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I ask that you judge atheists by the enemies we have made
(thelemmy.club)
Link. This is from a subreddit called r/antitheistcheesecake in which primarily Christians and Muslims post Soyjak memes about how much they hate atheists, gay people, sexually liberated people, and anything else they consider modern "d*generacy" (they really love that word).
In another thread they make fun of an atheist's grief over their beloved cat dying
When I think of former atheists I think of policy wonks who hate it when people don't take tradition into account. Like they'll actually quote scripture at you and are hypochondriacs about being based.
When I think of christians I'm not necessarily fond of them, but I think of a mid western social group. Like a balding dad volunteering to coach baseball for middle schoolers. Or moms talking about reality TV on Thanksgiving while a dad teaches the kids how to play poker.
Like if you were going to learn anything it wouldn't be the best hashtags to post about God it would be how to have a relationship with grace so you stop thinking about yourself and then you do it again when you think you're the best not-thinker and do it again when you realize that there are other points of view in this world and then again when you realize there's only one good POV and it's my politics.
People who agree with the culturaly hegemonic position are normal and comforting, people who challenge the hegemonic position are argumentative and annoying.
I am sorry to say that your brain is a victim of propaganda
I've made good experiences with Christian youth groups and I'm not even baptized. Two times in two separate countries I was invited to join one of these groups and both times I've found them to be very positive places. Your mileage may vary greatly of course, but that association isn't necessarily a result of propaganda.
As a child I spent some time in America and it was anecdotal. The anecdotes not being representative of the parts I'm not fond of nor comprehensive of my time around them.
The purpose, however, is to contrast with former atheists who take the bible itself as a lot more perscriptive for the praxis of Christianity than anyone I've ever met involved in the church. More clarifyingly, I see Christians using GOP talking points washed through pastor language as theory for their praxis
AmeriKKKans try to be normal about atheism challenge, difficulty: impossible. When i think about Christians, i know two or three genuinely nice and decent people who aren't weird about it and understand the inherently problematic parts of scripture and have based takes on how awful evangelicals and tradcaths are. And literally every other Christian i know is just various degrees of reactionary. Meanwhile, besides these two or three exceptions, every single politically trustworthy person i know is an atheist or an agnostic.
To be frank, your personality (and your material conditions) are a bigger factor in whether you are a reactionary or “based” christian, than your actual religion.
These aren't particularly controversial takes, the few based christians i know have all been socialized in leftist circles and one of them is a trans girl. And there's a very clear correlation between actually being compassionate, conscientous and caring about other people on one hand, and mostly caring about being perceived as a good samaritan and having an absolute truth you can whip out whenever you need to shut people up on the other. The former correlates with being the kind of christian leftists can find common ground with, the latter unsurprisingly correlates with being a bigotted hypocrite.