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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I think that you are reading it right. And while I personally wouldn't associate obedience with moral "good", whoever wrote this myth clearly did.
In fact the whole myth feels like Yahweh creating a successful trap for the couple - the tree is in the garden, but they aren't supposed to eat from it; the snake was in the garden, but they weren't supposed to listen to it; and the serpent speaking the truth while Yahweh was being a liar ("you'll die"... except they didn't.)
While I agree it is a setup, it is interesting to consider they did eventually die after being cast out of the garden. Nobody said they would die instantly, only that the eating of the apple would kill them. Which it kind of did eventually.
“If you eat the apple I will revoke your immortality” is roughly the same as saying “if you eat the apple you will die”.
Modern translations of “on the day you eat of it you will surely die” are likely taking an idiom and mistranslating it specifically in this sentence as the same idiom is used in other texts and even other parts of the Bible and not translated to mean “specifically on this day”
Given the Bible is largely built up of stolen mythology from other cultures of the same time, reading into some of those stories reveals a bit about the original meaning.
In the Sumerian story of the gardens of Dilmun, Enki and Ninhursanga, Enki eats of the eight forbidden plants so as to gain knowledge of them (a.k.a. “determine their destiny,”) and Ninhursanga curses him with these words:
That doesn't mean he died that day, but that he was stripped of his immortality that day
Dan McClellen actually released a video today regarding this specific matter. ( on YouTube )
Thank you for sharing this video - what he says about the paronomastic infinitive is interesting, and it explains an oddity of the same verse in the Vulgate:
"Morte morieris" is literally "you'll die of death". The expression sounds as weird and redundant in Latin as it does in English - but it makes sense if Jerome of Stridon was trying to reproduce a Hebrew figure of speech.
(Interestingly enough, "die" [in the day] is also there. And that "ex eo" ["out of that", i.e. as a consequence] also reinforces that Adam would die as a consequence of eating from the tree.)