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What are your biggest pet peeves in the atheism community? (lemmy.world)
submitted 4 days ago by to c/atheism@lemmy.world
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Here are my top 3:

  1. Whataboutism with Christainity - I've been a vocal critic of islam in atheist spaces for well over a decade. There has not been a single instance of me criticizing islam where I did not get a hoard of atheists bringing up Christianity for no reason. There's no relevance and no point to it, but they get really mad when I try to focus on islam. It's like why can't they just accept that islam or other religions can be criticized on their own merits independently?

  2. Self centered American atheists - Whenever I ever bring up my and my family's experiences in the middle east and how horrible islam is over there, there will always be a handful of ignorant American atheists who can't comprehend that the world is more than their country. No ISIS and your dumb MAGA uncle are not the same.

  3. "All religions are bad" - I hate this statement because it's like "all lives matter". Yeah, no shit all religions are bad. That's literally the baseline of any atheist community. All the discussions lie in the nuances beyond that. Smearing this statement all over atheist spaces is completely meaningless.

What about you guys? Are there any things in the atheist community that you noticed that make your eyes twitch? I would love to hear them.

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[–] 15 points 4 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (4 children)

  1. When people bring up Christianity they are sharing their experience as a way to show they also understand your frustration because we have similar problems with Christians in the U.S.

  2. Fanatic religious people are actually kind of the same everywhere. They all think it's their way only. And if not, they will hope bad things happen to you, to teach you a lesson. And many actively engage in activities to harm others who don't conform.

This is the same all over the world.

It's true we don't have a lot of suicide bombers. But we do have extremist doing a lot of things that harm many people. They do so in ways that get less press attention.

  1. Most religions are bad. Because they have the same end game. Control and subjugate. Which makes them bad.

Spirituality and community can be achieved without religious doctrine. Religion uses people's desire for these things to control them.

I honestly do not understand your complaints.

If you don't want to hear responses about American/Western atheist experiences, why post on this community ?

What do you want people to say to you ?

What kind of responses are you wanting ?

Have you asked yourself what you want people to say back. ?

I don't know what else , mostly Western atheists, are going to say.

Except

"Yeah Christian fundamentalist are really awful here in the U.S, UK, and Australia (English speaking countries). And make the country unsafe and fascist"

We do have all sorts of religions here in the U.S, but it's mostly the Christian evangelical /nationalist that are causing big problems.

And many atheists believe :

"Religion promotes adherence to made-up rules that people in power use to control and impoverish the general public".

I think that's a common opinion. It's sort of part of being an atheist.

If you have a favorable opinion of religion, then you probably are religious and thus not an atheist.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 child)

    The most common impediment to clear thinking that a non-believer must confront is the idea that the burden of proof can be fairly placed on his shoulders: "How do you know there is no God? Can you prove it? You atheists are just as dogmatic as the fundamentalists you criticize." This is nonsense: even the devout tacitly reject thousands of gods, along with the cherished doctrines of every religion but their own. Every Christian can confidently judge the God of Zoroaster to be a creature of fiction, without first scouring the universe for evidence of his absence. Absence of evidence is all one ever needs to banish false knowledge. And bad evidence, proffered in a swoon of wishful thinking, is just as damning. But honest reasoning can lead us further into the fields of unbelief, for we can prove that books such as the Bible and the Quran bear no trace of divine authorship. We know far too much about the history of these texts to accept what they say about their own origins. And just imagine how good a book would be if an omniscient Being had written it.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

    The burden of proof should be on the person making claims in a god. Not on the people who question someone's statement based on subjective opinion.

    If I say, the tooth fairy exists. And you don't believe me.
    And then I say. I shouldn't have to prove to you the tooth fairy exists. You should have to prove they don't!

    It's not up to me to disprove something someone invented. Me telling you I found money under my pillow as a kid and I felt the presence of the tooth fairy on multiple occasions should not be enough to convince you they exist.

    There is no objective evidence for the existence of a god or God- like creator. Nor that of the tooth fairy.

    Why are you on an atheist community?

    You won't convince us that your God is real. Or any other.

    I don't care if other people believe in the existence of a god or not. It's a personal choice. You go ahead and believe whatever you like. It has zero impact on my life.

    Most atheists feel this way. We just don't care to force our religious beliefs on others.

    Why do you have such a problem with others not believing what you believe ?

    Do you feel insecure about your beliefs when confronted with people who reject them ?

    I never understood this belief-insecurity that so many religious people have.

    Why is it so important to you that others believe in your opinion on this ?

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  • [–] [S] 0 points 3 days ago (1 child)

    You misunderstood all 3 of my pet peeves.

    1. What you're describing here is not whataboutism. I have no issue with people who bring up Christianity as way of detailing their anecdotes. Personal experiences in of itself serves a point. No, what I'm talking about are the instances where there is no point, or rather the point is derail the conversation.

    Here's just a quick hypothetical example. Let's say you make a post criticizing ongoing islamic imperialism campaigns, and you get a bunch of comments bringing up the crusades being bad. These comments have no relevance and serve no point besides trying to derail the original topic and serve as a weak "gotcha" where the implication is that you're a bad person if you don't admit that the crusades are equally bad, regardless of validity. I've seen these types of comments a lot, and they annoy me.

    1. What you're saying is only true to a degree. While it's true that all religious fundamentalist share the same core traits, there is a HUGE difference in environment. Extremism is a relative concept that varies wildly depending on the context. Religious extremists in American are MAGA idiots who want to ban abortion, bible thump, and be homophobic. In my home country of Iraq, religious extremists are literally ISIS. It's perfectly fine to recognize both are extremists in their societies and they both cause harm. There is no issue with Americans talking about fundamentalists in their country. My problem lies when a specific subset of Americans insist that "y'all qaeda" and the actual al qaeda are basically the same or something along those lines. They're absolutely not the same, and implying as such is just ignorant. MAGA would be considered soft moderates in a middle eastern religious extremism scale.

    2. I'm not disputing the statement all religions are bad, I'm saying that's the baseline. Endlessly preaching it to the choir is entirely meaningless, and it actually takes away from real discussions. Again, it's like the "all lives matter" nonsense. We know all lives matter, that's the baseline. Repeating that takes away from the real discussions that lie in the nuance, like how black people are being treated worse than others despite their lives mattering just as much as everyone else's. It's a similar story here. We can't meaningfully criticize harmful aspects of specific religions if all the attempts get drowned and diluted by "all religion bad" comments.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 days ago*

    I guess I still do not quite understand what you want.

    I can see why you would be concerned about people maybe not understanding that the extremism you experienced is much worse than that experienced in western English countries.

    I honestly don't think people think it's the same here (u.s) as it is there (middle eastern countries).

    We all watch the news and know of some of the things going on.

    But I stand by that religious zealots are the same everywhere. They just get away with worse behavior in different places. They all harbor violent and hostile behavior. Magas aren't our bad ones. The evangelical nationalist are.

    If you are looking to have a in-depth theological based discussion about Islamic religion and how it's being used negatively or positively in the world, I'm not sure this is the best community.

    Most people here, myself included, are more familiar with Christian doctrine. As this is an English community.

    I probably know a bit more than the average American about Islam, but mostly because I took a world religion class in college and wrote my final on Islamic women's perspectives on westernization.

    And I basically argued for why western women (feminist) can't and shouldn't interfere or lead change in womens liberation in Muslim countries because we misunderstand a lot about their situation. But we can and should support them. But we don't have a right to tell them what needs changed or judge them.

    I gave an example of covering their hair. Some women do see it as oppression. Some see it as just normal clothing that women wear. Like , for instance, how western women wearing bras.

    Forcing a woman to remove her hair covering feels immodest to her. And makes her uncomfortable. Just like if you forced a western woman to remove her bra and told her it was a symbol of oppression. Maybe it is. But it's not up to someone else to decide these things. And forcing someone out of something is just as bad as forcing them into something.

    But as you can see, that's a very small slice of experience with Islam. And it was a feminist take.

    15 years ago. One class.

    If that's the sort of discussions you are interested in though, you may not find it here.

    I know there are communities of people who have left certain religions and want to talk and connect with similar people. They are out there. I just don't know where.

    Forums. ?

    Probably a reddit sub but if you are here you probably aren't using reddit.

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