Proponents of such schools are actively trying to blur the line between public and private schools. One man interviewed by the Associated Press dismisses public schools as "secular humanist" rather than religiously neutral.

Title pretty much speaks for itself. I find myself losing faith in Jesus. Growing up, I’ve been to church etc etc, and religion is a big part of my family, especially christianity. Perhaps i just can’t accept that I’m leaning away from Jesus, because atheism is alot more compelling and plausible. It is just hard to stray from something you’ve believed in all your life.

And nowadays, I just can’t help but wonder about all the contradictions. People clown TikTok for stupid arguments and debates but it honestly got me thinking. Not to mention, I don’t feel supported at all, or like everyone loves to say, that “jesus is walking with me.” Is he really? Because I honestly think thats stupid. Nothing is going right, mentally I’m in a bad place, and I’m mid exams right now and just sat through the worst math exam oat, and I am a straight A student. And prayed for “clarity and knowledge and wisdom” and what not😑😑

So I just wanted to ask. How’s atheism? Believing in no god sounds pretty cool.

Edit: someone said a really good analogy that i believe helps explain my situation more! Right now, I’m taking religion like a bus ride, while atheism is more like getting off the bus entirely. I want to get off the bus, but I am unsure if I can accept i will be out there without the safety of the bus.

Let's start with the bedrock of the Abrahamic religions: the Jewish roots.

The original Israelite god (Yahweh) was a war/thunder god and the Israelites initially worshipped him along with other Canaanite gods such as El, Asherah and Baal.

And the First Commandment (You shall have no other gods before me) in fact recognises the existence of other gods and is part of a Monolatry tradition. All that changes with the Babylonian exile though which converts Judaism from monolatry to what we would now call strict monotheism.

The logic of the ancient world at that point was that if Babylon had defeated the Israelites then their god (Marduk) must have been the superior god. To counter that reality the Israelite scribes developed a monotheistic doctrine which said that their god (Yahweh) had not been defeated by Marduk, rather that their god had simply used the defeat of Israel as a means of teaching them a lesson.

For me that automatically kills off all the Abrahamic religions. If Judaism started out as a polytheistic/monolatrous religion and subsequently became a monotheistic religion then it must be false. It simply can't have had such deep polytheistic roots and still be Abrahamic.

Which in turn would destroy Christianity (which claims to be in the line of Judaism). Which in turn would disprove Islam (which claims the same Abrahamic roots, refers to the Jews and Christians as the 'People of the Book' and claims that Allah revealed the Injil (Gospel) and the Torah to a line of original monotheistic prophets).

it was so random too i was in the shower when i was 16 thinking about noah’s ark and i was like well that’s obviously not true and it literally felt like the matrix came over me like my third eye opened and i suddenly understood why these stories exist why religion exists in the first place and the fact that god isnt even real like it all just clicked at once

im 21 and really into sociology now

Moses shows the power of Jehovah by performing miracles like turning his staff into a snake.

Then the Pharaoh laughs that his own Egyptian Gods are equally powerful and he does the same miracle, turning a staff into a snake.

Wait. So the Egyptian Gods can do miracles too?

I ask because a common standing point in christianity that when it comes to abortion is that its wrong to kill a child (rape baby or not). Yet when i read the bible, there are multiple instances of God ordering the slaughter of innocent children and infants.

Everytime I bring this up, im hit with the classic “Well God has special authority over life and death.” This raises the question of when does a childs life actually matter to them? Its extremely confusing and even when I was religious i never understood it. I mean with that logic I could simply say “God ordered me to abort the kid” and they technically couldnt even deny it didnt happen; since God in the bible has a history of doing things lime that.

I know making sense of a senseless religion is impossible, but im curious about yalls rebuttals for this. I need ideas lmao.

Edit: Yall gave me some wonderful responses 😭

I want you to focus on how the religion operates as a system to keep believers locked in, and why its structures are explicitly designed to prevent anyone from walking away.

Operational control and the mechanisms used to enforce compliance:

1. Total behavioral control and the suppression of critical thinking

Indoctrination starts early. Critical thinking and questioning are systematically discouraged because the second you step back and analyze the claims with logic, the entire structure falls apart.

To keep people from reaching that point, the system dictates every single aspect of daily life - what to wear, what to eat, when to pray, and how to act. It acts like blinkers on a horse: when your entire day is consumed by rules and rituals, you have no time or mental bandwidth left to ask fundamental questions.

1. The socio-economic trap and religion as a coping mechanism

For many in impoverished or developing regions, escaping this mindset is nearly impossible due to socio-economic design:

Education restrictions: Children are often sent to madrasas or purely religious institutions rather than receiving a modern, secular education. This leaves them without practical skills for the job market.

Economic dependence: Lacking employment opportunities, they are forced into low-paying labor from a young age to support large families.

The hope loop: Struggling with scarce resources and daily hardship, religion becomes their ultimate coping mechanism. It sells them the promise of rewards in the afterlife to make their current suffering bearable.

The system creates the hardship through its own practices, and then uses that exact hardship to keep people dependent on the faith for hope.

1. Indoctrination among the educated

Even with access to modern education, the internet, and AI, deep religious dogmatism persists among highly qualified professionals - doctors, engineers, and pilots. This proves that it isn't a matter of low natural intelligence, but rather the immense power of childhood conditioning. Early environmental exposure can rewire how a person processes logic, overriding professional training and critical reasoning when it comes to faith.

1. Why apostasy carries the death penalty: "They know too much"

This entire self-preserving system explains why apostasy (leaving the faith) is punishable by death in classic Islamic jurisprudence.

An apostate isn't just someone who changed their mind they are a direct threat to the system. Former believers know the rules, understand the internal contradictions, and have broken through the psychological conditioning. If apostates are allowed to speak freely, they expose the flaws to others and break the illusion. The death penalty for apostasy exists precisely because the ideology cannot survive open criticism from people who used to be on the inside and "know too much."

TL;DR: The system relies on lifelong conditioning, constant daily rituals, socio-economic dependence, and extreme penalties for leaving to maintain control. It is structured to prevent people from ever looking at it critically from the outside.

As an existential atheist, I'm unsettled. I'm worried to see how the rise of AI is impacting society. It's taking people's craft and "purpose" away from them and I don't know how religious folks are squaring with it. How they're reacting or what their rationalization will look like. I'm sure priests, whether people like it or not, are using AI already to write sermons.

I also worry about extreme believers, those who believe "god speaks to me directly" mentality. Already, I see friend calling their agentic chat bot "He" or "Her" as opposed to calling it it, which is what it is. I see a future where a minority of people think god is speaking to them through AI.

I'm alarmed because this will increase the chasm of individual realities we all live in. Already, we're struggling with that and I think it will get worse. How will we problem solve or work together as a society if each of our realities is so different? It feels alarming.

As an ex-theist now atheist, i completely stopped believing in ghosts, black magic.

I always thought these things came from religions, but i saw here that even atheists believe in astrology, soul being separated from the body, tarrot cards etc.

As a new atheist i'm interested in seeing where this comes from, i thought atheists believe that only the laws of physics apply to the universe. I mean no hate i'm just interested.

At least here where I am. Churches sit empty pretty much except for Sunday. Why not Monday to Friday have it function as a place for actual charity? These types go on and on about how nice and charitable they are but its a literal waste of space.

Mosques are only open to Muslims, not that I want to go anyways but still. what if a homeless guy needs shelter. Maybe they should be more charitable too.

I don't like all religions but I'm honestly surprised the Sikh and Hindu and Buddhist temples and stuff are open to all and they are known to feed anyone pretty much. They always have events.

Maybe I'm bias but fuck the big Abraham religions.

It’s hypocritical that religious people argue the universe can’t come from nothing and therefore must have a creator, yet when you ask who created god, they claim “he” always existed❓🤔

Hello everyone! I hope you are doing fantastic!
I live with my sister and she is the absolute fanatic about christianity and stuff. She would make a cross on everything she eats or everytime she goes outside or comes inside. At night she is wasting 2 hours just for prayers and bs. Does crosses on everything, and everything she encounters. And personally i don't care what she does in her spare time, but the fact that i see her its just too much to handle, it's exhausting for me. It just hurts my neurons because personally i don't believe in this stuff. I feel like she's crossing my boundries by doing so and it makes me angry. How to get over it, and just don't mind it?
Edit: she would not listen to me or anything about this, considering that i'm the villain and don't understand her.

TL;DR: My Catholic school is making all 10th graders, including non-Catholics, teach children as young as 6 years old about Jesus and the Bible once a week. It goes against everything I believe in. We're in charge of everything: the presentation, activity materials, and handling the kids. My groupmates, though Catholic, are mostly lazy bums, and the only one who actually does things is sick rn so it's up to me to prepare everything or else my grades take a huge hit (yes, its a graded activity.). Our next session's in less than two days, and I have zero motivation to work on it.

So, I (15F) study in a Catholic school, right?

As much as I don’t want to, it’s hard to escape catholicism in my country.

I’m an atheist... and to be completely honest, anti-theist. I firmly believe that anything supernatural and spiritual isn’t possible/real and always has a scientific reason behind its occurrence. Even then, I respect religious people and leave them alone as long as they aren’t harming anyone (or themselves) and trying to force others into their religion.

Anyway, we always had to do religious activities for school, but I dealt with them fine because all we really had to do was answer surface-level multiple-choice questions and write essays.

Like, yeah, I'm okay with detaching myself from religion and treating it as a simple historical or cultural topic for the sake of my grades, even though I’d rather not do any religious activities at all.

However, this school year they decided to add this program where all 10th graders have to go to public schools to personally teach children as young as six about Jesus and the Bible. So young they haven't even learned to read yet. And by all 10th graders, I mean ALL, including non-catholics, atheists, Muslims, and whatnot…

Everyone has to teach young, impressionable children that God is the ultimate truth and that everyone who disagrees is wrong and sinful… even if they themselves don’t believe that.

We're split into groups btw, so like group 1 is assigned to teach 1st graders this topic and so on.

It’s our job to study enough about our given topic to know it well enough to teach it, spout out multiple bible verses, and to prepare EVERYTHING

So the presentation materials, activity stuff like stickers, papers, coloring materials, the rewards we give to the kids (we give them candy/stationary/ a toy for participating in the lesson)

Initially, I thought a few people from the group could stay behind while the others went to the schools to teach

I was like, hell yeah, I'll gladly help prepare the presentation, activities, and materials for every meeting if that meant I didn't have to teach. My Catholic groupmates can handle that.

So I stayed behind.

But turns out, everyone has to take turns teaching every week in sub-groups of 3...

And the only two people in our group who are both good at public speaking and are Catholics are unavailable...

My available groupmates, while Catholic, are lowkey lazy bums... they have done nothing for our lesson plan, our materials, nothing

The session's in less than two days btw.

So, for the sake of my grades and everyone else's, I have to go against my personal beliefs and basically indoctrinate children...

What makes this worse is that our assigned grade is 5th graders. They are bound to ask questions and are mature enough to sense if something's wrong.

I can't just be in charge of the activities and giving out rewards either because my other two Group B groupmates aren't... the best at public speaking, and I fear if I leave the teaching to them it'll just be an awkward mess.

So, say a student asks a question like "If God is so loving, why does He give innocent children horrible sicknesses and disabilities?" I can't answer based on what I truly believe.... I have to say some bullshit response like "Free will!" or "God gives His toughest battles to His strongest soldiers!"

These kids have never received any formal religious education before this... so to basically barge in and end that freedom they had with their beliefs feels so violating... and borderline unethical

It's true that I can always do what I have always done, which is to detach myself and just teach the Bible like I'm teaching any other mythology or like as a moral framework, but...

I can't even get the motivation to study our assigned topics in the first place because this teaching young children religion before they can think for themselves thing just feels so wrong. It goes against everything I believe in.

It's a headache to actually start too because all the instructions and guides our teacher provided were generated by ChatGPT.

So all of this, on top of all the other exams and activities I have to work on, is driving me crazy.

It's gotten to a point where, this entire week, I've been desperately hoping to get sick so that I'd have a valid reason to not go. But even if I do get sick, what will I do for the rest of the teaching sessions we have left?

Also, isn't forcing non-catholics to teach what they don't believe in a disservice to everyone else too? It's hard to fake enthusiasm and genuine interest.

Actually, I heard from other sections that their teacher let the non-catholics simply handle the documentation of each session... but, well, very, very fortunately, our teacher's different.

Right before the second session, aka the start of the actual teaching, my classmate stated that she didn't want to teach because she was non-catholic and from another religion.

Y'know what my teacher said in reply? "That's not part of our lesson." That's it! He didn't let her exclude herself from the program, like, hello?? So, yeah, I already know what my teacher would say if I tell him I'm atheist. He's hella strict at grading too, so if I try to maliciously comply and deliver a substandard lesson, my grades are gonna take a huge hit.

I'm afraid to speak out too because while I'm publicly atheist at school, I never told my family about it. They're religious, but very, very casual in their belief

By casual, I mean... they kinda just treat God as their magical wishing well? Like they only pray to ask for something

Like, at our house, we have Jesus statues right beside Buddha statues, which they pray to whenever they need money it's kinda funny

Still, they identify as Catholic, so I might be cooked if they ever find out that I'm an atheist...

This sucks ass

also sorry if this got long and ranty i just genuinely hate this and im losing sleep over the stress and the fact that we dont have anything prepared yet holy shit

I recently entered this version of life and something that keeps hitting me is how much I missed out on. Not even the normal young adult stuff like potential friends, partners, partying etc. but how I avoided things like credit cards and savings account and stock market being as halal as possible. I lost so much time and opportunity to religion and it's not even over because I still live with religious parents and family and they're very hardcore about it.

I don't like to dwell on the past but every once in a while, it just hits you. I'm sitting here messaging my friend having him explain this stuff to me and it feels like I'm so far behind. I thought I was doing the right thing and "following god's rules" and "working towards heaven"

For context, I 28F was recently diagnosed with a very large but low grade malignant brain tumor that they believe I had without knowing for many years. I grew up catholic and now identify as nothing perhaps atheist/agnostic but I am at a point where I dont really care that much about it to identify a certain way just want to be free from any religious influence. I feel I am very understanding of my catholic parents and some catholic friends who are “praying for a miracle” but last night my dad said on the phone with my whole family that god works in mysterious ways and it sent me over the edge. I don’t want to hurt my dad who I know loves me and is coping in his own way but how do I tell him these comments are very disturbing to me and I dont like thinking about a god giving people brain tumors because he/she/whatever is so mysterious…any advice

Learned this concept today. Applies to religions, cults etc.

identity protective cognition”, which refers to the tendency of individuals to unconsciously dismiss evidence that does not reflect the beliefs that predominate in their group

https://informalscience.org/identity/dan-kahan/

 Identity-protective cognition is a psychological tendency where people unconsciously evaluate evidence, risks, and facts to protect their social identity and group belonging. Coined and studied extensively by researchers like Dan Kahan, the concept explains why humans selectively credit facts that support their group and dismiss facts that threaten it.