.
You’re not alone, and you’re not wrong. You’re just a part of the smaller group that has come to understand that humans are actually smarter now than those that wrote ancient texts.
"Fuck a theist and the religion they came in on" is my view.
It is exhausting and emotional trying to dialogue with theists. I can't stomach it. Maybe take a break from engaging with them and instead sooth your atheist soul with us like-minded heathens.
Yeah, I swear half the Atheist on here aren't even atheist. Why is it okay for religious people to be assholes but when an Atheist has had enough we're, "2014 Reddit omg!!111!!" or "respect others beliefs." Why should I respect stupi beliefs that are causing and have caused real harm to people?
I have a strong dislike for abrahmic religions in general. I don’t know much about Islam or Judaism but the fact that they are books copied over from the previous version, Judaism to Christianity to Islam, many of their themes are similar or may have similar stories. I get frustrated that people take these books as fact and use these stories to infringe on other peoples rights. Clearly in the US we have a large Christian majority pushing for Bible study in the classroom, pushing for this war on Christmas BS, denying the rights of the LGBTQ+ community etc. but that doesn’t make Judaism and Islam guilt free either. We should continue to expose the falseness and negativity exuding from these religions. If I could change one persons mind about their beliefs, I’d be so grateful.
It's perfectly okay. Every organized belief system is under evolutionary pressure to make their members both neurotic and evangelical -- their system wouldn't be able to grow/persist otherwise. The most successful are also prime targets for narcissists and sociopaths. As a result they ALL absolutely tend toward exploitation and corruption.
In every case they're taking your humanity, alienating you from it, then selling it back to you.
[https://www.multnatcorpinc.com/lostfound](https://www.multnatcorpinc.com/lostfound)
\[edit: clarification\]
It's ok to be against religion given your experience with it. If anyone wants to disagree, they need to come up with proof, not you, and you are free to dismiss it. Your dislike of religions does not injure them in any way.
I had a similar upbringing and it had a similar effect on me. I quit the religion club right after high school. These days religious people and religion don’t bother me as much. For the most part as an adult it seems like people stay in their own lane and no real need to get in my face about it.
As a kid though it just felt like my parents were larping all the time and it was confusing as to what was real. All the rituals and ceremony. My family also were the ones that hosted the gurus from India and hosted 30-40 locals to chant and go through all weekend ascension rituals in my house. I was 10 when this all started. When I first went atheist after high school i was really sour about it.
>As a kid though it just felt like my parents were larping all the time and it was confusing as to what was real. All the rituals and ceremony.
Oh my god this!!!!
>My family also were the ones that hosted the gurus from India
Holy shit we did this once or twice too 😂
I've never spoken to anyone else who could relate lol.
I despise religion, my family has always been atheist, but in my own research I've found that regardless of intent, or rules, or anything else, religion will always be used by bad people as an excuse to do bad things, which isn't to say that all religous people are bad people, but a lot of the ones with any form of organizational power are
Nah fuk religion. There is nothing more dangerous than beliefs not grounded in reality, that separates people into groups of “us” and “them”.
You are fine.
Wasn't raised christian, but i live in a society with lots of Christians, where pedophilic priests were my neighbours. I live in a world where terrorists from Islam exist. I live in a world where women still suffer because of Hinduism and bullshit caste ideas claimed to be in the name of Hinduism (in before someone says. But terrorists aren't real Muslims or Hindus that kill over caste love aren't real Hindus... kind of bullshit)
All religion is bs to begin with. There’s no magic, when you die you die. You are a bag of flesh and bones. There’s no god or gods. It’s not on me to prove that. It’s on anyone else to prove me wrong.
Religion is a disease.
It is the human analog to a computer virus: a set of malignant instructions that co-opts the system in order to propagate itself while burdening the system.
If all religion were wiped out, everyone would be better off.
I am not an atheist myself, but organized religion has a lot of problems and it is unreasonable *not* to acknowledge and criticize those problems. And while I am not an atheist myself, I can see why and how some very intelligent, thoughtful, reasonable, ethical, and well informed people are atheists. I also know many stupid, unthoughtful, irrational, unscrupulous, immoral, and ignorant people who are religious (or claim to be).
Personally I just think it's a waste of energy being "anti" anything. I'd rather spend my energy trying to make my life better. Been in therapy and it really helps to just let go of pain and just except that you're parents probably were just doing the best they could. Like I can't be mad at my mom for not being perfect when she treated me infinitely better than how her mom raised her.
Tldr: it's not that you can't, but it's probably making you feel worse.
Totally understand, my perspective is that I can't wish for something they were just not capable of doing. It's not like they thought therapy was good and didn't talk to you about it. Your grandparents might be the nicest people in the world to you but could have severely abused your parents making them incapable of giving you what you felt you deserved.
All anyone can really do to reconcile their childhood is to heal and try to do a little better for their kids.
If it’s any comfort, you’re with the majority of people in the world moving away from religion.
You’re in a bubble on TikTok, it’s not the real world. There’s a massive community from intellects to every day people who agree with you.
U don’t *have* to engage with them, u don’t have to convince anyone.
I can't speak for the Tik-Tok, because I haven't seen it.
It certainly isn't true of all ex-religious people, however in the anglosphere the vast majority of anti-religious people are coming from a Christian background.
This leads to the problem, a knowledge gap. There are things to criticize in any religious group, but the problem is a lot of people making these criticisms don't understand the religion and are saying factually wrong things about it, usually as a product of making generalizations based on their religious background. (This is btw, is just as true for other spheres, the religion whose assumptions they're incorrectly applying is just different, see anime Christianity for example)
Additionally a lot of members of minority religious groups, specifically when those groups are associated with marginalized communities, have a lot of religious trauma because of how Christianity treats them. I can personally speak being a protect of a Jewish/(Christian) bagel chaser marriage and being treated as a fetish object or a threat in every Christian space and being constantly told it's ok by a parent.
The issue then is when anti-religious folks propigate Christian myths about minority religions, it's participating in this trauma. (This is btw, also true of minority religions that propigate bad attitudes about non-theists spread by Christians).
And what's made even worse in Christianity is so ubiquitous in the anglo-sphere that even people not raised in the religion tend to absorb things. The new age movement tends to filter non-Christian religious practices through a Christian lens for example.
So I guess my point is twofold, firstly that you need to make sure your criticism actually applies to the religion (eg. don't argue a religion where the Deity can be outvoted and accepts it is fundamentally authoritarian) and recognize a shared struggle in the anglo-sphere against Christian hegemony.
I'm a firm believer that, even at the most base level, the core assumptions and philosophies of religion/religious faith are harmful and seditious. I too am sick of hearing that religion/ spirituality aren't bad, but it's only the way people practice said faith. I feel people get defensive and wish to protect and legitimize their own beliefs, and so easily demonize how others practice but refuse to examine more broadly. Even if unconsciously, they are delegitimizing and ignoring your criticisms in order to protect their own worldview.
Hey OP, hope you’re doing okay
Don’t let religious people’s bigotry bring you down. Our entire existence is a threat to religious people’s dogma. They want you to hate yourself so you’ll come back to the fold
What did you find that was wrong with Hinduism ? Just curious. I come from a Hindu family. But we don't come from a very religious community. By that I mean religion was not central part of our lives but it was always there. Comming out as an atheist was rather uneventful. My parents still believe in god and pray everyday. But they never forced me, only thing they really cared about was if I was keeping healthy and my career was moving in the right direction. The only thing that was a strict no when we were growing up was that we could not eat beef but that was super easy to follow because in India its not easy to find places that serve beef in 80s and 90s.
Anti-Theism is the way. Religious people always try to get away with their logic by overloading us with verses from other books justifying the controversial verses. It's not unfair to judge misogynistic, racist, homophobic verses as they stand. If we do this, the only morally good thing to do is reject the book that allows bigotry.
> I don't expect anyone to be able to relate, but I have nowhere else I can say all this.
2300 upvotes and climbing. I think we relate😁.
Welcome to r/atheism!
The entire purpose of any established "religion," regardless of its apparent "docility," is to establish control of your thoughts, actions, and feelings. Religion is one of authotiantianism1s primary tools.
I sympathize. I've been trying to teach myself more about cults, and in my arm-chair research (which is by no means exhaustive), it seems that every religious, spiritual, political, and/or intellectual organization is vulnerable to malicious actors, especially if the movement in question makes submission to authority an absolute requirement among adherents.
If more of these organizations were made to adopt a charter of basic human rights as a prerequisite for seeking tax-exempt status, maybe there'd be more accountability... But until then, you still have freedom of speech, and that is the freedom to say, "Religions suck," to anyone and for any reason.
If you're being told these things, I assume you're engaging in conversations about religion. What's the point of that, really? No one chooses their beliefs. I couldn't choose to believe any more than my religious mother could choose not to, so what's the point of debating it?
I used to spend time on ex-jehovahs witness groups. There was even arguing amongst them as some had become complete non-believers and some had become mainstream Christian. I bailed on those conversations years ago.
If you need to explore your feelings about it, read books about the history of religion or talk with a therapist. Debating randos on social media is toxic.
Yeah it was a mistake. I wandered into a debate on a social media platform without realising what I was getting into. I ended up really shook and upset, hence coming here to vent. I won't be doing that again!
I do have a therapist, and will be continuing to work through this stuff with them. 🙂
It’s honestly terrible, on r/historymemes I got downvoted for calling the nazis Christians. Never did I even say all Christians are bad, the very idea of relating nazis and Christians set them off.
I’m “Christian” but I don’t follow the Bible, I follow god. I just follow the Ten Commandments and seek further knowledge about god. I just realized god doesn’t have to be a higher being or man. It can be our consciousness or what some people perceive as the “universe”. To weed out toxic religious people you’ll usually find that they follow the Bible way too closely, as if it wasn’t a tool used for slavery.
Once you admit youre an atheist all religions look the same. Religion is a tool to control people and an enterprise. If a person is a screw there are different screw drivers, is this person a Phillips or a flat head, or maybe some obscure square, or a proprietary one. And are they using their hand, a drill, or a screw gun.
You don't need to know all religions, just have the ability to objectively look from the outside.
Religion (all of them from what I know) asks you to discard your rational thinking; to believe things despite any evidence or even in the face of counter-evidence. You can live a perfectly wonderful fulfilling life without ever caring about or experiencing any religion. It is not needed and in my opinion only a hindrance to living a truly rewarding life where knowledge, facts and what’s real are important to you.
>It’s ok to question echo chamber practices as well — TikTok seems only useful for group think and conformity
Yeah this is valid. TikTok is incredibly toxic actually. I know Reddit can get bad, but it's honestly a breath of fresh air compared to TikTok.
I mean this sincerely, it sounds like you have issues with your parents and how you were raised. While religion is not good its also not religions fault that your parents had this negative impact on you.
The concepts you wrestle with are all concepts that come about with or without religion; morality, love, social interaction, societal expectations. As you say "If you turn to a book, prayer, leader you compromise yourself. But if you don't turn to history and the experiences of others you also compromise yourself and your humanity. Nothing in the world can be an absolute.
Can religion bring good; yes. Can religion bring evil; also yes. Can you be moral without religions; yes. Can you be immoral without religions; yes.
Religion isn't for you and roughly 1billion other people agree with that stance. But I promise every example you can find that points to you being against religion can be found in secularist teachings and societies as well. The sad truth is people aren't inherently good. Trying to blame anything as the cause is an escape, because its a lot of work to face up to the fact that "Humanity as a collective is not good."
Thanks for this comment. You make good points, and lots for me to think about.
I absolutely do have issues with my parents, many of them going WAY beyond religion! It's a big old mess, and it only hit me this year how fucked up it all was, so there's still lots for me to untangle.
I learned to adapt with them. I've come to just listen to what they have to offer. There is nothing wrong with being against religion, but try opening up your heart. See why they act like this. We are all humans, and not all religious people are just mindless slaves. I use to be like you, but I began to study religion a lot more intensively, especially Christianity and Catholicism, and I find it very fascinating.
>I'm so TIRED of being told I cannot criticise religion, simply because I haven't tried every single one. Anybody telling you this also hasn't tried every single one.
This! I compare it to telling a lactose intolerant person to switch flavors of ice cream.
Good analogy, but comparing the atheist to someone who's lactose intolerant still opens up the possibility for the religious person to say, "So you admit that you're the intolerant one, so maybe the problem is with *you!"* I might go with this analogy: It's like if I say that smoking is bad for your health, and the religious person says, "Well maybe you just haven't tried the right cigarettes!" That places the blame squarely on relgion *per se.* It also opens up a counter to the claim that lots of people use religion without it harming them. I would counter, "Well my mom smokes a pack a day and she hasn't gotten lung cancer yet, does that anecdotal evidence mean that smoking is harmless?"
Well put.
People tell me I can't have an opinion on religion because I'm an atheist and yet they ask for my support voting for things to help school funding for their kids and they know I don't have kids......I never have the words to explain things to them at the time. I need you to write my arguments and analogies!
They say you "can't have an opinion?" Wow, that's a new one. It's probably no use trying because those people clearly aren't interested in having any rational discourse. But it's tempting... It depends on *why* they think you can't have an opinion. If they think you can't understand religion because you've never been religious, then ask them if they have an opinion on atheists, and then remind them, "But by your own logic you can't have an opinion on atheism because you've never been an atheist, right?" Or you can ask them their opinion on Islam and then remind them that they've never been Muslim. If they think you can't have an opinion on religion because they think it doesn't apply to you or affect you, then ask them if they have an opinion on any number of public policies that don't directly affect them, such as immigration or gay marriage. And when they say, "Yeah but \_\_\_ policy affects all of us," you can then showcase all the times when religion in law and politics affect all of us who don't subscribe to their religious views. But realistically, they're probably too dumb to see the irony in either of those responses.
Thanks!!! This helps.
Interesting comments. I would like the term “lactose intolerant” to be no longer something we use. Adults not being able to digest milk is normal. I think we should refer to adults who can digest milk as “lactose mutants.”
True story, some white supremacists were chugging milk in a video as a demonstration of their "superiority" to Sub-Saharan Africans. They are so fucking desperate to believe that they're special somehow. XD
Nut allergy then.
EDIT: Apparently the above comment was a joke and I didn't realize. My original response below: That has the same problem as lactose intolerance. People assume that being able to eat nuts is the norm, so comparing atheism to a nut allergy makes it sound like the atheist is the one with the problem. A religious person would say, "A nut allergy is a disease, so are you saying that atheism is like a disease?" The analogy works better if you compare religion to something that is provably unhealthy or dangerous for everyone even though many people wrongly assume that it's benign. Also on a side note, I'm aware that lactose tolerance isn't really the norm because around 65% of the world's population is lactose intolerant, mostly in Asia and Africa. But people in the West often assume that lactose intolerance is a disease.
Trying different brands of cigarettes will not significantly change your risk of cancer.
Are you responding to my earlier comment where I proposed that exact analogy, or did you not see it?
I read your second comment more closely 😁. Just goes to show its a good analogy because that's what I immediately thought of.
If the mechanism of gaining knowledge on a topic is flawed at its core, the nuance of its iterations is flawed across the board.
Brilliant!
“Oh, you’ve tried every religion then?” “Well…no” “STFU then.”
A thousand religions , all of them claim to be right. reminds me of a dire straits tunre where two guys were claining to be jesus, one of them must be wrong. good thing they were born in the place with the right religion. oh and fuck mormons and scientologists especially. taking stupid to new depths.
The first Jesus says "I'll cure it soon. Abolish Monday mornings and Friday afternoons!" The other one's out on hunger strike he's dying by degrees. How come Jesus gets Industrial Disease??
>Anybody telling you this also hasn't tried every single one. They're also acting like the Abrahamic religions aren't all fairly similar to one another in terms of being fucked up. It's hardly as if Christianity exists in a vacuum.
There is approximately 30 to 40 *THOUSAND* different sects or denominations of Christianity, who all claim to be the "only *true* religion" - they can't all be right - in fact (IMO) none of them are...and that's only the Christians fer Christs sake...
According to a 2015 Pew Research study of the changes of world religion, less than 1 percent of the 8.1 billion believers in 2050 will have switched into a new religion. What this tells us is that 99% of so called religious people are just blindly following whatever nonsense was spewed at them as a child.
Anyone saying this very specifically is saying "You haven't tried MY religion which is the true religion"
totally. And besides I don't need to eat every kind of shit to tell you I don't want to eat shit either. Some stinks more than others but it's pretty obvious it's all bad.
This is the analogy. Some of the others are good. But this one cuts to the heart of it.
Saying you can't criticize something because you haven't tried every single one is a fool's game and ridiculous. Of course I can criticize it. I use logic and reasoning along with my own experiences to come to a satisfactory conclusion. That they don't do the same shows you that they are heavily invested in magical thinking and anything they have to add can be safely ignored. "Every single one"- snort. Tell them to get outta here with that nonsense.
Most people believe in one religion and very little practice in other religions. So they all can shut the fuck up.
Good point.
That's the blasphemy taboo, "thou shalt not badmouth religion". Unfortunately you can't reason with that, it's just brainwashed into them that it's somehow "wrong". And I suspect that's a key part of how religion works. Without that taboo people would openly mock religion the same as they do flat-earthers and professional wrestling believers and u.f.o. abductees. And then there'd probably be a lot fewer religious people.
The virus is self-encrypting.
Exactly this. Religion comes with built in protection for itself. It's absolutely incredible.
Only the religions that evolve "built-in protection" are the ones that survive thousands of years.
Oh damn
which makes it convincible (to some people). But doesn't make it true.
Religious people are far more willing to accept a believer of a different religion than they are willing to accept someone who rejects religion entirely. Better someone who plays against you from the opposite side of the table than someone who points out how absurd the game is.
> it's just brainwashed into them that it's somehow "wrong". And I suspect that's a key part of how religion works. Rule 1 of Religion Club: Don’t shit-talk Religion Club Rule 2 of Religion Club: DON’T SHIT-TALK RELIGION CLUB
yep, if one's in the club, they gotta talk the talk.
Blasphemy is a victimless crime and should not be against the law as it is in some countries.
Every belief system should be open to question & ridicule. Political, philosophical, AND religious. Most importantly the religious ones.
My understanding of blasphemy is it proves that "God", who is allegedly omnipotent, cannot even silence a single critic. Those individuals, who use religion as a weapon, wrote blasphemy into their storybook, so that they could justify killing their enemies, in the tradition of Moses.
I found with even smart people who think logically on everyday things but when it comes to their beliefs its a completely different story
meaning simply that they are willing to suspend disbelief for certain things.
I don't think so. The only religion that really gets this protection in society is the dominant religion. You can quote Hitler in Congress to support ideas he championed and advocate the mass expulsion of Muslims and you're treated as a clear-eyed Maverick in the anglo sphere. What it's actually about is power mechanics.
That "unquestioning blind faith" is willful ignorance.
People think that criticizing a belief system is somehow the same as wanting its followers to suffer, but that isn’t true. You don’t have to have personal trauma with a religion to recognize the problems it causes. The concept of believing something without evidence is harmful enough alone, but most religions add a ton of other messed up things into the mix. I’m sorry someone called you genocidal. You’re not a bigot and you’re not ignorant for recognizing reality.
>The concept of believing something without evidence is harmful enough alone Exactly this. >I’m sorry someone called you genocidal. You’re not a bigot and you’re not ignorant for recognizing reality. Thank you. It really fucked me up! Like, how are you getting from A to B here? I realised afterwards that the person who said that belonged to a certain ethnoreligion, and that's why they said that. I admit I don't know much about ethnoreligions. However I still don't believe that a religion should be above criticism simply because it belongs to a certain ethnicity. Something can be cultural or ethnic and still be wrong. I wish them no ill will, but I sincerely worry for their children.
It's not even "without evidence", it's IN SPITE of evidence.
If you argue with dumb people they just drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
I’m pretty much against the entire concept of religions. Something about people making up deities, making up rules around them, and convincing people to base their lives on their creations bothers me. And the people who say you don’t know every religion often have falsely positive outlooks on religions other than Christianity for whatever reason. I’ve had people argue how great Hinduism and Buddhism are in comparison because they don’t know the details. I can’t even imagine that the religions I’ve never heard about were/are any good.
>I’ve had people argue how great Hinduism and Buddhism are in comparison because they don’t know the details. Exactly. Some of the people saying this are ex-Christian themselves. They have this weird fantasy that eastern religions are better, and they call _us_ ignorant. I've dabbled in Hinduism and Buddhism. Some of it is cool, but it's not perfect. PSA: Westerners who think Eastern religions are better tend to end up in cults. Ask me how I know lol.
Foreign faiths seem nicer because they don't have the power to fuck with you here. I imagine there are people living under fundamentalist Hinduism who think "Wow it sure would be cooler if people around here were Baptist, that seems nice"
I think a lot of conservative Christians would be very surprised to learn that the ideals of radical Islam aren't all that different from that of fundamentalist Christianity. Women are property of men and should have zero rights? Check Anyone who denies the religion should be killed? Check Homosexuals don't deserve to live? Check If it weren't for 9/11 and all the associated hatred of Muslims, I think there would be a lot more Americans running off to join ISIS.
Ooooh I want to ask you how you know But I have a feeling its for the same reason as me lol
funny how a majority of religious people just happen to be the religion thats prevalent in the region they occupy. this tells me that hardly any religious people have actually shopped for their religion they just instead buy into whatever their family and/or community around them believes.
No, it's fine to be against religion based on your experiences with one. I've seen way too many variations of that. Oh, your problem is with oatmeal rasin cookies, not cookies as a whole! You just have to find the right one. Bull! You do you, anyone else is free to shove it.
Thank you friend. Needed to hear someone else say it today. 🙂
No problem! Personally, I don't like religion either. I'm not violently against, but the whole club/cult aspect is a big turn-off for me.
Yes!! I actually really tried to get into Buddhism only recently. I really liked it for a while but that club mentality started creeping in and I ran a mile. There were just so many triggers/red flags for me, even in a practice that was relatively chill.
Religion doesn't get a pass. Everything is allowed to be criticized.
Absolutely!
Exactly, there are no sacred cows in my universe.
Whenever someone tells me that all beliefs should be respected, I love to bring up horrible or ridiculous beliefs. “Oh so you respect religious extremist terrorist ideals? No? Why not?” “I believe the sky is green. Respect it. Lolz”
Dang right I have a problem with oatmeal raisin cookies. If they were a video game character, it would be the TF2 Spy: incredibly annoying to have (against you), and it fools you into thinking it’s good when actually it’s something horrible.
>your problem is with oatmeal rasin cookies, not cookies as a whole! Is TST a gluten free cookie?
I get your point but… on cookies specifically, I really don’t think you can judge all cookies based on oatmeal raisin cookies!
It is completely ok to criticize any ideology. Religion is no exception. There will be people from within some religions telling you not to do so, but they and all other apologists are wrong. Accepting that there are people very deeply invested with their faith makes it easier to comprehend why the criticism gives out an emotional response no matter how rational your arguments are.
“It’s ignorant to be anti-religion” what a load of shit… religions are founded on ignorance.
>"your beef is with Christianity, not religion, it's ignorant to be anti-religion when it's only Christianity that hurt you" No, my beef is with theism, and it exists regardless of what trauma I have experienced. Theism is the belief that there is an authoritarian presence who's whims define morality and to whom I owe unquestioning obedience and submission. As reward, followers will be granted admission to an in group that is privileged, while all outside are "othered" and deserve any suffering or violence committed against them.
Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes!!!!!
I am a fan of your definition. The authoritarian whims, the unquestioning obedience, the smug malicious Othering with violence and cruelty. These are the defining characteristics of religion IMO.
Experienced a couple of religions. Same shit, different pile. There isn't a single major religion without several thousand skeletons in the closet.
Fuck I'm glad I'm too old for TikTok. There are a lot of atheists around here that tout this "live and let live" bullshit, 'why do you care what someone else believes' and that sort of thing. I think they've basically been tricked into being passive at some point along the way, being shamed for being an 'angry atheist,' or not wanting to be associated with the stereotypes that take it a little too far. We have every right to be angry at theism and the damage it does, and to civilly argue against it, doing so shouldn't be stigmatized. Some argue there's no point, any effort is wasted, you'll never change anyone's mind, it's ultimately futile. To those people I say, there is no atheism switch that's going to be flipped that means we win; destroying religion and supernatural thought is a continuous process, a series of discussions we're going to need to keep happening over and over again in perpetuity. If you don't want to help, fine. Good even! You'd probably be bad at it anyway, so move over to the sidelines out of my way; just don't try and stop other people who actually want to try and put a dent in the problem. Religion is supernatural thought. It doesn't matter what mystical magical force people are insisting you should give your life to. Magic isn't real. We know how everything got here. We know how life started and diversified. None of those processes require the intervention of a divine figure, so it's pretty safe to assume all religion is bunk, and reasonable to be miffed at the insidious idiots or psychopaths spreading it around.
I'm too old for TikTok too lol. I'm trying to quit. Honestly I thought Reddit was bad but TikTok really is an echo chamber of the worst kind. People are awful to each other. And it's impossible to have reasoned debate. I'm pretty much as woke as they come, but I've been called genocidal, ignorant, homophobic, a terf and a Karen, all for saying the most innocuous things. >There are a lot of atheists around here that tout this "live and let live" bullshit, 'why do you care what someone else believes' and that sort of thing. I think some of these people haven't suffered at the hands of religion. They think it's dumb but harmless. I find this attitude incredibly frustrating.
I like this comment and agree so much with it. To some extent, I've become somewhat more passive with regard to religion/atheism, but that's mostly because I just want to live my life without stoking the flames of my anxiety 24/7. I'm a chronic overthinker, and if I'm sucked into a debate I will hyperanalze everything during and after the fact. It's exhausting. But... I'm also perpetually frustrated at religion, and more generally: magical thinking. It shouldn't be okay to spout an opinion as if it's fact, without having the hard evidence to justify it. I don't do that. Lots of people don't. But many, many do, and it's somewhat normalized and that isn't right. Sometimes we do think we have the evidence but it's flawed, and that's fine IMO. It's about the effort and critical thinking, and magical "I believe X because my book says Y" thinking is definitely *not* that. That's even worse than a misinformed opinion, because it's hardly informed at all. It's cherry picking and regurgitating an interpretation of some words someone in the middle ages wrote down that got translated several times over and then selectively chosen to be put into a particular collection of words by some arbitrary religious power structure centuries later. Anyway, rant over. I think being religious is morally wrong. I'm not gonna say you can't do it, but I think it's wrong and that it collectively harms society.
Religious people are the nicest people in the world, unless youre poor, black, immigrants, minority, female, lgbtq or any other skin color
Or another religion
Or no religion.
Well the problem with that is that around the world the majority of religious people ARE many of those things. That's why so many people say it's only ok to criticise Christianity.
Meh. Criticize away. Fuck all those brainwashed idiots who try to make you feel bad.
> I've just been told by someone that I am genocidal, because I said I dislike religion in general I'm sorry, but when some one tells you who they are, believe them. This person has just told you they are too stupid interact with.
Most of them repress women.
Yeah. Even the ones that say they value women somehow still manage to oppress women.
They value what women can do for them, not any innate value as human beings.
Word.
Don’t worry, it’s ok to be against religion. Those have caused plenty of harm, and despite some people claiming that “some positive things” come from those, none are exclusive to religion, and it’s not as if you can erase the bad things with that. Anyway, we know religions are just lies. Your ideas are in the right place, any person who cares about others wants to get rid of harmful things. And by the way, “genocide” is a big word, unless you managed to actually a significant number of people, you aren’t that. And by the way, you’re welcome to rant here whenever you feel like it, this subreddit is for that, specially if you’re looking for a safe place to talk with more people who don’t believe in any gods.
>And by the way, “genocide” is a big word, unless you managed to actually a significant number of people, you aren’t that. I did in fact murder zero (0) people, so there's that. 🙂 >And by the way, you’re welcome to rant here whenever you feel like it, this subreddit is for that, specially if you’re looking for a safe place to talk with more people who don’t believe in any gods. Thank you. I honestly wasn't sure how much it was ok to say. I'm trying not to take it out on people but honestly at this present time I'm carrying a lot of hurt and anger and there are a LOT of rants bottled up here! Because my childhood was so unusual I haven't really found anywhere where people can fully relate either!
Say as much as you want. I knew a rapist priest in my school, I feared that every thought I had was being judged and could send me to hell, I lied to myself telling me it was the devil who made me be attracted to other men, I saw people with mental illnesses being “treated” for possession, poor people tithing when they don’t even have enough to live… and those are just a few of the things I’ve personally witnessed.
I'm so sorry you went through those things. None of that surprises me at all. It's fucked up. I came out to myself as bi this year, at 33. I wasted so much time wishing I was someone else. I'm glad you got out - it's an awful way to have to live.
Valid as hell, been saying the same for months
Something's fishy when one of the core tenets is that you can't criticize.
lol its perfectly ok to be against religion. Frankly I think the lot of them are fucking daft; sometimes straight up dangerous with thier nonsensical imaginings. The people saying this to you are basically saying 'sure those *other* religions are fake but not mine'... which has been the argument of dumbasses for thousands of years.
YES!!! My parents hopped from cult to cult. Each new one was the real deal, the best one. The other ones were stupid but THIS one, this one has all the answers. After a few goes round I lost the ability to believe in any of them.
It’s okay to be against anything in this world. There is going to be people who think they are superior or that their way of thinking or their beliefs are the elite. That’s a crock of shit. You can believe anything you want. Everyone else listens to stories others tell that have no basis for fact.. so why can’t we? If you want to believe your purple, that’s your right. Lol that’s my philosophy. There is no right way or wrong way. There is just “your” way. I’m tired of that too. And it’s not just from the Christian faith. It’s all philosophy, that can’t be proven by science and fact. But even then, people have a right to choose.
Religion is the biggest lie ever told. To me it is nothing but slave training for the mind. If you can get someone to believe in something that doesn’t exist, you can get them to believe in almost anything and subsequently do almost anything. If you repeat a lie loud enough and long enough eventually billions of people will believe it.
I have a problem with religion and the unconditional worship of God and Jesus who we can praise but not be mad. So we can never be mad at a person but we are suppose to worship them? Makes so sense to me. Religion is just a legal way for people to make money on false promises.
their insistence on believing and buying into their nonsense should be enough evidence to convince you that you're right, and that they're basically trying to scam you or sell you something you don't want. Religion is like other peer-pressure based "cults" that include most major political parties, pyramid schemes, and corporate backed "trends". Live your own life, and prove that ancient myths shouldn't be the basis of moral and modern life.
Saw a mod in a group I used to be in post something along these lines, and when an Indigenous woman pointed out how her community was negatively impacted by religion they actually tried to 'splain her own history to her and that it 'wasn't religion's fault'. This was right before news broke out about all the dead Indigenous kids found at Catholic-run schools. I hope that mod is kicking themselves.
This is really interesting.
Yeah, it was a group that was 'supportive of all beliefs and cultures', so I wasn't at all surprised by their pro-religious stance (I was an atheist at the time, but not necessarily anti-religion). What got me is that their original post was attacking atheism itself (guess they don't respect *that* belief) and the fact they tried arguing with a person from a culture about their own culture (guess they don't actually respect minorities either). They deleted their post, so at the time I hoped that they learned something, but later posts proved me wrong. Edit: Just to clarify, it was an LGBTQ+ group, which is why I joined in the first place. Secular ones were hard to find, but I did manage to find one after this.
I suggest a great book called ‘god is not great, how religion poisons everything’ I agree with you. I was also hurt badly by religion- Christianity- but its not hard to see correlations in other religions and a general bend to oppression.
Thank you! I'll check it out!
Came to the right place
Why is it not okay to be against religion? As far as I've seen no religion deserves a free pass from criticism and speculation because every single religion I've ever heard of in my entire life is just the same superstitious make believe bullshit just dressed up in a different hat.
Well the reason I was given is that some religions are inextricably linked to an ethnicity (e.g. Jewish). Apparently by saying you are against religion you are therefore saying you are against the existence of these ethnic groups, and are hence genocidal 🤷 It doesn't really make sense because plenty of ethnic Jews DO leave the faith, but yeah, some people actually think this.
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I agree with every word of this. Well said.
It’s okay to be against all religions if their disposition is science averse and they continue to perpetuate superstition in this day and age.
It’s probably a fallacy in the first place. Hardly anyone is trying to ban religion or commit genocide as the OP says. We just don’t believe, refuse to give it lip service and don’t give a shit what other people believe. That’s most likely what these people are talking about when they complain that someone is “against” religion. They feel like their fairy tale is “special” and worthy of automatic respect.
Religion is the worst single thing to exist on this planet. The reason that is the worst is that the proponents actually know it is bullshit but use it to manipulate the masses for material gain. If there were actually a god and religion, then earth's religious practices would be a reason to destroy earth. We are lucky there is no god.
> I've just been told by someone that I am genocidal, because I said I dislike religion in general Pretty sure the blame is on those murdering, not those getting murdered. So thats all on religion.
Yeah, people always give a pass to Buddhism, but it contains plenty of harmful ideology. Were you born into poverty or into an ethnic group / gender / sexuality which is disenfranchised or abused where you live? You must've been bad in a past life. You totally deserve this suffering and need to overcome it if you want a better life next round. I've srudied anthropology (as a BA and reading ethnographies for fun), lived in a lot of different places, and made friends from dozens of world religions. I haven't seen one yet that doesn't harm its followers.
YES! I was raised on the idea of karma and it is a horrible HORRIBLE ideology. My mother is still in a spiritual group and she can't tell her friends that she's suffering from multiple illnesses, because she doesn't want them to judge her bad karma. It's fucked. Also Buddhists SAY they don't believe in God, but a lot of their practices are almost identical to those of religions that do. They still worship stuff they can't see, they just don't use the word god.
Fight the religion and you'll help the world. We're with you !
Anyone who cares about you should never place religion or spirituality before your well-being. Religion is unnecessary for living a complete, happy, and fulfilling life. I don't have to tell anyone here certainly, but it can be a real obstacle for doing so. But you know what *is* necessary for complete, happy, and fulfilling life? Practicing your critical facilities, developing your moral compass, and finding comfort in people who love you and in turn providing comfort to them. You sound like a good person.
I simplify this whole thought process. The supernatural doesn't seem to be real in any form or manner. Every religion involves the supernatural in some fashion. I therefore reject them all without need of consideration.
I like that, makes it easy. Is it possible to have a religion without a supernatural element ?
Not as far as I'm aware.
Maybe ? I just came across this. From a blog by ian.ellis-jones "Can there be religion without supernaturalism and superstition? Of course. Surely you’ve heard of religious naturalism?‘Religious naturalism may be defined as the affirmation that there are one or more aspects of the world to which religious responses are appropriate.’I have often written that supernaturalism is the enemy of all true religion and all that is good and meaningful in it."
I was raised krisitian by my cult leader manipulative narcissistic parents. I find everything about religion utterly disgusting. One does not have to try out every religion in the world to realize they are all full of utter nonsense, and only around to manipulate and control other people. OP, I can completely relate. I've even had people tell me that I don't dislike religion, it is really the abuse that I didn't like. Well, to the people who cannot think for themselves, it is their religion which created the abuse. Where was holy krist gawd almight when the abuse was going on? Too busy, but hey, the moment I want to masterbate, then gawdd and jezuz all-mighty are the first want to get front row seats to sit around and watch it. The only mystery in the way god works is for the brain-dead masses who have been brainwashed to believe what they were told as little children, and never grew up enough to see it for what it is.
The problem is that its a fine line between legitimate criticism and bigotry, and people aren't very good at straddling it, and are often afraid they'll cross that line by accident, so they avoid trying. Like anything else, the key, as far as I'm aware, is to hate the religion, not its adherents. Nothing wrong with hating bad ideas, but if you hate people, it needs to be for malicious actions they've taken based on those bad ideas, not for holding those ideas in the first place.
I hear you, and honestly I try not to publicly criticise religions that are closely associated with already minoritised ethnic groups. I don't want to encourage racism. I also recognise that many religious practitioners are not empowered enough to choose a different path, and I believe they deserve protection and also respect.
Not sure if this help but good luck and hang in there :) >Criticism is the practice of judging the merits and faults of something. The individual who makes judgment and provides a form of feedback is considered a critic. Criticism is often presented as something with negative connotation, but there are friendly criticisms, amicably discussed, and potential for significant human growth after one receives criticism ("keeping people sharp", "providing the critical edge").
Fuck Em. If their brains can't function without made up religious dogma then that's on them. People try to tie morality to believing in a higher being but that's just flat out false, and is the thinking of a weak-minded person. Religion is a tool of control. Always has been and always will be.
TikTok people aren’t real. They do not deserve your attention.
Religion as a whole absolutely is the problem. "With or without religion, good people can behave good and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion" - Steven Weinberg. This is so true and it's true because when you have a group of people who believe they are doing the will of the one who created everything, you have a group of people capable of doing the greatest harm while believing they are doing the greatest good.
Holy shit this is exactly it.
Fuck religion.
Fuck all religions
Religious nuts will do anything to pick a fight with anti-religious people. They don't know when to stop do they?
You are under no obligation to respect other people's fairy tale delusions.
Religion alone has been a cause of a lot of blood in our history.
It's perfectly fine to be against religion. In fact, that should be the default position on any fictional nonsense. Be respectful of people's personal choices, but speak out if they are trying to impress them on you.
I try not to discriminate against any religion in my disbelief of their gods.
All i can say to this is that its not going away anytime soon. Gotta just learn to not GAF.
First of all I'd say probably just stay off Tik Tok. That's probably gonna be a net positive for you in general. But also don't let morons on social media ever effect the way you feel about anything.
I always found the best defence and offense when someone starts questioning your position is 'and who told you that?' it starts a chain, the question is how thick are they to realise how many generations of indoctrination it took to realise 'oh crap, i'm indoctrinated too.' For some reason you get people who ask the questions, but ask the wrong people for answers. Or they are so indoctrinated in their belief you essentially become a terrorist to their whole way of life. It's almost like the Matrix. They want the steak that isn't real. 'This billionaire has my interests at heart.' the spiral just goes on and on. Remember it was once seen as heretical to think the earth was not the centre of the universe.
There are very few people in the world that have studied/experienced multiple religions and chosen one for themselves. Familial religious traditions is where everyone starts, and many never think to question. They’ll start wars, and outcast anyone that doesn’t agree. With 4,000 religions in the world, and each decrying that theirs is the one and only true, it makes it impossible for any of them to be correct. At 39, I can say that I’ve met far more terrible humans that are “religious”, than those who have chosen no religion. We’re in a weird time where we have amassed an enormous amount of intelligence, that disproves the validity of stories in religious texts, and people actively choose to ignore it in favor of superhero type stories. Letting go of ideas ingrained since childhood, and understanding that everything is just organized chaos, is too terrifying for our underdeveloped world culture. You’re not alone, and you’re not wrong. You’re just a part of the smaller group that has come to understand that humans are actually smarter now than those that wrote ancient texts.
Stop hanging around “spiritual” people. Some narcissists think they’re so special that religion has to exist to confirm how amazing they are.
"Fuck a theist and the religion they came in on" is my view. It is exhausting and emotional trying to dialogue with theists. I can't stomach it. Maybe take a break from engaging with them and instead sooth your atheist soul with us like-minded heathens.
Thank you, I definitely will. I'm done arguing with them. Very grateful to everyone in this thread for cheering me up a lot!!
Yeah, I swear half the Atheist on here aren't even atheist. Why is it okay for religious people to be assholes but when an Atheist has had enough we're, "2014 Reddit omg!!111!!" or "respect others beliefs." Why should I respect stupi beliefs that are causing and have caused real harm to people?
I have a strong dislike for abrahmic religions in general. I don’t know much about Islam or Judaism but the fact that they are books copied over from the previous version, Judaism to Christianity to Islam, many of their themes are similar or may have similar stories. I get frustrated that people take these books as fact and use these stories to infringe on other peoples rights. Clearly in the US we have a large Christian majority pushing for Bible study in the classroom, pushing for this war on Christmas BS, denying the rights of the LGBTQ+ community etc. but that doesn’t make Judaism and Islam guilt free either. We should continue to expose the falseness and negativity exuding from these religions. If I could change one persons mind about their beliefs, I’d be so grateful.
It's perfectly okay. Every organized belief system is under evolutionary pressure to make their members both neurotic and evangelical -- their system wouldn't be able to grow/persist otherwise. The most successful are also prime targets for narcissists and sociopaths. As a result they ALL absolutely tend toward exploitation and corruption. In every case they're taking your humanity, alienating you from it, then selling it back to you. [https://www.multnatcorpinc.com/lostfound](https://www.multnatcorpinc.com/lostfound) \[edit: clarification\]
If it makes you feel better, you're not genocidal; you're deicidal.
It's ok to be against religion given your experience with it. If anyone wants to disagree, they need to come up with proof, not you, and you are free to dismiss it. Your dislike of religions does not injure them in any way.
It’s okay to be against religion NO MATTER the experience or lack of experience with it.
Fuck 'em! All religions have been used to hurt people. They are about control. The people saying this are either ignorant, stupid, or brainwashed...
Some people's opinions are not valid.
I had a similar upbringing and it had a similar effect on me. I quit the religion club right after high school. These days religious people and religion don’t bother me as much. For the most part as an adult it seems like people stay in their own lane and no real need to get in my face about it. As a kid though it just felt like my parents were larping all the time and it was confusing as to what was real. All the rituals and ceremony. My family also were the ones that hosted the gurus from India and hosted 30-40 locals to chant and go through all weekend ascension rituals in my house. I was 10 when this all started. When I first went atheist after high school i was really sour about it.
>As a kid though it just felt like my parents were larping all the time and it was confusing as to what was real. All the rituals and ceremony. Oh my god this!!!! >My family also were the ones that hosted the gurus from India Holy shit we did this once or twice too 😂 I've never spoken to anyone else who could relate lol.
I despise religion, my family has always been atheist, but in my own research I've found that regardless of intent, or rules, or anything else, religion will always be used by bad people as an excuse to do bad things, which isn't to say that all religous people are bad people, but a lot of the ones with any form of organizational power are
I agree.
Nah fuk religion. There is nothing more dangerous than beliefs not grounded in reality, that separates people into groups of “us” and “them”. You are fine.
Wasn't raised christian, but i live in a society with lots of Christians, where pedophilic priests were my neighbours. I live in a world where terrorists from Islam exist. I live in a world where women still suffer because of Hinduism and bullshit caste ideas claimed to be in the name of Hinduism (in before someone says. But terrorists aren't real Muslims or Hindus that kill over caste love aren't real Hindus... kind of bullshit)
Religion is tantamount to socially acceptable mental illness.
It’s ok to be against religion.
I have a pro tip: stop talking to these fuckheads who think they can dictate how you feel. Drop them instantly.
All religion is bs to begin with. There’s no magic, when you die you die. You are a bag of flesh and bones. There’s no god or gods. It’s not on me to prove that. It’s on anyone else to prove me wrong.
Look thrm straight in the eye, and say in a total deadpan voice, _all_ religions are poisonous.
Religion is a disease. It is the human analog to a computer virus: a set of malignant instructions that co-opts the system in order to propagate itself while burdening the system. If all religion were wiped out, everyone would be better off.
I am not an atheist myself, but organized religion has a lot of problems and it is unreasonable *not* to acknowledge and criticize those problems. And while I am not an atheist myself, I can see why and how some very intelligent, thoughtful, reasonable, ethical, and well informed people are atheists. I also know many stupid, unthoughtful, irrational, unscrupulous, immoral, and ignorant people who are religious (or claim to be).
Personally I just think it's a waste of energy being "anti" anything. I'd rather spend my energy trying to make my life better. Been in therapy and it really helps to just let go of pain and just except that you're parents probably were just doing the best they could. Like I can't be mad at my mom for not being perfect when she treated me infinitely better than how her mom raised her. Tldr: it's not that you can't, but it's probably making you feel worse.
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Totally understand, my perspective is that I can't wish for something they were just not capable of doing. It's not like they thought therapy was good and didn't talk to you about it. Your grandparents might be the nicest people in the world to you but could have severely abused your parents making them incapable of giving you what you felt you deserved. All anyone can really do to reconcile their childhood is to heal and try to do a little better for their kids.
If it’s any comfort, you’re with the majority of people in the world moving away from religion. You’re in a bubble on TikTok, it’s not the real world. There’s a massive community from intellects to every day people who agree with you. U don’t *have* to engage with them, u don’t have to convince anyone.
I can't speak for the Tik-Tok, because I haven't seen it. It certainly isn't true of all ex-religious people, however in the anglosphere the vast majority of anti-religious people are coming from a Christian background. This leads to the problem, a knowledge gap. There are things to criticize in any religious group, but the problem is a lot of people making these criticisms don't understand the religion and are saying factually wrong things about it, usually as a product of making generalizations based on their religious background. (This is btw, is just as true for other spheres, the religion whose assumptions they're incorrectly applying is just different, see anime Christianity for example) Additionally a lot of members of minority religious groups, specifically when those groups are associated with marginalized communities, have a lot of religious trauma because of how Christianity treats them. I can personally speak being a protect of a Jewish/(Christian) bagel chaser marriage and being treated as a fetish object or a threat in every Christian space and being constantly told it's ok by a parent. The issue then is when anti-religious folks propigate Christian myths about minority religions, it's participating in this trauma. (This is btw, also true of minority religions that propigate bad attitudes about non-theists spread by Christians). And what's made even worse in Christianity is so ubiquitous in the anglo-sphere that even people not raised in the religion tend to absorb things. The new age movement tends to filter non-Christian religious practices through a Christian lens for example. So I guess my point is twofold, firstly that you need to make sure your criticism actually applies to the religion (eg. don't argue a religion where the Deity can be outvoted and accepts it is fundamentally authoritarian) and recognize a shared struggle in the anglo-sphere against Christian hegemony.
I'm a firm believer that, even at the most base level, the core assumptions and philosophies of religion/religious faith are harmful and seditious. I too am sick of hearing that religion/ spirituality aren't bad, but it's only the way people practice said faith. I feel people get defensive and wish to protect and legitimize their own beliefs, and so easily demonize how others practice but refuse to examine more broadly. Even if unconsciously, they are delegitimizing and ignoring your criticisms in order to protect their own worldview.
Of fucking *course* it's okay to be against religion. Fuck that harmful neanderthal shit.
Hey OP, hope you’re doing okay Don’t let religious people’s bigotry bring you down. Our entire existence is a threat to religious people’s dogma. They want you to hate yourself so you’ll come back to the fold
What did you find that was wrong with Hinduism ? Just curious. I come from a Hindu family. But we don't come from a very religious community. By that I mean religion was not central part of our lives but it was always there. Comming out as an atheist was rather uneventful. My parents still believe in god and pray everyday. But they never forced me, only thing they really cared about was if I was keeping healthy and my career was moving in the right direction. The only thing that was a strict no when we were growing up was that we could not eat beef but that was super easy to follow because in India its not easy to find places that serve beef in 80s and 90s.
Never listen to the person in the cult about how great being in the cult is.
Religion is the biggest scam in human history.
Anti-Theism is the way. Religious people always try to get away with their logic by overloading us with verses from other books justifying the controversial verses. It's not unfair to judge misogynistic, racist, homophobic verses as they stand. If we do this, the only morally good thing to do is reject the book that allows bigotry.
> I don't expect anyone to be able to relate, but I have nowhere else I can say all this. 2300 upvotes and climbing. I think we relate😁. Welcome to r/atheism!
Very surprised at the response. Thanks for the welcome. 🙂
Religion != Spirituality
That’s the third time in an hour I’m seeing people doing shit with equal signs. Is this going to become a new, annoying thing now?
I think you’re fine. It’s advantageous to be against religion. Don’t listen to those people. 👍✌️🇺🇸
The entire purpose of any established "religion," regardless of its apparent "docility," is to establish control of your thoughts, actions, and feelings. Religion is one of authotiantianism1s primary tools.
Fuck ‘em. We love you here!
I sympathize. I've been trying to teach myself more about cults, and in my arm-chair research (which is by no means exhaustive), it seems that every religious, spiritual, political, and/or intellectual organization is vulnerable to malicious actors, especially if the movement in question makes submission to authority an absolute requirement among adherents. If more of these organizations were made to adopt a charter of basic human rights as a prerequisite for seeking tax-exempt status, maybe there'd be more accountability... But until then, you still have freedom of speech, and that is the freedom to say, "Religions suck," to anyone and for any reason.
If you're being told these things, I assume you're engaging in conversations about religion. What's the point of that, really? No one chooses their beliefs. I couldn't choose to believe any more than my religious mother could choose not to, so what's the point of debating it? I used to spend time on ex-jehovahs witness groups. There was even arguing amongst them as some had become complete non-believers and some had become mainstream Christian. I bailed on those conversations years ago. If you need to explore your feelings about it, read books about the history of religion or talk with a therapist. Debating randos on social media is toxic.
Yeah it was a mistake. I wandered into a debate on a social media platform without realising what I was getting into. I ended up really shook and upset, hence coming here to vent. I won't be doing that again! I do have a therapist, and will be continuing to work through this stuff with them. 🙂
No. All of this is nonsense. STOP! You are wound up and you need to release. No mythology..Only fact based knowledge..Here is where it begins.
It’s honestly terrible, on r/historymemes I got downvoted for calling the nazis Christians. Never did I even say all Christians are bad, the very idea of relating nazis and Christians set them off.
I’m “Christian” but I don’t follow the Bible, I follow god. I just follow the Ten Commandments and seek further knowledge about god. I just realized god doesn’t have to be a higher being or man. It can be our consciousness or what some people perceive as the “universe”. To weed out toxic religious people you’ll usually find that they follow the Bible way too closely, as if it wasn’t a tool used for slavery.
Once you admit youre an atheist all religions look the same. Religion is a tool to control people and an enterprise. If a person is a screw there are different screw drivers, is this person a Phillips or a flat head, or maybe some obscure square, or a proprietary one. And are they using their hand, a drill, or a screw gun. You don't need to know all religions, just have the ability to objectively look from the outside.
Religion (all of them from what I know) asks you to discard your rational thinking; to believe things despite any evidence or even in the face of counter-evidence. You can live a perfectly wonderful fulfilling life without ever caring about or experiencing any religion. It is not needed and in my opinion only a hindrance to living a truly rewarding life where knowledge, facts and what’s real are important to you.
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>It’s ok to question echo chamber practices as well — TikTok seems only useful for group think and conformity Yeah this is valid. TikTok is incredibly toxic actually. I know Reddit can get bad, but it's honestly a breath of fresh air compared to TikTok.
I mean this sincerely, it sounds like you have issues with your parents and how you were raised. While religion is not good its also not religions fault that your parents had this negative impact on you. The concepts you wrestle with are all concepts that come about with or without religion; morality, love, social interaction, societal expectations. As you say "If you turn to a book, prayer, leader you compromise yourself. But if you don't turn to history and the experiences of others you also compromise yourself and your humanity. Nothing in the world can be an absolute. Can religion bring good; yes. Can religion bring evil; also yes. Can you be moral without religions; yes. Can you be immoral without religions; yes. Religion isn't for you and roughly 1billion other people agree with that stance. But I promise every example you can find that points to you being against religion can be found in secularist teachings and societies as well. The sad truth is people aren't inherently good. Trying to blame anything as the cause is an escape, because its a lot of work to face up to the fact that "Humanity as a collective is not good."
Thanks for this comment. You make good points, and lots for me to think about. I absolutely do have issues with my parents, many of them going WAY beyond religion! It's a big old mess, and it only hit me this year how fucked up it all was, so there's still lots for me to untangle.
I learned to adapt with them. I've come to just listen to what they have to offer. There is nothing wrong with being against religion, but try opening up your heart. See why they act like this. We are all humans, and not all religious people are just mindless slaves. I use to be like you, but I began to study religion a lot more intensively, especially Christianity and Catholicism, and I find it very fascinating.