I have been reluctant to call myself an atheist. Mainly because I associate the label with many negative qualities and find many atheists to be perpetually 14 edgelords who claim to be pro-science but seem to think the scientific method is composed of running into a church and yelling “Fake!”
I could go on if it were my intent to chase away my audience with a stick so I’ll mostly leave it there.
How can I see such angry arrogant bullies chanting “Sky Daddy!” and go “Yes I am one of them?”
It is illogical.
But I have no choice but to wear the label, because God is not real.
If God were real, Christians would be the kindest and most giving people in the world.
I don’t need to tell you how far from the case this is.
I don’t need to tell you about the cruelty of Christian movements. About how all their good will and charitable acts begin and end at “Believe in our God and stop complaining!”
They do not stop suffering, they deny it even exists. Claiming it to be part of God’s plan and how God doesn’t make mistakes. The latter is true because the former isn’t. God doesn’t make mistakes because there is no plan, there is no God.
This is insanity
While I have known Christians who are truly kind people, some of them I call my dearest friends… these are the exception not the rule. And even he, one of my best friends, will ignore his conscience and choose cruelty if he believes it the will of his God. Even if his Pope says it isn’t.
If God were real these Christians would not be so angry that non believers and transpeople exist. They would be fearful of his wrath and joyous of his love.
The rich would not horde wealth but spend it in service to the poor, for the riches of Heaven would be far greater and far more permanent.
If God were real he would heal the sick, we would hear of the miraculous healing of amputees. We would hear of gender dysphoric teenagers who awoke in a new body. We would hear how the angels themselves condemned Israel’s genocide of Palestine.
God would have saved my Christian friend who became brain dead in a hit and run, and actually dead two weeks later.
God would have halted the actions of every man of faith who decided to prey upon children, nay they’d be too scared of his wrath to even have thoughts of doing as such.
But God will never lift a finger to help anyone. Not because he is cruel or indifferent. But because he isn’t there.
Should I hear a voice with an otherworldly glow say “It’s me, the Lord your God. I am sorry for my absence, but I need your help to make this right.”
All would be forgiven and I would bow in reverence to Christ.
But that day will not come.
I am an atheist not because I am heartless and reject him… but because my heart calls out to him and receives nothing.
I have pondered if maybe God is around and some can hear him more clearly than others.
But then I remember how Conservatives behave, either using God for a selfish agenda or being suckered by false holy men…
And there goes that hypothesis.
God, if you’re willing to talk I am willing to listen. But sadly you aren’t because you don’t exist.
I won’t say all Christians are awful because it’s simply not true.
The majority of Christians, especially American style ones, do not know or follow the teachings of Christ.
I’m agnostic, but I think what Jesus taught was actually pretty cool.
I kinda wish god was/is definitely real someone’s because I want justice for all the evil people in the world.
So… just to clarify.
Did you know Jesus taught obedience to the Law of Moses (and the commands of the prophets.)? His actual teachings- as recorded in the 4 gospels- are actually pretty horrific, when you understand that he absolutely was teaching adherence to the “old law”. (in point of fact he adresses this directly in Matthew5:17-20)
The law of moses is horrific compared today’s standards. I mean, it allows men to sell their daughters to be a sex slave… rape is basically a property crime, and if a guy rapes an un-betrothed virgin… he owes the father some money and then the woman in question is forced to marry her rapist. And then there’s the explicit endorsement of slavery, the whole thing about stoning women who didn’t bleed on their wedding night (I say it this way, because it was known long before Jesus that most women didn’t actually bleed the first time they had sex… and that commandment was given directly by god, presumably.)
Like… in my limited experience, the people who talk about the teachings of jesus… only take some things, and ignore all of the horrifically objectionable shit. Like. Slavery would have been something that jesus would have encountered on a daily basis… and his father most like;y owned several. (he probably wasn’t a furniture maker- rather he was a builder… likely building houses and other buildings like bridges, etc. It’s also likely that jesus didn’t grow up poor.)
Didn’t he literally say the “old law” didn’t matter anymore?
That was Paul. Who was totally a heretic.
The verse I linked is Jesus explicitly stating he absolutely did not come to abolish the previous law. In fact, he made the law stricter (or wanted to.)
The stuff about “you’ve heard it said… don’t murder… but anger is just as bad, etc. it doesn’t help that a fair amount of the gospels were later inserts to retcon things to be more palatable to a broader audience.
Like gentiles we’re unlikely to convert if they had to give up pork and snip the tip, etc. Jesus was pretty clear about that, too.
He said he came to fulfill it, not make it stricter, fulfill as in complete so it’s no longer needed
That is a lie. Mathew 5:17-20
Yes. Jesus used the word “fulfilled”. But then in the same breath he’s saying “The law will not pass away”. and then- again literally in the next sentence, he says “whoever teaches others to not follow the law will be the least in heaven.,” And then wraps up saying “Hey, if you’re not more strict than the scribes and the pharisees… you’re not going to heaven.”
Luke says similar in 16:14-17:
if you take the scriptures as truth, Jesus is literally saying that the Law will remain.
Personally, I don’t take the scriptures as truth, and I doubt very much that what’s attributed to him were actually said. At best a historical jesus was a jewish mystic running a faith healing racket. a fraud. a sham. Paul is the one who taught that the law was now irrelevant, and most of the things attributed to jesus saying it… well… those were written after Paul. Further, none of the gospels are eye-witness accounts, were written anonymously, and some fifty years or more after the events they purport to descibe.
there are exactly zero reasons to believe they’re accurate.
It’s possible to Chery pick nice things about Jesus. Moses was a piece of shit, and Yahweh a minor Caananite god appearing late in Caananite/Egypt/Greece (who syncretized/recognized each other’s gods) between 1400 and 850bc), even if Moses truly received commandments from him, would be a Caananite coup where Yahweh is not honoring his parents, where idolatry commandment was specifically a warmongering “destroy everything Caananite” instead of coveting any metalic value inside of them. The freedom of Israelites was the freedom to enslave all others with Moses at head of Israelite hierarchy.
The disciples all brought their own perspective, and some of the gospels are written by people who never met Jesus. Matthew was a Roman tax collector, wealthy enough to host a banquet, and appreciative of the trickle up benefits of slavery.
That Jesus needed to be politicaly polite/correct to establishment beliefs as a constraint in contradicting Moses would certaily allow disciples to hear what they wanted to hear, or quote the polite parts before the “, but …”.
If you start with “ranked mandate priorities” (means all contradictions to higher prioritized mandates are invalid), which makes far more sense than every biblical statement is equally true, no matter the author, and put “do onto others as you wish done onto you.” as top mandate, then it is possible to revise the bible into something more Humanist, and even to accept Jesus while rejecting Yahweh/Moses.
You can cherry pick anyone. I bet hitler said one or two things that weren’t totally awful. Same for Trump, Mao, Stalin, Putin… musk.
You can cherry pick, yes. But that means your understanding doesn’t comport with reality.
“Some” of the gospels? Try “all.” None of the gospels were written by the people they were named for. The rest of what you said is word salad and, it sounds like what you’re saying is that words don’t mean words.
The reality is we don’t know if these are even his words- the earliest gospel was written 50 years after his death, does not mention a virgin birth, does not mention anything before his ministry at all…. And doesn’t really mention any of the prophecies that Jesus “fulfilled”
Mathew was written next., at around the first century ce. It was written specifically to address that last bit about Mark not fulfilling prophecy. And fails miserably.
For example,
the virgin birth thing? Comes from Isaiah 7:14. Isaiah is sent by god, to tell Ahaz to chill, that god was going to deal with the kingdoms that were allying against him.
The child mentioned by Isaiah- who would be nard Emanuel- was not the Messiah. In fact the child’s sole purpose here is to indicate time. The woman is not a virgin- she’s just a “young woman”. Who was already pregnant. The kid was born and that prophecy was fulfilled in the time Isaiah said it would be.
The only reason for this mistake is that the author of Mark was likely a Hellenic Jew, heavily influenced by Greek philosophy, and was almost certainly working solely off the Septuagint. In koine Greek, the word for “virgin”- parthenos- was also used sometimes to just denote a young woman. They never read the original Hebrew, which absolutely does distinguish the two.
It doesn’t make sense to say the child was Jesus- the kid was literally born and used for timekeeping and the actual prophecy fulfilled a few chapters later.
Luke was just as bad as Mathew. None of the “prophecies” they mention were ever meant to be about Jesus, and Ike half were never actually meant to be prophecy in the first place. (Like the psalm of David they use to say him being pierced which said nothing of being pierced and was just a poem about David being surrounded and abused by enemies.)
There’s zero reason with that kind of known mistakes (or out and out lies,).
The main thing I said. Instead of reading salad, understand what was said.
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This is pretty much where I stand sort of.
I do believe that Christ if he were real could save this disgusting world and reform the plague that is humanity.
There are some Christians who legit follow Christ but they are in the minority.
The reason they are in the minority is because God is not there to reinforce the teachings. He does not appear before the wicked and warn them to change their ways, he does not appear before the downtrodden to lift their spirits.
Christians claim he does yet he is no where to be seen. “Mysterious ways” is a lot like the word “sorry”. It means less the more you have to say it
I was agnostic, I even got banned site wide from Reddit standing up for Christianity against Anti-Theistic trolls.
Even tried being Buddhist for awhile and meditated in search of God, but I couldn’t find him.
There simply must come a time where I stop saying “I must not being doing this right.” And start being honest with myself.
“I called out for God and nobody came.”
Yeah I’ve never felt it/god either. I think that’s fine.
I have Christian family members who are just solid people, so I try to defend people like them.
I don’t like anti theism because they find real community with their church and help people, and it’s genuinely a net good for them.