I find this summary amusing -

"Jesus had a bad three day weekend for your sins."

@WilliamCharles There are very few things that are binary in this world. Death is one of them.You are eitger dead or you are not. I oftengive this exaple so I apologize if I talked about it already. My father died when I was sixteen. And he is still dead. Had he appeared be dead for three days and then came back life I would not be saying today that he died. The finality of it is kind of an important aspect of death.
Jesus died for our sins.
Is Jesus dead?
No.

How does that work? I know they have all kinds of apologetics they try to explain the obvious paradox with but if you are going to use thevword "dead" to solicit guilt and gratitude in your myth, you don't leave yoursel much wiggle room. It's just bullshit.

@Gregory2

It is not a defense of that narrative, just a distillation of it. It agrees with you in not being impressed with the "sacrifice" of a supposedly eternal being claimed to have enacted some sort of magical reality via said illusory "death."

Agnostic.com doesn't promise eternal life. Just some comradery for us, a discriminated minority, and maybe a veiled promise of getting laid the young members.

There's certainly some horror stories here.

:

"The following list represents just a small portion of the religions (past and present) that have been identified as encouraging practices that are destructive psychologically, emotionally, and physically. These are the memoirs and stories about people who feel they were forced to escape oppressive religious sects."

[bookriot.com]

I basically agree. Atheism is a very narrow position on a single belief. Even to the extent there's a shared "atheist experience" it's dependent on theism.

For this reason I do not agree with the Sunday Assemblies movement or similar notions.

Community just requires shared purpose and experience with others. My community comes largely from playing no-stakes 500 Rummy with friends on Saturdays and professional interactions with colleagues and interactions with my wife and stepson, and a little bit with my neighbors. It is sufficient. Part of the problem, I think, is that people have overdetermined notions of what community should be like and provide them. They care too much and try too hard. They seek cosmic significance and world-changing activities ... if you simply enjoy people AS people and quit trying to make something of community that it's not, you can get by on a lot less than the church makes us think we need.

@mordant Brilliant. The churches of course exaggerate everything, which they can do so easily because they work in a world where proof is not needed. They are thereby able to plant an exaggerated fear of death so that they can appear to abollish not only mere death but an even more frightening death, and not only loneliness but super exclusion.

@mordant I have a very narrow view of belief. As in, there shouldn't be any. I don't care what I want to believe. What counts is what's out there. I have senses snd they sense. I know I don't experience what's out there with my senses but with my brain but that is what the scientific method is for. Two monkey brains are better than one. If I ask a random man where is the man's room is, follow his directions and you find the bathroom, that is reality. He didn't believe where the bathroom was, he knew it from his experience. And I was able to confirm it by being able to relieve myself. That is reality. It's not that easy in science but thst is the basic idea of it. If the issue was as complicated as some scientific observations and he explained it to me in scientific terms, probabilities, that he is right, I would be peeing on the wall just off a couple of iches.

I could dance with you till the cows come home
On second thoughts I rather dance with the cows and wait for you to come home.

Groucho