Atheism
Community Guide
Archive Today will help you look at paywalled content the way search engines see it.
Statement of Purpose
- This is a support and conversation community for people who don't believe in gods.
- Superstition hucksters have no reason to subscribe or post here at all.
- If you are looking to debate or proselytize, options will be linked lower in the sidebar.
Acceptable
- Honest questions or conversations.
- Discussions on parenting or advice.
- Struggles, frustrations, coming out.
- Atheist memes. We can have fun!
- News headlines relevant to atheism.
Unacceptable
Depending on severity, you might be warned before adverse action is taken.
- Anything against site rules.
- Illegal and/or NSFW material.
- Troll posts and comments. There will be no attempt to explain what that means.
- Leading questions, agenda pushing, or disingenuous attempts to bait members.
- Personal attacks or flaming.
Inadvisable
- Self promotion or upvote farming.
- Excessive shitposting or off-topic discussion.
Application of warnings or bans will be subject to moderator discretion. Feel free to appeal. If changes to the guidelines are necessary, they will be adjusted.
If you vocally harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathizer or a resemblant of a group that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of any other group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you you will be banned on sight.
Provable means able to provide proof to the moderation, and, if necessary, to the community.
~ /c/nostupidquestions
If you want your space listed in this sidebar and it is especially relevant to the atheist or skeptic communities, PM DancingPickle and we'll have a look!
Connect with Atheists
- Matrix: #atheism:envs.net
Help and Support Links
- Freedom From Religion Foundation
- The Secular Therapy Project
- Secular Students Alliance
- Black Nonbelievers
- The Clergy Project
- Atheist Alliance International
- Sunday Assembly
- Atheist Ireland
- Atheism UK
- Atheists United
Streaming Media
This is mostly YouTube at the moment. Podcasts and similar media - especially on federated platforms - may also feature here.
- Atheist Debates - Matt Dillahunty
- Rationality Rules
- Friendly Atheist
- Making Sense with Sam Harris
- Cosmic Skeptic
- Genetically Modified Skeptic
- Street Epistemology
- Armored Skeptic
- NonStampCollector
Orgs, Blogs, Zines
- Center for Inquiry
- American Atheists
- Humanists International
- Atheist Republic
- The Brights
- The Angry Atheist
- History for Atheists
- Rationalist International
- Atheist Revolution
- Debunking Christianity
- Godless Mom
- Atheist Freethinkers
Mainstream
Bibliography
Start here...
...proceed here.
- God is Not Great (Hitchens)
- The God Delusion (Dawkins)
- The End of Faith (Harris)
- Why I Am Not a Christian (Russell)
- Letter to a Christian Nation (Harris)
Proselytize Religion
From Reddit
As a community with an interest in providing the best resources to its members, the following wiki links are provided as historical reference until we can establish our own.
view the rest of the comments
Churches are the mechanism by which people organize and share beliefs. Countries that do not allow freedom of religion use taxes and regulations to shut down religious organizations that either don't follow the state sanctioned religion or compete with the state sanctioned religion. It is indeed a form of thought control.
Political leaders of faith will seek out ways to favor their own churches and punish the ones they don't like. The Supreme Court has already created two classes of religions by giving preferential status to their own faiths while denying the rights of faiths they don't believe should exist. That's happening already, and we have a constitution that specifically prohibits it.
I agree with you that certain church leaders abuse their status and dramatically cross the line when it comes to political activity. They aren't really churches, and there really is plenty of proof of that. I think the people running those organizations belong in prison for fraud, but I don't get to have everything I want. It should be very hard to take away tax exempt status, though, because you know politicians would abuse that worse than church leaders abuse the system now.
If you and me were in charge, we could probably sit down with a list and make some really reasonable decisions about which churches should be taxed. But neither of us has that power, so I'm glad nobody else has it, and I'll even bet that a lot of other people are glad we don't have that power.
Yes there is fraud and abuse and corruption of tax-exempt churches. This is the better alternative.
First off churhces are NOT "THE" mechanism. they are- at best- A mechanism.
there's a MTG card shop I go to play games and hang out with people. There's at least as much organization and belief sharing happening there. I doubt anyone would seriously argue that shop deserves to be tax exempt.
or on a more serious note, journalists, authors, book publishers and sellers and all sorts of other sorts in that general vein.
so how is that an argument that churches/faiths should not be collectively taxed?
Personally, if a church wants to spin off an actual charitable organization, they should do that. but if the primary purpose is religious instruction/indoctrination they should be treated like a 501c7 corp. Which is still tax exempt, but is allowed to make political endorsements, so long as that's not the organization's prmary (or even "substantial") purpose. West Burough Baptist, for example would get yeeted from 501c7 status; but most churches would not.
one critical distinction is that most of it's income must come from membership dues. (tithes?) and contributions are not tax deductible.
IMO charitable organizations should be solely for charity and not be used to proselytize a particular faith, which is exactly what churches (and most religious organizations,) do, if they do any actual charity at all.