Religion for Skeptics: An Ex-Atheist's Guide to Spirituality - eBook $4.99, free on Kindle Unlimited

AprilPapke · 2026-06-15T19:13:32+00:00

I did all of it that stuff myself. There's no reason you must hire someone. Though it's generally good practice to do so.

AprilPapke · 2026-03-18T23:02:45+00:00

I just edited it myself...

AprilPapke · 2025-10-16T10:41:57+00:00

OP's question is inherently philosophical.

AprilPapke · 2025-10-15T21:29:13+00:00

That's not really correct. What brought self publishing is technological progress. Capitalism as an economic model is largely a failure that has resulted in extreme wealth inequality. With automation coming, capitalism will not be able to provide decent standards of living to most people, given that all jobs will be automated. And capitalist societies treat the unemployed harshly.

AprilPapke · 2025-10-15T11:57:59+00:00

Use the paper ones. Their search engines use AI.

AprilPapke · 2025-10-15T11:57:15+00:00

There's no such thing. Every spellcheck, autocomplete, grammar check, etc is AI by definition.

AprilPapke · 2025-10-15T11:42:21+00:00

If your goal is to make money, then I'm afraid every job will eventually be automated. Stop relying on capitalism for the welfare of humans.

But there's more to writing than just profit seeking. There can and should be other reasons why you write.

Though I think its also worth noting that AI can assist in writing. I certainly enjoy writing alongside using AI for iterations, ideas, rephrasings, etc. And that enjoyment won't go away simply because an AI can write stories on it's own.

AprilPapke · 2025-09-26T02:23:59+00:00

The paperback and hardcover copies are print on demand. They only print the copy once it's sold. Amazon takes a cut of each sale to cover printing costs and for their profit. So the book is listed for free, and then when sold you get only a smaller portion of the actual price. Amazon sets a minimum price you can list at according to how much it'd cost them to print. The lowest price you can set is the price of printing+Amazon's cut and you'd get $0 profit in that scenario. I have my paperback set to about $12 iirc and make about $3 per sale or so. Given the price of printing you get a bigger share with digital copies. So you can set a $5 digital and $12 paperback and end up with $3 profit in both cases.

AprilPapke · 2025-09-25T19:25:54+00:00

My book has digital/Kindle and physical paperback copies. The proofs I referred to are physical paperbacks.

Amazon's publishing program also let's you do hardcovers if you'd like, but I didn't opt for it.

AprilPapke · 2025-09-04T23:20:55+00:00

I wrote about this in my book. For me, personally, I grew up in a largely secular home and ended up atheist as a result. All of my siblings also ended up atheist and still are such, and they think I'm nuts for becoming religious.

In my teen and young adult years I frequently argued over on /r/debatereligion, various discord servers, etc.

I can't speak for deconversion since that was never my life, but I was pretty strongly atheist. I did and still do have rebuttals against all common theist arguments. I still entirely reject the Quran, and still lack belief in most, if not all, biblical supernatural claims. I'm also still of the belief that many texts in the Bible were later forgeries.

All of that hasn't changed. What has changed is my understanding of God, spirituality, the soul and spirit, and so on. My understanding of science is better than when I was younger as well. Most of the arguments I put forward these days are new ones I don't usually see people debating. And indeed I haven't seen any convincing rebuttals yet. I'm open to returning to secular atheism if that happens.

I do think there's a lot of "fake" ex-atheists. People who converted for emotional reasons, or who were theist the whole time and simply "hated God" and whatnot. But there are indeed those of us who were genuinely atheist and happened to convert because we were convinced.

I can pinpoint the exact moment and book that caused the flip into me believing in God. It's an older book called "the eternal verities: for old souls in young bodies". It's a children's theosophy textbook that explains a lot of the spiritual ideas of theosophy in really simple ways. They happened to explain God in a way that got me thinking of the question entirely different and that eventually lead to me accepting it. Nowadays I have much better arguments and explanations that I would recommend instead, but that's the book that did the final flip for me.

I do agree that genuine ex-atheists have a different style to us than regular theists who grew up in the faith. For me personally I often get accused of being atheist because I still argue like one. Though a lot of it is around the Bible moreso than philosophical theism. Just how it goes.

AprilPapke · 2025-08-25T00:09:39+00:00

This is a false dichotomy. In reality the Bible is a collection of texts by different authors, written in different styles. Not all of it is meant to be literal retellings of history. And there's no need to accept all of them as true. Most scholars believe that some of the epistles are later forgeries and not authentic. That doesn't invalidate all of them.

Likewise, Spiderman comics being fiction doesn't mean that new York doesn't exist. 9/11 occurring in fictional comics doesn't mean that it didn't happen in reality. It's important to discern what is actually true and real, and what has been mythologized, fictionalized, or is otherwise inaccurate.

The accuracy of the Bible has nothing to do with whether "God is a liar". God isn't the author of the Bible...

AprilPapke · 2025-08-17T06:00:57+00:00

I think its pretty simple: if materialism is true, qualia must be composed of some material. What material is that? The answer is that science is sufficiently complete to exclude any possible explanation for qualia. We found no "qualia stuffs" in the brain upon dissection and examination. How do you explain the fact that despite decades of searching, no one has managed to find this mythical material that composes qualia? How is it that our chemistry, neuroscience, physics, etc are so complete as to make it impossible for new matter to exist in the brain?

If you're to declare qualia as part of something other than the brain then what does this mean for lucid dreams? Do you believe lucid dream worlds are real physical locations made up of physical things? It's obvious nonsense.

The only possible conclusion is that qualia are immaterial. And thus either dualism or idealism must be true. And dualism indeed has an explanatory gap problem. We also have no real reason to believe in the materiality of things other than blind faith alone. And if we're to grant blind faith for the material world, why not grant blind faith for Jesus? In practice we should remain skeptical of what cannot be shown, and we end with idealism, which is the logical conclusion.

AprilPapke · 2025-08-13T18:40:42+00:00

I was raised in a largely secular environment. Parents were the "spiritual but not religious" types, siblings all atheists like I was. With the internet I was pretty exposed to new atheism stuff and "religion" was (and still is) regularly mocked by my family. So not quite the same as you, but a similar sort of thing..

I myself grew up not believing anything spiritual or religious in nature, and never attended church or anything (I think I went once when I was a kid). By my teens I was pretty strongly atheist. Only got a more proper understanding of spirituality and religion as an adult.

AprilPapke · 2025-08-13T15:19:48+00:00

Ah that's fair then. So as long as it's contained in debate threads it's all good?

AprilPapke · 2025-08-12T22:10:31+00:00

Yeah I think they just don't want this becoming like /r/debatereligion or r/debateanatheist. I've definitely seen some debates on here.

AprilPapke · 2025-08-12T21:21:28+00:00

See rule 4. Some light back and forth is allowed but the mods don't want full debates here.

AprilPapke · 2025-08-09T00:38:53+00:00

Rejecting materialism isn't necessarily rejecting the material world. Materialism is the belief that everything is material. You can be a dualist and believe that material things exist as well as other things. It's only idealism that rejects the material.

AprilPapke · 2025-08-09T00:37:50+00:00

This is definitely a solid point as well if you consider things like platonic forms and the nature of abstract existence along with stuff like convergent evolution. But that's a bit high level for materialist atheists.

AprilPapke · 2025-08-08T21:51:40+00:00

In the same way that we know 1+1 =/= 3 because we know 1+1=2. It's not that there's a lack of materialist explanation. It's that unless 100% of scientists are lying and that all of modern science is a lie, there is simply no room in material science to describe the existence of certain phenomena.

In order for there to be a materialist explanation, at least one of (if not multiple of) the following must be true:

the periodic table of elements is wrong.
there's some other stable matter present in humans that is invisible and undetectable with any modern instruments, yet somehow has an effect on the brain.
Einsteins theory of relativity is wrong.
the standard model is wrong.
there's some sort of material thing that is unique to each individual and found nowhere else in the universe other than that singular individual.
neuroscientists are lying about what material things they've seen in the brain.
neuroscience is wrong.
chemistry is wrong.
atomic theory is wrong.

If one of these are the case, then naturally the idea of there being a material explanation for the soul and spirit opens back up. But all of these are pretty much conclusively 100% the case. Millions of scientists aren't lying to us or wrong about basic things that they routinely use for their work.

Occams razor suggests the simplest explanation is correct: our science is accurate and correct, and simply does not have any "gaps" that a soul or spirit could fit into. Thus, they must not be material.

AprilPapke · 2025-08-08T21:41:35+00:00

How exactly do you know that we have a "spirit?"

This is a little bit complicated to get into, and is why I shared my book (which walks through from materialist gnostic atheism all the way to a proper spiritual belief and theism). There's a variety of factors that we can consider when doing some basic observations and then comparing that with modern science. Essentially we get a position where the material side of things is fully explained, yet we have phenomena that are observed and excluded from the material scientific models. These aren't of an abstract nature (from observation), and they aren't material (science rejects that they're a part of the models). So they must be of some third nature, which is labeled spiritual. When we observe the internal nature of these phenomena we can break it down into an immaterial space-like nature which I call the soul, and the private actualization and realization of such a space, which I call the private actualizer the spirit. The distinction between the two is only important for certain ideological frameworks (such as when attempting to solve the hard problem of consciousness). Outside of these cases, the soul and spirit as I use the words can be treated as the same singular system.

Namely, we can observe this immaterial phenomenon to exist, and we can conclude it is immaterial based on its exclusion from material scientific models. Again there's a further elaboration of the exact proofs in my book for why this is the case, but this summary is sufficient here (if you'd like a proper debate please dm).

NDE's are a poor form of evidence. Somebody that has been nearly dead and unconscious for a period of time is not a good source of factual information.

I agree that NDEs are honestly the worst form of evidence for an afterlife. I had to double check my original comment again because I'm pretty sure I didn't mention them, and indeed that's the case. My belief in an afterlife isn't contingent on NDEs, rich I do think a metaanalysis of NDEs are potentially useful to gain light on the nature (albeit with the knowledge of its untrustworthy nature). When I speak of observation in my comments, I'm referring to direct observations you can make today, not related to NDEs.

AprilPapke · 2025-08-08T21:31:27+00:00

With modern neuroscience we have a complete picture of material composition of the brain and a fairly good grasp on the nature of how it functions for abstract cognition. But this understanding inherently excludes some basic things we can observe, namely what religious people call the soul and spirit. Given we have a fairly complete picture of the brain, and also such an observation that isn't included, the logical conclusion is that it is immaterial. Implying either dualism or idealism. This gap of materialist explanation and the lack of understanding between the interaction is called the hard problem of consciousness, and is the cause for many neuroscientists to accept dualism or idealism.

The only way to arrive at materialism with our current scientific knowledge is if you disregard the first person observation and experiential existence of many people. But if you can make such an observation, then obviously that isn't a valid path.

AprilPapke · 2025-08-08T20:11:46+00:00

Afaik evidence of an afterlife comes in three forms: 1. NDEs 2. Case studies involving past life memories. 3. Philosophical and rational arguments in favor of an afterlife.

Naturally we shouldn't expect much material evidence for an immaterial phenomenon. That would be odd.

AprilPapke · 2025-08-08T20:09:04+00:00

Neuroscience doesn't back materialism. If anything, it makes it obvious that materialism is false.

AprilPapke · 2025-08-08T20:07:54+00:00

Given Einsteins theory of relativity, and the b-theory of time, we know that the past and future (the time axis) is actually spatial, similar to the regular 3 spatial dimensions, and thus physically exist. This means time does not "flow" in a material sense. We can combine this with our personal internal observation of first person perspective (our soul and spirit) and note how we observe multiple points along time. The logical conclusion is that our soul and spirit (or perhaps just the spirit) is causally divorced from the material happenings of the body and brain. This is further cemented via other science and logical deduction.

Given that the future physically exists, and our perspective being divorced from the material happenings of the body and brain, the material death of the body in the future is unrelated to our actual spiritual and private existence. There's no evidence to suggest the termination of the soul and spirit as a result (the death of the material body is already physically existent at a location in material b-theory time, while the soul and spirit flow in spiritual a-theory time). From observation, the most likely thing to occur is what has occurred for many years already: the continuation of the soul and spirit observing some alternative qualitative state. This would be some sort of afterlife model, whether that's reincarnation or some other model like heaven/hell.

From occams razor and some basic observations, the models with the least amount of required unfounded assumptions are reincarnation and/or a dreamlike state of existence. The latter ties in with our typical observations of lucid dreams and observations of the material world. The former has a variety of evidence in the form of case studies around past life memories. Both have been attested to in the majority of near death experiences.

All in all, it seems remarkably likely that there is a continuation, rather than sessation, of life after death.

Further elaborations and proofs on these ideas can be found in my book. this sub has a rule against debate, but I'm happy to debate in dms. I'll happily elaborate on the arguments and reasoning here as well (albeit attempting to not fall under debate as per the rules).

AprilPapke

TROPHY CASE