You must worship the Green Goblin.

That’s what it sounds like to me.

Meet with a potential client at lunch. Seemed like a nice guy, actually no he is a nice guy but he couldn't shut the fuck up about Jesus.

We're having lunch and it's going well. Prospect is worth about 140k annually in sales and about 50k in margin. I would have netted about 10k in commission over a year. Would have been a mostly low maintenance account as well.

About 20 minutes into lunch he asks me about my first name. He asks if I know where it's from I respond "yeah from the bible". I then tell him what my "namesake" did in the bible. Huge mistake. He then starts to go one about how religious he is. How glad he is to do business with a fellow christian. How he's going to tell his business partner about his new christian vendor. This goes on for about 10-15 minutes about Jesus crap. I'm trying to swallow it down. Then it happens.

He asks me which church I attend. I try and play it off. He pushes again. I snap, not angrily but firmly stating "Chuck my family is really religious, it didn't stick, I've been an atheist since I was 15 when I learned about science". It goes over like a fart in church.

The rest of lunch is pretty quiet. I pay the bill and don't even bother asking for a follow up. I just don't know why they have to push. I pretend to be ok with a lot of shit at work to make sales. You're a republican? Great me too! Your a Anarcho fascist? Sure I love that shit! You like pokemon? Cool let me pretend to care. You like classic cars? Great bore me with a restoration story I give two fucks about.

This guy broke me though. He was so pushy and talking scripture nonsense. I couldn't take it. Anyways my boss is cool so he understood. Sucks to lose that revenue but hey whatever it's just money I guess. Thanks for listening.

Have you ever experienced bullying or discrimination for being an atheist?

People in my life (family, friends, etc) can say hallelujah, praise "god", rejoice in the lord, etc. They can speak im toungues, catch the holy ghost, anoint people with oil, claim to have witnessed miracles and so on.

But as soon as I express my lack of belief... Its like a fucking bomb going off. I cant even be civil and express reasons why I dont believe in the "God" in the bible or Quran or any other revealed religions which make outrageous claims with no sufficient evidence whatsoever. I literally even get threats from people.

I live in the bible belt (In Tennessee) and it feels like im the only fucking atheist that exist among all of all these so called godly people. Im sick of my back being up against the wall. Im sick of being a target for people to project their insecurities onto.

If their "god" is as powerful as they claim he is then why are they so desperate to defend him? Doesnt seem to me he is the omnipotent, loving being that they assert him to be...

The titles says it. Recently I encountered two posts here, where people describe that as a child they believed in Santa Claus. As in, literally, old guy bringing presents. I always interpreted “kids believe in Santa” as a phrase describing silly beliefs.

This Santa thing works differently in every region where it is a “thing”, perhaps that’s why it is hard to understand it. How do parents in the US do it?

When I was a kid, on the 6th of December ( day of Saint Claus ) we put boots in the window. When enough family members arrive, I ( the child ) leave the house for a couple minutes to look at the stars or whatever, when I come back there is candy and stuff in the boots. Sometimes accompanied by notes, so you know which one is from “grandma’s Santa”, which one from mom’s Santa. I waited for Santa till the evening, as obviously grandma’s Santa can’t arrive before grandma comes over for dinner. Then I ate the candies from Santa. Never did I think there literally was a guy in red coat doing anything. I never recall any other child telling me “my parents told me Santa is not real “.

Think of it this way: Do you believe that the bible is an inerrant book of an existing god whose one version of evidence has been given and accepted by the whole world in one voice? If the answer is No, then remember this is the same book that claims that there is a hell. So, try not to think of hell, think of the source of information about it and see if you believe the source.

Leaving out the idea of him being the son of god, sent by god, and the other unrealistic parts of his story, what are the bad things that he did? As most have heard, so have I, all of the good stuff like being humble and forgiving, not judgemental towards the dregs of society, preaching love and acceptance, and being a giving person. I want to know about the bad side.

Edit: Just to be clear, I do not care about whether or not he actually existed, or whether the accounts of his deeds are factual. Looking at the Bible as a story, like any other, I just want to know the bad things he got up to. Bonus if you can point me to the passages or other resources.

Edit: We're in r/atheist, nobody needs to convince me that it's all bullshit. I just figured someone in here was more likely to give me the answers without trying to justify it. Again, viewing it as a story, like the story of Spider-Man.

Let’s take Adam and Eve for example, he immediately pulls the “free will” and “Gods sovereignty” card, or “we can’t understand what he understands” bullshit. Like bro, it’s painfully obvious that the Bible was just written by Bronze Age goat fuckers, with minimal evidence to back it up. I just need help because we talked about religion a lot back when I was heavier into my Christianity, but then recently I kinda just woke up to how truly fucked this shit is. Like for example, he thinks the Bible is the whole truth and nothing but the truth…. Really? Let’s take the book of exodus for example. THERES NO HISTORICAL EVIDENCE OF ANY OF THAT SHIT HAPPENING! YOU MEAN TO TELL ME A MILLIONS OF SLAVES WANDERED THE FUCKING DESERT FOR 40 YEARS AND THERE NOT A SINGLE TRACE!? THE DESERT IS A PERFECT PLACE TO PRESERVE EVIDENCE OF THAT SHIT BECAUSE ITS SO DAMN DRY! That’s what really had me questioning the Bible, and just the fucked up morality.

So, there I was scrolling through instagram reels when I come across a Islamic family from Toronto, the woman is a fundie who covers herself head to toe.

I find this disgusting. She is a knowing slave. She can't even shake a man's hand, or eat normally because she has a face covering.

Religion is control, and islam is the most controlling.

Some people have an “aha” moment, some know their whole lives, some are turned off by organized religion. What was it for you?

For me it was in 5th grade. We were learning about ancient Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians. A boy in my class asked why ancient people worshipped so many gods when “obviously there’s only one God.” (This boy has since grown up to become a youth pastor)

My teacher’s response was my “aha!” moment. She said people created gods to explain what they didn’t understand, why good and bad things happen, why the sun rises and sets, why the seasons change, etc.

It made so much sense to me, and since that moment I’ve believed every single god was created by people to give hope and purpose. There’s also human’s fear of death and the unknown and need to know why life exists.

So, what was yours??

After much deep thought, the goldfish ended up explaining it all. I observed and became enlightened. Here's my observation. They are in the bowl, they swim and know the boundaries of thier environment. Once a day, food drops into the water and they feast. They have little plants, rocks, and structures to swim around and stay amused.

Amongst the goldfish, one thinks, without the food falling we would perish. Must be a God. What happens when we die? No goldfish really knows, what happens if we jump.out of the bowl, no one knows, no fish ever came back. Goldfish starts to tell everyone the food comes from a God. We must worship. So they do and the food falls.

Some goldfish consider themselves smarter than the rest. Convince them they must pray for the food to fall or one day it won't. They pray for the hand. One day, the hand doesn't show up, no food. The smarter goldfish demand prayer, a lot of it, donations sacrifice, they do it...then the food falls. Success. The religion is now accepted.

Eventually the goldfish scientists study the algea, how it forms, they develop theories on how the plants got there, who built the structures in the bowl and how did they do it? Ancient goldfish now forgotten?..they see lights turn on outside the bowl, shapes move around, must be aliens from a distant place, maybe its our God, pray more.

The smarter goldfish become worshipped. Songs written about them, the lower goldfish pray faithfully, the food falls, they have it figured out.

They are also wrong.

We cannot know why we are here just like the goldfish cannot know why they are in the bowl.

The meaning of life is that you will never know why because you never can. You think you know, but it's a fools quest.

The meaning of life is that there is no meaning. We just exist.

Stay tuned because when this hit me, so did my theory that we may just be NPC'S in a video game....that revelation scares me but I'll explain another day.

In the meantime, all you can really do in this life is be a good goldfish, share the bowl, we are all in this bowl together and can never comprehend why.

Peace

Just curious. I find myself more and more intolerant of religion the older I get and the more i see. That's not to say I cannot tolerate the people necessarily. But I used to think I could make it work with dating theists. I was wrong. I used to think I could talk about or simply say I don't pray. I was wrong..

The older I get the more I realize the idea of tolerance is kind of bullshit. I cannot tolerate people who openly and actively call me infidel and thinking I'm going to hell while in the same breath turn around and ask me to "tolerate" them or their presence.

I cannot look someone in the eye and say I tolerate them, knowing what they think about me as a bisexual.

now are all Christians, Muslims, etc like this? No. But until they tell me they denounce all the shit in their religion, and show me they are actively calling their fellow Christians out. I call bullshit.

I have only maybe two christian friends because, although I still think they are believing in a religion with a psychopath of a character, at least they do call out homophobes etc. So theirs that.

But in general, if you can't say homophobia is wrong and people should be free to blaspheme or that punishing apostates is wrong, no I don't tolerate you or your religious ideas

So I live in Brazil, I'm a 14 year old and I am irreligious, when I was even younger I believed in god, but after I got older, I started to question god's existence, as it started not making sense on my mind.

When one day, I'm at school, and I sat down with my friends to eat, like everyday. One of my friends starts talking about religion, I never told them that I was atheist, but after a while conversating, I say it.

They looked at me with a face of disgust, and I started being called "anti-christ", "satanist". When even though I'm irreligious, I always respected other religions, and never disrespected them in any way.

My friends started treating me differently and excluding me sometimes, and I'm really sad.

I created a different reddit account just to share this, since they might find out If I do it on my main. Anyways, just wanted to share something that is happening in my life right now.

(Sorry for bad english btw 😭)

And for the record this applies to Christians too. People say that atheists are over reacting to Islam and religion being a problem.

There are christians that say that Jesus said to live and let live. Yeah only if you have no power. live and let live only when you know you are losing. Like notice how the homophobes just say "its my opinion you should live and let live my homophobic opinions" but when they are in power they can't live and let live gay people.

When Muslims say Islam doesn't force anyone... Gonna stop there again. Regardless of how rude people are, look no further than Denmark. They ARE forcing Denmark. They are forcing Denmark through violence to not trash talk Islam. They forced French newspaper charlie hebdo to bend to their will

Hello! I have been a Christian all of my life based on other people telling me what I should believe and getting baptized because I thought it was right. Christianity seemed to make me feel happy and have motivation.

Lately I have been seeing a Bible study person and they help me with questions I have. But my questions are complicated. I have lately come to realize that the God of the Bible to me seems evil and wrong. Yet all these people believe that him sending people to burn for eternity is love.

I see so many things from the Bible that I see that I feel are completely wrong. But I’ve asked for signs and yet they have been given to me and I would be dumb not to notice that when I ask for a sign that they are there when I prayed. I need some advice because I do not really believe anymore and wondering if God isn’t real; why when I ask for signs they are actually there?

So my (35M) father in law (69M) suddenly just passed away, and I've been trying to help my child (7M) understand grieve his own way, and cope with what's happened. While I'm doing ok and coping my own way, we've had a couple of conversations on what all happened, death in general, and some of my beliefs/ways of dealing with the loss. He's dealt with losing pets before, but this is a different scenario altogether. I'm just curious for those in this community who have dealt with this before on what you did/spoke about with your child on death and loss.

This is rather long, and I apologize. But I swear I have a point to make.

Roughly two months ago I experienced one of the most rage-inducing social interactions since the time I argued with a former manager and popped an ocular blood vessel. While I wouldn’t say I think about it every day, it certainly has damaged my ability to peacefully coexist with religion.

Backstory: we met back in 2017-18, sorta dated and bonded over our gay outcast status, but never quite graduated to anything deeper. At some point in the middle of knowing each other, he had a boyfriend who unceremoniously dumped him over political reasons. This left him quite vulnerable, which made me wary of pushing myself on him. Regardless, we hung out a few times and slept together once. I still kept him at arm’s length, worried that my mentally unstable self would only cause him more grief.

A bad change happened regardless, and I’m not sure when it triggered. I noticed when I tried to share some deep-seated personal issues with him, having already done so during the night I slept over. That’ll be significant shortly.

This is when the post becomes relevant to this sub. He told me to pray. Don’t talk to him about my issues. Talk to God.

I assumed he was kidding at first. When it became obvious that he wasn’t, something flipped in me. I’ll happily admit, I could’ve handled it better. Basically, I became extremely hostile and tried to talk him away from this path, questioning how someone so logical could go Christian like this. He used that logical mind to lay out his insanity in massive walls of text. I eventually noped out and procrastinated a response.

That brings us to two months ago when he finally took it upon himself to reply to my silence. With a cooler head, I tried to talk to him again. When it turned to debate, I attempted to lay out my stance and how it was incompatible with his prayer stuff. I said I wanted to talk to him, not a being I didn’t believe in. This time he got hostile first. And then I got hostile. Eventually I blocked him because it hurt too much to see him like this.

He followed me onto another app later that night. Having cooled down, I made the mistake of replying to see if I could salvage it or at least agree to peacefully disagree. He told me that he no longer had any interest in talking to me as a friend or anything more. He was only talking to me now because it was his mission to “save” me.

Since I’m anonymous on this site, I’m just gonna say this. Back when we were sorta together, I confided in him that I’d tried to kill myself in my teens. And I still battle thoughts and desires to do it to this day. He used that. He told me that I only felt that way because I don’t have his God in my life.

I psychologically reverted to how I used to behave while being bullied in middle school. Snarling impotent threats and insults in an attempt to defend myself. I trusted this guy with my darkest secret and he stabbed me with it, all to push his zombie messiah.

He laughed at my freak out, told me I was acting cringe and triggered. And it was cuz I don’t have Jesus. He proceeded to use his cool and logical speaking manner to attack what he perceived as a breaking of my resolve. Fortunately for me, my resolve was adamantine. It was my emotional well-being that had fucking imploded.

He doesn’t even feel like the guy I knew anymore. I told him this. I straight said that he feels like he’s possessed by a demon (cuz I ironically use a lot of mythological metaphors). Nothing worked. When I told him I missed the person that he was before this religious awakening, he responded by saying that I missed him being miserable. He said I was embodying Satan’s desire to see everyone suffer and I needed his cult to feel complete.

The remainder of the argument was a train wreck. He attempted to prove his ridiculous points by saying stuff like: only Christian civilizations have been successful and all evil civilizations (Nazis and Soviets) were atheist. He said all other faiths and atheists were servants of Satan, yada yada yada. My attempts to debate him were useless as his exploitation of my personal issues had left me off-balance and unable to formulate concise thoughts.

He’s blocked, forever. I genuinely WANT to help him escape this abyss he’s willingly leapt into, but I can’t do it if he’s gonna use something so personal to assault me.

One thing I can say… He has single-handledy assured that I will never respond diplomatically to religious conversion attempts and made it so that I will never again openly share my secrets. He has irreparably damaged his cult’s cause in my eyes and left me worse off than before I met him. The irony there is that I was keeping him at arm’s length to avoid hurting him.

Maybe if I’d been there more, I could’ve stopped this.

I don’t understand who or what he is any,ore. All of his deeper thinking is gone. There is no more empathy. He doesn’t feel like a real person. And despite what he did, I can’t bring myself to hate him.

All I hate in this situation is his imaginary friend… The monstrous set of fictional characters that comprise the Abrahamic God.

I'm an atheist, born and raised. I'm also a graduate student of history at a state university in the US. I've extensively studied the culture of civilization throughout time, especially in Rome and post-Roman Europe. So it obviously bothers me when I run into people on college campuses thumping the Bible and using warped "history" as a means to spew their hate.

This has happened to me several times but it infuriates me to no end every single time. Every campus preacher I've seen claims that they know the truth of God's words. They raise the Bible up and repeat the same tired quotes out of context that they've been using for centuries.

The man I encountered on my campus today made the claim that women today had lost the grace of God because of their descent into sexual misconduct and promiscuity. He went on to claim that at the height of Christendom, when all Europe's nations were Christian nations, women had the grace of God because they knew not to be promiscuous. Behind all of his words was a clear message: he believed that women had to be told how to act by a man so that they wouldn't be sullied. He went on to cite the Bible and several MALE Christian scholars as evidence that women in Medieval Christendom experienced greater love and freedom than they had at any other time.

As a historian, this positively enraged me. Not only is this man spewing falsehoods, but he's using history as a tool to justify the oppression of anyone who's not a white Christian man. I talked with him in front of this crowd of students and tried to have a rational debate. But every time I countered with a real historical source, he switched tack and moved to a different subject, like these preachers always do. I cite statistics of women experiencing greater economic, religious, political, and social freedom than they did during Christendom, and he responds with "but their freedoms led them to be sexually promiscuous because they were not told the truth of God." I mean, what a load of bullshit.

I walked away after a few minutes because I frankly had more important things to do, but it gave me a bad taste in my mouth for the rest of the day. It saddens and sickens me that someone would use my profession as a tool to oppress and spread hate. It makes me sad that there are people in this world who honestly believe the Church histories that paint everything as sunshine and rainbows. I'm sickened that there are many who believe that it is morally acceptable to say that history justifies the oppression of women or any group.

History is meant to be a force for good in the world. It is meant to expose the voices of those who haven't been able to make their voices heard. It gives authority and agency back to groups who have had it taken away from them in the past. By knowing and embracing rational history, we can make the world a better place.

In my mind, it is the people like this campus preacher who demonstrate how Christianity is dying in the West. When they can have a debate with a credited scholar of history and still believe that their hate-filled "history" is correct, you know that they know the battle is already lost.

So in summary, please don't allow these people to twist history to be used as a weapon. Speak up to them, expose the weakness in their arguments with facts, statistics, and research. We can ignore people like this, but who might actually stop and start to believe them? We have to keep pushing for a more just, equal society so that we can be better than what has come before us. And if religion stands in the way of that, we have to push back.

Sorry for the long rant. Just something I had to get off my chest as a life-long atheist and historian.

​

One week ago in Canada we saw the '1 Million March 4 Children,' mostly made up of Christian and Muslim parents concerned about their kids and indoctrination. I found it ironic and indicative of a lack of self-awareness with this cohort that they don't at all feel ashamed screaming, "Stop indoctrinating our children," when that's exactly what they do to their kids. I guess maybe they don't think there's an irony, and that they have the exclusive right to brainwash (not that that is what's happening in the schools.)

In any case I wrote an essay in my substack about this. Feel free to check it out. https://zacharyhache.substack.com/p/nostalgia-for-the-straight-dictatorship

Lately there seems to be more screaming and whining than usual from the fascist propaganda mills that the separation of church and state is a myth. The fossil fuel companies must have had a bad fiscal quarter, or something. Anyway, the objection Christofascists seem to use over and over is that because the exact, word-for-word phrase "separation of church and state" does not appear in the Constitution, then neither does the concept that phrase describes.

I think we all know that the exact phrase comes from Jefferson's writings, and that the separation is entailed in the First Amendment with the proclamation "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." But we can tell the Christofascists that until we're blue in the face and they will refuse to listen, often repeatedly falling back on "Yeah, but it doesn't SAY 'separation of church and state,' so it doesn't MEAN that."

Well, if you get one of these bad faith infantile liars on your case, here's an alternate tactic. Tell them the Bible doesn't prohibit abortion. When they scream that of course it does, ask them to point out the Bible verse that contains the exact phrase "Don't get an abortion." They'll probably direct you to the Ten Commandments part about not killing/murdering. Then you just say "That doesn't say 'don't get an abortion.'" They'll insist that it's all the same, so just double down on the fact that the exact phrase "don't get an abortion" is not in the Bible, therefore the Bible doesn't tell you not to get an abortion. If the scumfuck dirtbag exasperatedly explains that just because that phrase isn't there, doesn't mean the concept isn't there, respond with a mocking and passive-aggressive "Oh, so I guess that doesn't apply to abortion in the Bible, but it does apply to separation of church and state in the Constitution, because words only mean what it's convenient for your agenda for them to mean at any given moment."

Then rip the MAGA hat off the dude's golf ball-sized head, ram it up his left nostril and skitter away like a cartoon villain, complete with high-pitched piano sound effects.

I moved to Toronto two weeks ago for college. I'm an international student and I have been applying for part time jobs. I dropped my resume at a small shop that sells Kebab and the store manager with a skullcap on went through the resume and asked me " hey you are a Muslim where is your Hijab". I couldn't reply anything back to him except tell him that I wasn't that religious. He went on to give me a free lecture about Islam and how women are well-protected in our community and even asked whether he should add my number to a Muslims Whatsapp group based in Toronto. He further declined my resume saying that his shop is only meant for people who believe in the word "Halaal" and he could hire me only if I'm a believer.

Edit : I don't think I have the time, energy and financial freedom to legally fight this. I'm an international student in Canada and I don't want to get involved with laws from a country that I'm unfamiliar with. I think it's far better off if I focus on my studies and finding a part time job asap so I could make enough to pay for my next semester and my basic needs ( if any of you are from downtown Toronto or Scarborough and have leads for part time jobs or can refer me for jobs please do let me know in the DM😭 I can send you my resume. I'm allowed to work for 20 hours a week as per canadian law. I can do nightshifts too). It was an awful experience indeed. I left my homecountry for Canada so I'd feel safe as a woman living on my own without being scared of getting lynched to death for not wearing a Hijab but I had to go through a horrible one hour lecture about why I'm going to hell, from my own people. I'd like to name and shame them but I'd rather not get in trouble at this point as I just came here and I'm trying to get settled. I'd report them anonymously if there is an option though. I want to save myself.

TL;DR: Ive been dealing with anxiety, having a hard time sticking to therapy and I see so many people being healthier when finding a religion, I want that for me, but I cant lie to myself into believe in that. Do you have an input about this?

I dont know how to express this, but Im not exactly going through rough times, Im just currently unemployed and without money,but I have the full support of my friends and family and even have a gf...

But Ive been experiencing increasing anxiety over the years, and IDK I have a real hard time sticking to therapy sessions both online or physical. Ive been dealing with this increase in anxiety through marijuana, although not with a doctor's recomendation or anything. I dont think that is very health, over the years Ive become very dependant on smoking anything, its not that Im addicted to marijuana, Im addicted to smoking.

In the lights of trying to find something else as escapism, Ive been tinkering with the idea of trying to open my mind to religions, not actually convince myself that a ll those myths are real, but just seeking the "bodily" rewards Id get from meditations, prayers, offerings and other stuff related to positive thoughts, like thanking life, the universe, an entity, anything.

As you guys can see, this is clearly something Im seeking out of an empty on me. Ive been having a hard time dealing with anxiety, and religion seems to help so many others. Thing is, I just cant convince myself to fully believe in that stuff. I have some religious friends that tell me they see or hear some stuff like guidance, or simply feeling jesus or w/e, but I never feel nothing. And I dont like lying, so Id never join these stuff and lie to people to be accepted, Id rather tell the truth.

I have no prejudice against healthy religious people and I think that religion is wonderful, I just cant set mysefl to believe that any miracle or anything that goes beyond the normal laws of physics actually happens, nor I believe in divine entities or even life after death for that matter. I feel like its hard for me to fit in if I try.

I want to ask other non-believers if they ever come up to this problem. I never had a problem not believing in anything before, but as I get older it seems hard to just face this life without religion, idk why.

Me personally it was a lot of doubt & just plot holes in the religion that accumulated over time & I never denied the religion because of my fear of hell & god’s punishment. But as time went on I realised stuff such as how evolution works & just that the Quran doesn’t make so much sense.

As a kid my parents took me to Quran schools & what everyone was doing there was basically reading a surah & then memorising it & reading it to the teach, once you did that you was done for the day. This didn’t make any sense to me because the Quran was saying things that I realised later as I got older. But all my parents & the teachers cared about was just reading & memorising it, rather than understanding it.

Upon reading the Quran it doesn’t make any sense to reality either, it’s flawed which makes no sense because I thought gods words were perfect & if gods words are still perfect then this might not be gods words then.

God is omnipoten he could have told us about his existence in some better way but instead he gives us this book & tells us to just believe, while giving us the ability to reason & logically think things through.

I’m not a full on atheist yet I’m basically a non-resisting nonbeliever, it does just not make so much sense to me no more & it doesn’t help when I ask my parents about god & the only thing they can tell me is to just believe & I didn’t tell them about my doubts of course because they’d disown me.

Just think about that for a second: you know god? Someone only represented in a book 2000 years ago. People don’t even know their significant others or family that much but you know a DEITY that well? Not a human, a deity.

Listen to this absurdity: You’re aware of what the creator of the universe wants and you know what he expects of you (Just repeat that over and over)

Sounds like some narcissist down the block. So humanistic.

Ego is what is fueling these false beliefs. So irrational. Saying you know god is so out there for he’s given you NOTHING to go off it except a book. What if he’s changed his mind since then? Most people don’t even know themselves. I’m sick of hearing it and it must be known how preposterous it sounds.

By this, I mean a story that is your favourite to point to whenever you think of how fucked some parts of the Bible are? Or when you're trying to ruin your theist friend's day

Mine is this: Let's make three assumptions all christians believe. 1: God is all powerful. 2: God loves us all. 3: God is all knowing. Now, let's make a question. Why do bad things exist? Like illness, hunger, you know, all that stuff. Well, it can't be a test from God because then it would mean that God doesn't know the outcome and that breaks rule 3. It also can't be punishment or his own amusement or plan because he supposedly loves us and wouldn't make us suffer. And it can't be Satan stuff because supposedly God could erase it almost immediately, else he wouldn't be all powerful, breaking all three.

This and and an anologous version but with prayers not working has been my best argument. What have you got?

I just saw a video by sadh-guru where he quoted this line from Swami Vivekananda. The idea is, you can pray without involvement, thinking of a 100 different things, you can work without involvement, you can go to school without involvement, you can even get married without involvement. But you cannot play a game without being totally involved and throwing everything you have into it, not holding anything back. The essence of life is only in involvement. Without involvement, you cannot experience anything in its full depth. How profound your involvement is what determines how profound your experience of life is.

How can we be involved? Only by doing our absolute best, nothing short of our best. We often think one thing is more important than the other, and this is what always holds us back from doing our best. If you see something as not important, naturally you will not put your best efforts into that thing. But If you see everything as equally important, doesn't matter if its big or small, only then you can function at your 100%. Only then you can explore all the possibilities of your life and die without having any regrets, knowing that you did everything you could do.

I just wanted to share this with you all because this was the most insightful concept I've seen in a while.