If so, how did they take it (I'm guessing "not well"), and where do things stand now?

Or does it?

I know we were once nothing, but it is still terrifying and depressing to me to think about returning to this. In fact, as of late, I've been unable to not think about it: the loss of all experience and all memories of everything, forever. All the good times we had, and will have, with anyone or anything ever will totally annihilate into nothingness. All our efforts will amount to nothing because the thoughtless void is ultimately what awaits everything in the end.

The only argument against this would have to be supernatural, like another cause of the Big Bang or somehow proof of reincarnation, but if my consciousness won't exist for me to experience it, then what does it matter either way?

There is no comfort in Hell, either. The anvil of death weighing down, infinitely, on all values and passions is becoming unbearable for me, so I could really use any potentially helpful thoughts about this matter.

Personally, I thought this was a no-brainer. Living a life of submission and duty to someone who can treat you as property while calling it "love" is a very niche fetish, and certainly not going to be anywhere close to the utopia conservative Christians claim it should be.

But hey, don't take my word for it. Don't take the word of sociologists and psychologists who study the matter. Certainly don't listen to feminists who have their own opinions on a woman's proper role in society.

Listen to the women who lived it.

For the first time since people started looking at demographics, more young women are leaving churches than young men. Naturally, the people most responsible for this trend have no idea what to make of it.

Kristi Burke is doing an excellent series of videos on Christian deconstruction. Here's her latest, posted yesterday.

Few people have an easy time escaping Christianity, because it's ubiquitous in Western society. But it can be done.

...pay attention to Leonard Leo. He is the judicial kingmaker responsible for the list from which Trump selected Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Leo has shaped this Court and acted effectively to keep its Republican justices from abandoning his – and their – sectarian-right vision of America.

Communicating trauma through art is fine, as long as you don't remind the Christian fundies that their beliefs and practices are a prime source of religious trauma for lots of people.

It's mostly good news all around. Evangelicals are the only ones who are managing to hold their ground, so that's bad. But "Unaffiliated" which includes atheists, agnostics, and "Nones" are up from 21% in 2013 to 26% in 2023. We continue to be the fastest-growing demographic in the US. Furthermore, an increasing number of Americans simply find religion irrelevant or otherwise unimportant, and those numbers are growing as well.

There is hope for the future, should we survive so long.

cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/10870025

Salem police said someone threw an explosive device onto the porch of the Satanic Temple.

Captain Cassidy examines yet another Christian expressing pity for non-believers who must be somehow deficient to explain non-belief.

A trailer full of bibles appears to have been intentionally set on fire at Greg Locke's Global Vision Bible Church before Easter service, police say.

cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/10581116

3-year-old Arely Proctor was tortured to death by her grandfather, uncle, and mother during an exorcism. They were convinced she had…

It's always a weird day, Easter was when my family found out I had fully left the church. I remember I just said I wasn't going that day and my mother had a meltdown, saying there was no point in celebrating if I didn't go to church. She cancelled the family dinner and all the activities for the whole family because she found out I didn't go.

20 years later we're better but I still remember that, I'm willing to admit that her cancelling a holiday because of me was traumatic for me, Easter used to fill me with dread.

Now I eyeroll at every big public he is risen post and continue on with my day. Today coffee, a good pastry shop, then enjoying a nice spring day.

cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/10506910