this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2023
794 points (94.0% liked)

Atheist Memes

5400 readers
31 users here now

About

A community for the most based memes from atheists, agnostics, antitheists, and skeptics.

Rules

  1. No Pro-Religious or Anti-Atheist Content.

  2. No Unrelated Content. All posts must be memes related to the topic of atheism and/or religion.

  3. No bigotry.

  4. Attack ideas not people.

  5. Spammers and trolls will be instantly banned no exceptions.

  6. No False Reporting

  7. NSFW posts must be marked as such.

Resources

International Suicide Hotlines

Recovering From Religion

Happy Whole Way

Non Religious Organizations

Freedom From Religion Foundation

Atheist Republic

Atheists for Liberty

American Atheists

Ex-theist Communities

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

Other Similar Communities

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 49 points 10 months ago (4 children)

Christianity is going to be easy.

I like other mythologies because they're interesting, they've got a lot of gods and a lot of other cultures.

Christianity only has Jesus, Moses, God and the Virgin Mary going for it. The mythology is kinda boring and very contradictory of itself. People prefer to cherry pick verses and everything to believe out of than it's intention.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Idk man, when you start looking into the old testament, especially non-official/apocryphal books like the Book of Enoch, it gets pretty interesting. Especially when you take early Judaism in context with the neighboring Canaanite religions

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

My favorite is the Book of Nod.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

There are some kindred who consider that book quite heretical.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The first thing Christians do when they've formed a new group is to figure out who the heretics are.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Nod

This... might clear things up just a bit. The Book of Nod is loosely Christian/Abrahamic religion adjacent mythology of the origin of vampires in the ttrpg Vampire the Masquerade. It's the in universe origin myth of vampires.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (2 children)

The Crucifixion story and the end times prophecy are both pretty damn good stories, you have to admit.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (2 children)

What? Why do you think they are good stories? They seem fairly boring to me. What am I missing?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)
load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

I wish I shared your optimism but I fear it is not happenstance that it has survived for so long. I suspect that it contains enough textual material to be easily adapted over time to serve many purposes, fit many cultural mores, and exploit various aspects of human nature.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 37 points 10 months ago (4 children)

greek mythology is kinda amazing though

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago

Yeah, I really love it because I love fantasy worlds.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 21 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Bit inaccurate, isn't it..? No such thing as Greek gods and Roman gods... “Roman” gods are just your plain old Greek gods with fake beards, speaking Latin in a Greek accent, and wearing their togas in the Roman style... Should have used Greco -Roman gods for one door and something else (Egyptian, Babylonian, Norse... take your pick) for the other...

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Greek gods were just Egyptian gods. Egyptian gods were just Babylonian gods. Ba ylonian gods etc.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago (7 children)

And Roman Catholic church "borrowed" multiple holidays from the Roman empire

[insert the meme with astronauts and guns]

load more comments (7 replies)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Christian gods are just Judaic gods, and Judaic gods were just levantine gods.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Sort of. Romans borrowed gods from all over the place and created their own gods.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_deities#Alphabetical_list

Not on that list are all the emperors who were worshipped as gods.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 19 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I wonder what the average lifespan for religions is

[–] [email protected] 17 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I imagine its probably all over the place, to the point an average is not very useful, because on the one hand, something like a small cult that doesnt survive the death of its founders might last just a few decades, but something like Hinduism might last thousands of years and have a very unclear date to when it starts. You'd also have the question of when a religion ends exactly, like, one that has no followers left is probably dead, but what if it changes over time until the original form is unrecognizable? Is the original dead, or does the modern form count, and if the former, when did it end? Does it count as dead if a major world religion loses that status and becomes largely irrelevant, but still has a few small communities of followers, such as with zoroastrianism? If a religion does lose all of its followers, but people later attempt to recreate and convert to it from its surviving texts or similar, does it still count, or does the revival count as a new religion?

Maybe Im missing some obvious example, but I cant really think of cases, beyond the tiny cultlike ones, where a religion dies out organically either, most examples I can think of are cases where a religion is deliberately killed off, usually by another one supplanting it and having some conquering power or converted authority forcing its members to convert to the new one.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)
load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

Both the Egyptian pantheon and the Hellenic pantheon went through multiple iterations across the ages of their respective peoples. Neptune was the all father originally, then Zeus was made the patriarch of the Olympians (while Kronos created Phanes who begat the cosmos). Curiously Aphrodite was Astarte before, and Ishtar before that, and didn't just bring love and beauty, but also the Phoenician alphabet which would replace Linear-B.

And the way Christian and Jewish scripture is interpreted today is very different than how it was interpreted in the 16th century, or the 11th century, or the 6th century.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

i have gone full circle and now i believe in millions of gods.

so many gods of and with all things.

gods with etsy stores.

the gods of my oil pan. the gods of my ancestors' oil pans'.

time is a god, and it will have to psychopomp itself according to the next panel of the comic.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Pretty sure that was Kratos actually

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

God of War 5: Kratos kills Time for taking his credit

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago

To be fair the Christian god is basically a Greek God with a Jewish accent.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I feel bad for religious people who have been deceived their entire lives' into a delusion. But at the same time, I almost feel no empathy when they go out of their way to do and say the most insane stuff with religion as a justification.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago

I feel so bad for the kids of these religious zealots. I used to live next to a family with a little girl (12/13ish) that just played/stood around in their yard alone for hours every day. She wasn't allowed to speak with anyone outside of their church ever or use the phone. She wasn't allowed to have toys or really celebrate anything ever. "Homeschooled" of course. Often she'd just sit out there crying because her mom constantly used her as a bargaining chip to guilt her dad to join their religion. She told her constantly that her dad didn't love them because he wouldn't join their faith and that he was going to hell blah blah blah. She riled her up and made her hysterically beg her dad not to leave them and go to hell on a regular basis. It was truly awful. Sometimes when her parents left she'd wonder over to the fence separating our homes and chat with us. I hope we were able to plant at least a seed of sanity with our talks. Poor girl.

Later I had a coworker stressing out about her kid having extreme night terrors and behavioral issues because she was SO scared of going to hell. I, knowing her kid was only 7, kinda laughed and said something like "did you tell her 7 year olds aren't ending up in hell?" To which she got angry, snapped at me, and said that she wouldn't lie to her daughter like that. She seemed genuinely offended that I expected her to have cared more about her young child having a mental breakdown at the age of 7 than appeasing her rancid asshole of a god.

Abhorrent parenting from stupid and small minded people all around. If that's what they deal with as kids no wonder they're so broken and incapable of rational thoughts as adults. It's SO important to keep this shit out of our schools.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

Eh, “time”. I’d say so far only religion has killed other religions. I don’t think there’s ever been a time where atheism was as prevalent as it is now after the concept of religion was first formed.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (2 children)

If the metric used is the number of figures in the pantheon, it will be very interesting to do the math for hinduism, budism, dao and shinto.

Like it or not, ~~religiosity~~ belief isn't going anywhere. Science can not provide meaning for life or the universe where we exist.

What we can and should fight for is a society where belief is solely personal matter, with no room or weight on the broad public forum.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (13 children)
load more comments (13 replies)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

You got me excited for the next God of War reboot at first glance! haha

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Uhhh don't you mean Yahweh

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Eh less people would have gotten it if it said it like that

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

More blood for the Blood God.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Inaccurate. Neopagans and reconstructionists exist, and have growing communities. A thing doesn't have to be the most popular thing to be alive and well.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Glycon still has at least 7 followers. Checkmate atheism.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›