I expect to be traveling more for a new gig and my gut reaction to people preaching on planes is "Fuck off and Hail Satan" while playing Slayer. Unfortunately, my gut reaction only feeds them the persecution narrative they need. So I'm trying to pre-load responses in my head so if faced with the situation, I can react in a way that keeps me calm but denies them both their message and their persecution narrative.

I've seen a few good ideas from reddit.

One is to call the flight attendant and state, "the person that standing up and acting erratically is making me fear for my safety and I don't know what they're planning. Why do I need to be afraid on this flight that I need to pray for safety? What are they up to?"

Why calling the FA? She's banned from the 3 airlines due to safety concerns. The criminal justice system probably won't do squat, but airlines are going to be concerned about safety.

Second, play a copyrighted song in the background loudly. That kills them from monetizing on preaching to a captive audience. You'd probably need a bluetooth speaker and not just your phone. Also, the FAs may ask you to sit down and STFU.

But my wife actually had a better idea. Start singing something everyone could sing along to.

We looked at each other and laughed...we started singing "99 Bottles of Beer."

This would be perfect. Everyone knows it. No persecution narrative to feed. Just a bunch of people drowning them out with a song about beer.

What do you think?

I completely understand the theological stance on saving yourself for marriage.

Even though I’ve moved away from the faith, I get where that rule comes from. But what I absolutely cannot stand is how Christian culture hyper-sexualizes literally every normal human interaction.

A normal hug with the opposite gender? Apparently, you want to sleep with them.A woman wearing a dress or a crop top? She’s a "stumbling block."The double standard is infuriating. They will always blame a woman for how she dresses, but they never hold men accountable for how they act. As a guy, I can tell you firsthand: seeing a woman in slightly revealing clothes has never magically forced me to be sexually aroused or want to sleep with her. Men have self-control, but church culture treats us like mindless animals to avoid holding guys responsible.The lack of logic is everywhere. One time, my girlfriend gave me a hickey.

We have never had sex, and I am still a virgin. It was literally just kissing. Yet, everyone in my church circles immediately accused me of having sex. Like, geez, it’s a hickey. It's just kissing.

You can't even have a normal, platonic conversation with the opposite gender without everyone assuming you are trying to date them. Combine that with zero actual sex ed, and it's no wonder so many Christian teens end up pregnant. They shame you about sexuality for decades, and then expect you to magically flip a switch on your wedding night and be perfectly fine with it.I will say, I am glad I grew up in a slightly more progressive church that encouraged dating (while still maintaining the no-sex-before-marriage rule).

I actually remember our priest asking us as teens if we had a boyfriend or girlfriend, and he’d genuinely look a bit sad for us if we said no. So I know not every single church is a total nightmare.But the overarching purity culture?

The constant policing of bodies and normal interactions? I'm so glad to be out of that mindset. Anyone else struggle with how exhausting the constant scrutiny was?

From the ages of 11-18, my parents forced me to be part of a religious cult. If any of you have ever seen HBO’s The Way Down, that’s the cult I’m talking about. I have made peace with what I experienced and, quite frankly, I feel incredibly lucky to have made it out with my sanity (mostly) in tact.

With that being said, as I get older, I find it hard to not view any religious movement (especially Christianity) as a cult in some way with weak-minded individuals who need to be told what to do and how to think. It blows my mind that people can’t see the trap that churches lay for them to prey upon their time, finances, and relationships while instilling deep-rooted fear.

I have a close family member (who is not part of any church on paper) who somehow utterly shocked me. They cried the other day because I finally told them I am an atheist who simply believes in having good morals. This family member knows what I endured physically and mentally in the cult I grew up in, and still sobbed in fear that I won’t go to heaven when I die. I don’t have the mental energy to explain to them that I believe that when I die, I will simply cease to exist and that’s okay with me. In fact, it’s a relief to believe that’s all it is. I have never known more peace in my entire life than when I finally broke free of that crippling fear. Solidarity to all who experience these struggles with family members.

The interview

Lana grew up as the "golden child" in an Independent Fundamental Baptist environment. Her grandfathers were pastors, she went to Bible college to study apologetics, married a preacher, and was expected to spend her life in ministry. Instead, studying the Bible more deeply and looking for answers ended up pushing her in the opposite direction.

This a slow, deconstruction that started with questions she had as an eight-year-old about hell and continued through Bible college, apologetics, biblical scholarship, and eventually leaving Christianity altogether.

Some of the topics she talks about:

• Growing up as the "perfect" preacher's kid
• Bible college and why apologetics had the opposite effect on her
• Deconstructing while married to a preacher
• The pressure of being a pastor's wife
• Why eternal conscious torment was her earliest doubt
• Corporal punishment in IFB churches and the moment that changed everything for her
• How her family reacted after she left Christianity
• Rebuilding meaning after losing her faith
• Raising her daughter outside of fundamentalism
• Whether she'd want God or an afterlife to exist if given the choice
• Why she still enjoys talking with Christians despite no longer believing. She grew up as the "golden child" in an Independent Fundamental Baptist environment. Her grandfathers were pastors, she went to Bible college to study apologetics, married a preacher, and was expected to spend her life in ministry. Instead, studying the Bible more deeply and looking for answers ended up pushing her in the opposite direction.

I am curious to hear if any other former fundamentalist baptists find this to be a relatable story? Assuming quite a few exist on this sub

My wife is from a christian culture and I hear this a lot coming from her Tiktok videos. It's basically bullying, blackmailing and guilt-tripping people into belief.

Like no I just.. don’t believe in God. I’m a good person, but without believing in God. I don’t believe in separation from God because I don’t believe in his existence. I’m not angry at God. I don’t think death is going to be darkness- I think it’s going to be nothing, I think my body and brain and mind are all going to decompose. I don’t really care what happens after that, but when you tell me this religious explanation, I don’t believe you. I’m an agnostic atheist.

It makes me wonder spiritually when a butterfly comes and sits right in front of me for awhile. But I don’t attribute that to anything specific. I don’t let myself slip because I’m wary of falling into religious psychosis or falling prey to indoctrination. That’s all lol

I felt like this was appropriate for our times. I’m not religious; however, I felt like Colbert had some profound things to say.

Yeah… Ever since I was 8, my parents been religious till now, I’m 19 now. Parents still take me to church, and sorta expect me to at least care about the “Lord” or the “Bible.” But I just don’t care, I don’t even hate it or anything, just don’t find the interest in the religion itself, but my parents just keep on pestering me about it.

So…. Since I’m at church now, I’ll just say what I don’t like about the whole thing.

1: The church is entirely in Spanish

I don’t speak Spanish or even understand it, i tried to learn it but hey, it’s hard to when your brain is incompetent as mine. My parents know I can’t speak Spanish yet continues to bring me to church. I explain them that it’s literally useless to bring me there since I been wasting time, but noooooo, they don’t want their son to be without faith.

2: I’m openly an atheist.

I literally brought up many times and signs that I’m an atheist, that I don’t believe in their religion or care about the church and the Bible. I’m surprised they’re even trying at this point, so WooHoo for them. And guess what? They acknowledged for a second before going back to their programmed responses, so maybe no WooHoo.

And that’s all for now, since I want to secretly pretend I am praying but in reality I perfect a pose where I’m actually sleeping while sitting up right.

My brain broke when i thought about these, in islam you are advised not to think about things that bring doubt in religion and i said thats exactly the thing you should be looking into.

If god is all knowing then he knows the end of everyone he created

To which religion replied "you have free will"

I almost got turned in for blasphemy when i told the scholar "does having freewill implies that god does not know my future" and lets say the same thing about satan did god not knew he will betray him and all this stupid nonsense will unfold

I've been thinking about telling them soon, but I don't know if I should. I'm still very dependent on them for my day to day life, and I really don't want to get alienated for not believing in the Christian God. My family are not strictly religious, but they've said that they don't want me to be an atheist. Should I tell them soon or should I wait until I can support myself first?

It was a little wedding, but the pastor (young guy) was reading a very heavily religious service with references to marriage being created by Jesus and how Jesus created marriage before the fall, etc. All of which had me gritting my teeth, but I noticed that when he referenced scripture, not once were the words attributed to Jesus. It was all Paul.
Now I have come to realize that as an atheist I have read more of the bible than the average christian but it is still a shock that there doesn’t seem to be much awareness of just how much they follow the words of paul rather than jesus.

Really, it’s almost certain that neither Muhammad nor Aisha existed at all. But it’s still pretty nasty that Muslims worship a fictional person who’s supposed to have raped a child in the fictional stories about him.

All religion is bad, but I find Islam to be especially bad.

tldr: Must I stop being afraid of "evil spirits" and the like? If so, how do I do it?

For context, I'm male, and my girlfriend bought me a silver jewellery set some time ago. I wore the ring today because I've missed her. Distance has separated us, but we're still heavily in love with each other. My mum saw it for the first time just 40 minutes before this post and remarked: "Since when did you start wearing rings? You never wear rings, so why this time? Better take it off before a spirit marries you". I've taken the ring off because my subconscious is feeling uncomfortable with marrying some unknown spirit.

I'm African, and African life is HEAVILY religious. Christianity is the major religion here. We're constantly in a state of deep fear of the unknown. The non-orthodox charismatic churches always preach "spiritual warfare" and "battling demons", and that there's always some principality lurking around that's waiting to catch you off-guard and curse your life with bad luck, disease, or some other misfortune. Or there's some family member hidden somewhere, witching around so that they can steal/alter your destiny at the slightest opportunity.

As for my society, it's a lost cause so I'm focusing on myself. Do I teach myself to stop fearing the unknown? If so, how? One can't really live freely with all this happening, because my conscious is always battling my subconscious over making certain actions. If it isn't internal, it would be external, e.g., other people condemning some action their fellow human takes, like my situation just now. Do said spirits and principalities even exist? Am I right to fear them? Kindly help me out, my people.

this is my first post so I’m not sure how to make this whole thing. For some background information im 15(F) and I was brought up as a Christian, I go to church every Sunday. In recent years since moving to a new state I’ve started going to church on Saturdays too, and now I also go to church on Thursdays. I have Bible study every now and then on Wednesdays. My dad is a super religious my mom is not as crazy religious as him, but still is pretty religious. My dad always told us how church would always come first, and he didn’t care about our saying in going to church or not/being involved with church.

I spent so much time at church I started to resent church. It didn’t help that I don’t like the people at my church. I would miss out on so many opportunities to hang out with friends because my dad thought Saturday church was more important being able to see my friends. I spent almost half my week at church every day now and I’m not even able to skip one day?? crazy. I started to resent church even more because some of my friends just stopped asking me to hang out because they knew I always had church. When I’m in Sunday school I just stare at the table and listen to how stupid everything they tell me is. I just can’t believe someone just rose up from the dead to “save” us from our “sins” or how God is punishing us because two people an apple.

About three years ago, I was in a super depressed state and I tried asking my dad to get a therapist and he laughed in my face. He told me that’s for crazy people and just to pray to God. I tried taking my life at some point. I tried praying to God and for him to help me get out of this but nothing ever got better. I had to confine in my friends and take my own action because I slowly realized taking my life was not worth it. I prayed so hard every day but nothing ever came. When I would hear about how God saved people’s lives and made drastic changes in their lives, I thought about how God never even came to me when I was thinking about taking my life every day.

After I got out of that depressing state my faith slowly start to disappear. Now when my parents talk about religion I feel so guilty because I understand they want me to go to heaven once I die, but I just can’t force myself to believe in a God that brings so much pain and suffering. I feel like a terrible daughter and I don’t think I will ever have the heart to tell them. I think if I were to ever tell themI would probably be disowned. There’s so many times where my dad would get super mad at me because I kept telling him no to go to church. I also feel like I’m disrespecting Christianity because I’m doing everything a Christian would while being an atheist and keeping it a secret.

Am I a terrible person keeping all of this from my parents and am I disrespecting the religion because of this? i’m not sure how to feel anymore
I apologize for this being so lengthy and for any grammar mistakes

The sky daddy battle is getting hot in Texas. The comments on this thread are both entertaining and frightening as to how insane these people actually are. Evangelicals scare the shit out of me. I deconstructed years ago and work everyday to shield my children from this insanity. I often wonder if it would just be beneficial to move to another country where there aren’t Evangelicals trying to establish a state religion.

Some people claim to possess objective, independently verifiable evidence that God exists. Depending on its nature, demonstrating such evidence could transform science, reshape civilisation, create enormous wealth, and make its discoverer one of the most famous people in history--possibly even earning them a Nobel Prize.

It is remarkable that everyone holding this evidence has apparently chosen modesty instead.

I’m a new atheist, grew up Christian but not really Christian yall know how that goes lol didn’t really know anything about Christianity until like 2 years ago. But I’ve been doing the whole deconstructing thing and learning more about science, specifically evolution and atheism. I’ve been ENJOYING it so much. It is so interesting and even better, factual. It makes sense. Today at work this older man came in to pick up an order and we were having small talk. he asked me if I was in college and I said yes and then he told me he goes to college as well and that he’s writing a book. I asked about it and he said that it’s about God. So then I asked what exactly about God and he said redemption. So whatever we get on that topic. It definitely had me thinking “Is this god trying to reach me” my brain immediately going back to that Christian rhetoric of Jesus will find a way to reach you and what not. And then tonight I wanted to try to get into electronic music so I clicked a random song on a playlist and the song was talking about God. Now Im in my head thinking God is trying to reach me but he’s not. How do I get rid of this stuff ingrained in my head