Atheism
Community Guide
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Statement of Purpose
- This is a support and conversation community for people who don't believe in gods.
- Superstition hucksters have no reason to subscribe or post here at all.
- If you are looking to debate or proselytize, options will be linked lower in the sidebar.
Acceptable
- Honest questions or conversations.
- Discussions on parenting or advice.
- Struggles, frustrations, coming out.
- Atheist memes. We can have fun!
- News headlines relevant to atheism.
Unacceptable
Depending on severity, you might be warned before adverse action is taken.
- Anything against site rules.
- Illegal and/or NSFW material.
- Troll posts and comments. There will be no attempt to explain what that means.
- Leading questions, agenda pushing, or disingenuous attempts to bait members.
- Personal attacks or flaming.
Inadvisable
- Self promotion or upvote farming.
- Excessive shitposting or off-topic discussion.
Application of warnings or bans will be subject to moderator discretion. Feel free to appeal. If changes to the guidelines are necessary, they will be adjusted.
If you vocally harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathizer or a resemblant of a group that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of any other group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you you will be banned on sight.
Provable means able to provide proof to the moderation, and, if necessary, to the community.
~ /c/nostupidquestions
If you want your space listed in this sidebar and it is especially relevant to the atheist or skeptic communities, PM DancingPickle and we'll have a look!
Connect with Atheists
- Matrix: #atheism:envs.net
Help and Support Links
- Freedom From Religion Foundation
- The Secular Therapy Project
- Secular Students Alliance
- Black Nonbelievers
- The Clergy Project
- Atheist Alliance International
- Sunday Assembly
- Atheist Ireland
- Atheism UK
- Atheists United
Streaming Media
This is mostly YouTube at the moment. Podcasts and similar media - especially on federated platforms - may also feature here.
- Atheist Debates - Matt Dillahunty
- Rationality Rules
- Friendly Atheist
- Making Sense with Sam Harris
- Cosmic Skeptic
- Genetically Modified Skeptic
- Street Epistemology
- Armored Skeptic
- NonStampCollector
Orgs, Blogs, Zines
- Center for Inquiry
- American Atheists
- Humanists International
- Atheist Republic
- The Brights
- The Angry Atheist
- History for Atheists
- Rationalist International
- Atheist Revolution
- Debunking Christianity
- Godless Mom
- Atheist Freethinkers
Mainstream
Bibliography
Start here...
...proceed here.
- God is Not Great (Hitchens)
- The God Delusion (Dawkins)
- The End of Faith (Harris)
- Why I Am Not a Christian (Russell)
- Letter to a Christian Nation (Harris)
Proselytize Religion
From Reddit
As a community with an interest in providing the best resources to its members, the following wiki links are provided as historical reference until we can establish our own.
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Surely the answer is "Depends which bit of it you're quoting." For example, if you quote something that calls for genocide then, obviously, yes. But if you were to quote something relatively innocuous, then yes because you're quoting from a book that, among other things, calls for genocide.
I disagree. If you quote it in a manner that encourages genocide, then yes, absolutely. But if you properly contextualize the quote, there is no such possible quotation that should be outright banned. Context matters, and intent matters. It's important to be able to discuss difficult subjects in a respectful manner, and sometimes that requires verbatim reproduction of hateful artifacts of speech.
Soooo no more free speech?
Free speech, sure.
Freedom from consequences, absolutely fucking not.
Then the question would be what sayings are resulting in consequences. And that’s when you start loosing freedom of speech. Banning someone from a TV show might be something different, as it’s not linked to judicial consequences though.
But would you also forbid quoting Marx, Stalin, Hitler, Bin Laden, Mao, …? This question is a very dangerous one. Because it will result in limitations of freedom of speech.
Ah, my good old friend the slippery slope fallacy. I haven't seen you for checks watch a couple of days.
The question always is, why it should be forbidden to say unpleasant things. First off, in many situations, people are making a joke of themselves. Secondly, you have to toughen up in life. Stop trying to cushion every aspect of communication. We cannot make everyone feel comfortable.
I haven’t watched the vid and cannot right now. But responding to the comment above, it should be “forbidden to say unpleasant things” when the law makes it illegal, because the law comes from the elected legislature in a democracy (i.e., ≈ the collective will of the people). This is not about cushioning people from unpleasantness, it’s about not breaking laws that exist for a reason.
When should it be made illegal to say such things? When we collectively and democratically agree that it leads to net negative societal outcomes; for example, quoting the worst of the Old Testament, or Hitler’s Mein Kampf in the context of uncritically calling for genocide or apartheid is already illegal in some countries, because we know exactly where this leads. It’s not the books themselves that are problematic, it’s advocating for illegal things like discrimination or mass murder based on race, beliefs, etc. Anyone advocating for such things is already legally liable under several jurisdictions, regardless of whether they couch their argument in some third-party written text.
Such laws were enacted precisely because of historical lessons learned at an expensive cost to humanity. We don’t have to repeat the same experiments just because we didn’t live through that era.
Its a bad idea to rely on the good will of the majority when handing out rights. I think its easy to see in places like America and the UK, and in some places in Europe, public sentiment is slipping backwards. Humans have some terrible impulses and will collectively act on them sometimes. Look at how trans people are being treated right now. Just because its been decided by the state legislatures in Florida that you can't educate children about sex or gender identity or that exposing kids to the "speech" of dressing in drag is a criminal offense does not make it moral. And yes private companies are not bound to any government laws regarding speech and association. But the ideal of free speech is also worth cultivating beyond strictly state sanctioned violence. It is worth hearing and listening to what people have to say, even if their only value is to used as an example of what not to be or become.
What’s the alternative to the will of the majority, though?
The legislature is meant to be ≈ representative, but that ranges from 1:1 in places like Switzerland (direct votation on everything) to indirect representation such as a bicameral system where the higher chamber (typically, the senate) is supposed to embrace the long view and provide some degree of perennial wisdom that the masses sometimes lack (especially in reaction to current events).
I agree that the mean has regressed toward populism and reactionary sentiment toward social progress (e.g., LGBTQ rights) among Western democracies in the last couple of decades. But I also look at this as history (with a lowercase h) ebbing and flowing, while History (with an uppercase H) trends unidirectionally toward more open and progressive societies. In other words, one step back, two steps forward. Every generation seems to be more tolerant than the previous, and holistically there’s been steady progress (in the “progressive” acceptance of the word) on societal matters over the 19th and 20th century to date.
I also feel that an absolutist free speech position, while dogmatically progressive and permissive on the surface, is actually regressive in its byproducts (cf. Popper’s paradox of intolerance). I also feel that most Western democracies, through their imperfect but somewhat representative legislatures, have struck a nuanced position on free speech that wisely forbids advocating for discriminatory speed (all the way to handing down hefty fines and prison sentences for neonazi speech in Europe, for instance).
That makes me not in favor of naively experimenting with relaxing those rules and risking hate speech (however thinly disguised) become banal once again.
Quite a puzzle, isn't it.
Now you're just putting words in my mouth. You clearly aren't engaging in good faith so this conversation ends here. Have a nice day. :)
It was not my intention to do so.
I reject this accusation.
(☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞ I wish you a wonderful day as well.