Boy, that list looks pretty similar to the principles of Unitarian Universalism (full disclosure, born and raised). The suggestions are good but if we look at the history of the Unitarian Universalism it was heralded by various scholars as the secular religion for the coming enlightened future. None of that has happened and the fastest growing religious communities these days are fundamentalist, evangelical Christians. I agree with the sentiment of the author, but reality suggests that we secular minded folk are missing something in the implementation.
I was also born and raised UU and still appreciate the values of tolerance and education that came out of that. What other church offers its own fact-based sex ed course and has you visit other religious institutions as a requirement for coming of age?
But despite there being UU churches in every major city I've lived in, I haven't been back in a serious way since high school. For me at least, part of the 'implementation' thats missing is the lack of pull to the weekly service. I'd love the community, but don't feel particularly drawn to the actual meat of it. Kinda like wanting to join a soccer team without liking soccer too much.
Community needs some kind of core that is valuable to people in order for a community to form around it and I'm not sure those secular weekly services have the same kind of broadly appealing gravitas that traditional religion provides. As well as there not being enough family-driven guilt to pull early-twenties people back to church during those times when spirituality is less interesting compared to other things in life.
My Episcopal sunday school made the whole class to go services and sunday school (or equivalent) for every major christian denomination and every major non-christan religion. About 25 sundays in a row. If you missed you made it up. We also had 100 question tests on major tenets of the other major world relgions. Same for the Catholic Marianist school I went to. The idea was, we want you to understand why you are chosing this religion (even if it's mostly automatic because your parents are encouragining you). You couldn't be confirmed if you couldn't pass these tests. You also had to go to conselling with the very nice and understanding teachers to talk about if you really wanted to do it. One kid didn't go through with it on purpose. The teachers were very good with handling the parents and making this easier on the kid.
I really liked the Marianist and Jesuit idea that you should be able to challenge your religion so much that you have to come to logically understand and accept it; They are both great at Logical argument and reduction, especially about faith.
I think this type of introspection helped me quite a bit as an engineer even if it didn't work in making me a faithful person.
Sadly, it's probably the lack of a us vs them tribalistic segment. Everyone loves to root for 'their' home sports team, and that other rival sports team sucks a lot, their bad guys.
No idea if this is it, but I don't think I ever met poor UU folks. I never really met any redneck UU folks either.
They're nice enough people, I suppose--I've been meaning to get out to a service myself--, but they do seem to be a little on the urbane mid/upper class side of things.
I wonder if an "organized secularism" would only copy some the problems found in organized religion. Do people become less religious only because of a rejection of the supernatural, or for other reasons as well? I think some people become less religious for two additional reasons as well: "shared values" and "rituals."
A set of shared values is nice until it fails to change in response to changes in the values of individuals. For example, the Catholic Church has been slow to accept the rights of gender and sexual minorities, even as many individual Catholics become more accepting of these rights. The result is a split in the church, between those who want an updated set of values and those who prefer the old set.
Individuals may also dislike some of rituals associated with religions, perhaps because they take time or have some other cost that the individual doesn't want to pay (fasting, reduction of pleasure, etc.).
A secular community that adopts a shared set of values and rituals may only take on some of the problems leading to less religiosity, rather than solving them.
I think what makes most religions so inflexible is having a canon which can be difficult to circumvent. If a secular order is based on the opinions of the founders who are treated as wise humans instead of divine, it becomes easier to accept that they could be wrong or just misinformed.
I'm sadly skeptical, given how much weight Americans seem to give to the intentions of the founding fathers when it comes to discussing the constitution.
This makes sense -- I was trying to figure out why various secular groups with which I'm involved (e.g., improv theatre, or the guys at the gym) don't have any of the church-like feel. I think it's because they're too flexible -- people are always leaving, forming sub-groups, etc. I like those people but they would never show up at my house to mow my lawn, as another commenter described.
Or maybe 'flexibility' is the wrong word, since the groups I mention are activity-specific, and one's interest in the activity ebbs and flows, whereas one's interest in fellowship with other people in the quest for some kind of human-level goodwill would presumably be constant.
Based on my own reflections on the Christian community I am part of, I'd have to agree. I believe one of the things holds the community together is that every sticks to the same set of rules. And is willing to change if they find they are living outside of the rules. Not everyone's cup of tea but it's a life I enjoy. Perhaps similar systems outside of religion could help people.
I grew up in a Christian community and it's something that I miss - the feeling that you strive to uphold rules that are greater than yourself, and everyone around you fights with their own bodies and minds to do the same. In the group I used to be a part of, the mentality of "we're all in this together" was strong.
This is true, although I suspect that the reluctance to change the set of values in traditional religions may have a lot to do with subconsciously (or consciously) fearing supernatural retribution. e.g. God will punish you for being sinful. In principle, this shouldn't be a problem for a secular community that does not accept the notion of a supernatural governing force.
You only have to look at half the discussions on HN to know that humans are still very religious about subjects despite the rejection of the supernatural. We joke about language or editor wars being "religious", but really, that same thought process exists.
On the same topic, but contrary to what you are saying, organized secularism with rituals, values, expectations may only draw out this natural propensity towards "religion" in people even further.
Touching on your point further, Protestant churches actually fare pretty well with some of these cultural issues that force change. If someone disagrees about gay marriage or another controversial topic, they just start a new church and half the congregation goes there. It makes Protestant churches at the same time possibly more extreme but also much more varied in their belief systems and allows for religion to evolve. (This is not an endorsement of Protestantism, just an acknowledgement).
I dislike the notion of organized secularism because it creates an us vs them attitude. You have churches and then secular churches when the real solution (whatever it may be) should be a less dogmatic form of outreach that grabs at people from all walks of life and engages them. That's how people change, that's how they get better.
>Do people become less religious only because of a rejection of the supernatural, or for other reasons as well?
Sociologically, people mostly become less religious when they feel that they control their own fate, and feel no need to ask for divine intervention. Hence why societies grow less religious as they grow rich and egalitarian, while highly unequal and/or poor societies have a tendency towards greater levels of religiosity.
Gregory Paul and Phil Zuckerman have investigated this question by teasing out correlations like this. Their conclusion, as discussed in [1] and [2] is that three factors correlate well with a drop in religiosity: (a) egalitarianism (i.e. not being in a rat race against the Joneses and also not suffering the lifelong indignity of being substantially less well off than others), (b) freedom from financial and other catastrophes (as provided by a socialistic-leaning society) which does away with the need for a Big Brother to help you out and correct the injustices, and (c) education as you suggest. Education is helpful but the other two factors apparently rank above it.
I, for one, abandoned my religion simply because I came to the conclusion that the teachings of the religion itself (evangelical Christianity in my case) weren't true. I have no problem with shared values per se; I could probably get behind a secular humanist community's shared values. And even rituals might be good, as long as the participants don't regard them as time-wasting bullshit.
I may not be reading you correctly, but I understand you to be coming from a position of faith and happy therein (for now). If so, your standpoint makes sense to me. I imagine you may feel it would take a good deal of momentum to cross the boundary at the edge of your faith. A nihilist alternative may also act as a warning of the scary outside to those still on the inside.
Nevertheless, it is not actually necessary to go to extremes (see fallacy of excluded middle). The outside is closer to where you are now, than you might imagine.
I am happy with my faith. I've gone through a crisis of it. I've come out much stronger on the other side.
Specifically to the extreme, during that time I re-evaluated possible philosophic systems. I am an absolutist. I think there is Truth. Without a god, I needed to see if there was any system that provided a similar world view. Existential nihilism does. It says that the only fact we have is that nothing fundamentally matters (I'm treating existential nihilism apart from the extreme skeptics that deny the existence of things). The universe will die, or collapse and re-expand. Regardless to the exact details, every invention and power of man amounts to nothing. Therefore since every man is within the group man, individual acts amount to nothing. I've not seen a more honest system than this. I want an honest system
Most other systems are predicated on a quasi-Christian-like system. They believe that people are somehow different than everything else in the universe. That they have intrinsic meaning while nothing else does. Or they go to the other extreme that makes everything equally special, and as we're taught in the movie The Incredibles, nothing is special then. As we've seen in this thread, the view might boil down to "it makes me feel good to help people".
The problem that I have with such systems is that they ultimately anchor to a feeling or some other arbitrary truth. Upon that rock an edifice is made from which various dogmas are shouted. If I were to throw away one system of belief with that behavior, why would I adopt another?
As a result, I find that there are only two systems that could be true given what humanity knows: some form of theism or nihilism. I'm convinced of the former, specifically Jesus as the Christ, but I find no honest system possible other than nihilism if my feeling and beliefs were some how shown to be false.
>> If I were to throw away one system of belief with that behavior, why would I adopt another?
You seem comfortable with the arbitrariness of your faith now. So why not any other? A hypothetical true-believer in the Flying Spaghetti Monster would (by most reasonable criteria) be moving in the right direction if he/she were to become a Christian instead. Even though both faiths may be unanchored, there are wider considerations too.
I do see how one can say it's arbitrary. There is a set of rules that we didn't make, that a god imposes on us. We may know why for some rules. We might not know others. The system could be called arbitrary.
My reason is entirely based on experience. I have not felt the spirit of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, nor his noodlely appendage. I have felt the Spirit. This makes it not arbitrary. It's rooted in God. It's rooted in the absolute.
That's why if I ever stopped believing in the Trinity, I would be a nihilist. It's a good starting point. It admits that everything is arbitrary. As such, I think we could build on it to a Utilitarian system. We all agree that core set of values is arbitrary, but that it's build on avoiding pain. Avoiding pain is an arbitrary metric, but well, the majority doesn't want to be kicked, so let's agree that we shouldn't do that to each other.
This is a cordial conversation and I have no desire to be the first turn it mean. So please read the following in the most charitable light.
You seem to apply two standards. To yourself, your personal experience is sufficient. Yet from others, a more rigorous justification is expected.
By analogy: if I were Japanese, I would definitely prefer Buddhism over Shinto. Yet, I am not Japanese, which rather undermines my argument. Under such hypothetical circumstances my perspective would surely be other than it actually is now.
The reason I pursue this point is that, historically, people with faith have argued unreasonably that the only viable alternative to their unique faith is [name_a_specific_extreme_and_scary_philosophical_position_here]. To be fair, if you are doing this at all, you are doing so only subtly.
The Christian faith is anything but arbitrary. It is predicated on the Bible being true, and the Bible is a collection of documents, many of which are grounded in specific points of both space and time.
In particular, the factual claims about Christ, his life, his death, his resurrection are central to any evangelical Christian's faith. Disprove them and it's game over for Christianity. Paul says as much in his letter to the early church in Corinth [0]. Beyond factual claims about Christ, there are many other sections of the Bible which would become fatal to the central Christian message were they proven false. (The flood, the plagues in Egypt, the Hebrew Exodus from Egypt, the prophecies in Ezekiel, Daniel, Isaiah, etc.)[1].
Start with any one of them and offer a credible disproof and you can go down in the history books as the person responsible for dismantling the arbitrary Christian faith.
This will go nowhere. Any argument I make will likely be skewered on interpretations of "credible" or on which parts of the Bible you choose to defend or which parts should be taken literally and which figuratively.
Anyway, let's try starting at one of the most obvious. I understand the Bible says the world was created in 7 days. Has that been credibly disproven yet?
That's... very stupid. You really ought to read some strong naturalism, a worldview predicated on the view that, indeed, there is a truth, and it is Nature, which can be examined and learned-about through all the normal methods.
On rituals: One user over at Less Wrong wrote a couple of posts[1][2] on designing ritual, and associated value and dangers. I also found the 2012 edition of a ritual book[3] that his group used to formally mark the winter solstice.
This need to be worshipped is what I found to be the most bizarre characteristic of deities. Seriously, why would someone who can create space, time, universe and everything care the slightest bit about whether or not a bunch of Homo sapiens perform all these weird acts that worshipping entails? Too needy.
In the specific case of Jehova, Eph 2:7 addresses this question: "So God can point to us in all future ages as examples of the incredible wealth of his grace and kindness toward us, as shown in all he has done for us who are united with Christ Jesus." -NLT
In this question I saw one of the classic agnostic lines of thought which is "If there is a God, why would he care about us at all? Why would he care what we think, say and do? We can't be the center of the Universe. We can't be the focus of all creation. That's just hubris."
I love this question, because its humble, searching, sincere. Why does God want our praise? He, or any deity, is far far above it. Why go through all this trouble creating this elaborate mess just to talk to a bunch of specks of protein. None of it, none of Christianity made sense to me. The purpose behind it all. Its just stupid.
But there it was in Ephesians 2:7, God's reason. I was relieved because it is a selfish reason. I couldn't stand the idea that God is just love love love... it was just giving and getting nothing in return. And it didn't reflect the Jehova of the Old Testament. But Ephesians says he did it for the glory. Who's going to be the witness of that? What peer-group or other beings would God point to and say "There I did it, I'm amazing."? I have no clue. However, this is so refreshing to me, because it shows that God is possessive and jealous, and very much like us, who were "made in his image".
But, I have to agree with agnostics... humans are far from the center of the universe. God is. Its his game. His strange, fearsome, terrible, wonderful work.
Very interesting, thank you for the response. How can God be perfect and just if he is possessive and jealous? Maybe God isn't actually a perfect being , but instead an advanced creature (who seems to be fairly needy) living in a higher order universe playing with a giant lego set (our own universe). But then who created God and the world he lives in? Heh.
Great question honestly. Apparently this is an outcome that is greatly valued by Jehova. That's the best I can do. Eternity future is almost as vaguely addressed as eternity past.
EDIT: To provide context since the parent comment was deleted, they were asking for a logical breakdown of why Jesus would require worship in order to provide salvation.
To break it down: God is completely pure (without sin). To be with God (which is what we would call 'salvation') we would also need to be without sin. Obviously, no human is without sin - meaning we could never be with God. Prior to Jesus, we were required to sacrifice things in order to atone for our sins and get right with God. Jesus provided an eternal, perfect sacrifice to pay for everyone's sins. It isn't so much that we need to worship Him, more that we need to accept the sacrifice He has already provided - if we reject the sacrifice, the full penance for all our actions is on us, and we can never be with God.
Sarcasm aside, though, it's such a wonderful little rhetorical trick to introduce an otherwise indefensible point with the prefix that it is "Obvious" that to let it go unmentioned would be criminal.
Okay, I've cooled down a bit and I'll say this: You're free to believe whatever you want to believe. Can I just request that, in the future, you don't come in guns blazing and saying that all people need is Jesus? It's great if Christianity is working for you. Try and understand that it doesn't work for everyone.
A generic drive-by provocation about religion is all of those things (as is clear from this ridiculous subthread) and not welcome on Hacker News. Please don't do it again.
I think this would be strengthened considerably with the help of global networking. There are a lot of similar organisations worldwide that could be effectively merged with the right kind of social networking.
I think he meant more along the lines of "having a wedding" or "having a funeral" than "sacrificing a cow" (but pardon my ignorance of Catholic rituals).
Also see sports as ritual, fellowship with the boys coming over and grill some brats and burgers while consuming mind altering substances while watching a ritual. Burnt Offering. Stereotypical non-sports party is almost as ritualistic.
I'm the opposite - I miss the community and its events. There's a growing Humanist community where I live precisely for that reason. The vast majority of the population are Catholic so life revolves around Catholic rituals, whether we like it or not. It's great to have secular alternatives for marriages, funerals and baptisms.
I attend both religious and secular weddings and funerals, and no one seems to be missing a beat.
As an agnostic, I've never thought, "we need an alternative." That probably has to do with the fact that marriages and funerals, even religious ones, are already highly personal, custom affairs.
> secular alternatives for [...] baptisms
An initiation ceremony for secularism? I find that bizarre.
Nothing of the sort. It's a secular christening, .i.e. a party for friends and relatives after the baby is born. I think some European Humanist groups call them naming ceremonies but I haven't been to anything that formal.
Yes, my parents (who are not religious) did that when my siblings and I were born – a "naming party". I don't think there was any actual ritual or any organization involved, though.
Ireland. The main humanist group [1] is in Dublin but there's a few smaller groups popping up, for example in Cork [2]. It's mostly an excuse for a chat over pints, but there's also some campaigning, e.g. for a secular education system.
check out the Less Wrong Solstice Celebration [0]. It tries to establish a pretty formal ritual with humanist/rational values. I have no personal experience, though.
Eh, I always want one of these secular communities to take off and flourish but they never seem to.
Possibly the principals of "think for yourself", "relative and perspective", "freedom of association" are antithetical to these kind tight knit groups. It's a shame in some ways and definitely more lonely. But, looking at the types of people some more radical religions attract, possibly lonely is the better option.
In the meantime, if we really need a community support group without the superstition and hoopla, I guess there is always the possibility of joining a street gang....
Communities are defined by what they can't do as much as by what they want to do. You can't make sacrifice for something bigger than yourself if the group doesn't demand anything at all. That is, what I believe, the primary problem with Catholicism in the west today - they don't enforce anything.
Military has a code. Street gangs have codes. There is something about a shared and enforced set of rules, however inflexible, that binds people together.
I disagree. The primary practical benefit of a common, strictly enforced set of rules is that it solves a great many of coordination problems (think prisoner's dilemma, tragedy of the commons). The problem isn't usually with a single greedy individual who wants to profit off the group; it's with the (apparently) natural human tendency to optimize for one's own benefit first. It's fine when one person does it, but when everyone does it, everyone loses. So a set of enforced common rules is a thing that keeps the group both from getting overrun by freeloaders and by self-destructing because of the usual human stupidity.
The US used to have that. You can still see the remnants if you look. Rotary International, Kiwanis International, the Independent Order of Foresters, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, the National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry - all those secular fraternal organizations still exist.
The core of these organizations was small business owners, a group which once ran their small towns, and no longer does. Some of those organizations existed to push back against big business, especially railroads, back when railroads had a monopoly on shipments to small towns. That function evaporated as trucks took over.
Rotary has a moral code, the Rotary Four-Way Test:
Is it the TRUTH?
Is it FAIR to all concerned?
Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?
Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?
That's a morality for business people, created by business people. It seems archaic today. It was once taken quite seriously.
I'd like to promote activities that are detrimental to some institutions and beneficial to others because I believe there are institutions that should be dismantled.
definitely nitpicking, but if those institutions should actually be dismantled, it might be beneficial to those wrapped up in the institution in the long run (while detrimental to the institution itself)
Because your average business today doesn't seem to give a shit about truth (see: almost everyone's marketing), fairness (especially to employees), goodwill (externality? what's an externality?) and benefiting all concerned (a third of the companies out there would probably not exist if their founders gave a rat's ass about their effect on society).
Call me cynical, but I get the feeling that morality and honor got sacrificed for competitiveness. Internet businesses are a special case here, they can afford to be fair to the employees and to care in a way, and yet there are still lots of them that are harmful to the society.
> … your average business today doesn't seem to give a shit about truth…, fairness…, goodwill … and benefiting all concerned (a third of the companies out there would probably not exist if their founders gave a rat's ass about their effect on society). Call me cynical, but I get the feeling that morality and honor got sacrificed for competitiveness. Internet businesses are a special case…
I thought you were talking about internet businesses!
Lodges, while at one time pillars of the local community, isn't the same thing. All the groups mentioned, are/were pretty exclusionary. I believe all of these organizations either currently are, or were historically strictly male. (Perhaps, the VFW was always open to women, but with the military requirement, it still has a strong a filter.) Furthermore, all of these organizations are for adults. While religious services and fellowship opportunities are for the whole family, you can't exactly bring a 3 year old to a Kiwanis club.
But you can bring a 6 year old to a Kiwanis club meeting so I wouldn't write it off so quickly. I was in the Kiwanis club in middle school and ran our high school chapter, it was definitely a good organization. I'm not sure it fights the article's definition of a secular group though, it honestly just felt like a charity that organized volunteering efforts pretty frequently. My purpose was 100% to pad my resume for college so I dropped it to the wayside pretty quickly, but in retrospect it was a pretty good organization.
I just ran into a Independent Order of Odd Fellow lodge a couple weeks ago, while visiting a new city (Decorah, IA). I thought: what the hell is that? A little googling revealed the underlying ethos of the organization to be highly attractive, but from what I can glean from the website the whole thing seems to have fallen into decay. Pity.
The 'pushback against big business' angle was news to me, though. Interesting perspective. Any references you could recommend to dig into that aspect?
Masons are the quintessential white boy money club. They have absolutely nothing to do with actual stone cutting, they have have an infatuation with having a long lived legacy, like the Pyramids.
The problem is organizations founded to oppose the Masons are religious just as well for the most part. The ones that are secular aren't that big and don't have the money and volunteers to help out.
Corporations have gotten secular like Microsoft and Google and Apple. They try to do things to give back to the community. But still some claim they are like the old railroad companies and in it for the money.
Like I said. Any sort of good principles, like religious tolerance, was a by product of wanting to put personal wealth as the center of power over religious affiliation. If you want to supplant the church, you don't oppose it directly, you route around it by making it a non-issue.
It is sort of what atheists do these days, route around the church with technology and science. Then get on technology and science issues the church may not approve of and then bring up social issues in the community.
Only thing is that sometimes churches get up on technology, science, and social issues like when Pope Francis supports evolution over creationism and then talks about working with atheists to fight climate change.
The Catholic Church has done well to distance itself from arguing against science as a refutation of God. It took them awhile, but they eventually learned from that Galileo kerfuffle. If something in the physical universe is proof God, it will someday be understood, thereby shaking the foundations of the belief system. They are slowly removing all links from the physical to spiritual to make for sounder system. Maybe they should use a proof assistant, ;)
Science only deals with the observable universe, it cannot deal with spiritual things that cannot be observed. The only thing close to evidence of God is neurotheology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurotheology
There is no such thing as a God-o-meter that can measure God. If God lives in Heaven and the only way to get there is to die and be judged good, how can one observe that? Once you go to Heaven you can't go back to Earth.
It might even end up being that God is an alien, the last of his race that was created early in the universe and has evolved for billions of years ahead of us and visited us during early stages of our development to help us along. Last seen over 2000 years ago and went home never to be heard of again.
Then again people argue that complex patterns in the universe and life itself is evidence of a creator, and skeptics claim that it came from random chance and not a creator. For every claim to evidence for a creator a skeptic will come up with an alternative to it.
I have to say that science does not have evidence against God nor does it have evidence for God. Atheists have taken over science to claim evolution proves God does not exist, etc. When Darwin was doing his theory he just left out God like Newton did with Gravity theory. So that it wouldn't be creationism and it would answer questions he had about creationism.
But yes the Catholic Church learns from its mistakes.
"The 'pushback against big business' angle was news to me, though. Interesting perspective. Any references you could recommend to dig into that aspect?"
This history of the Texas Railroad Commission may be helpful.[1]
The Texas Railroad Commission has a fascinating history. While it was started as a railroad regulator, for much of the 20th century the TRC set world oil prices and served as the model for OPEC.
My father-in-law is very involved with the local Rotary where we live. I've attended a few meetings and play in the annual golf tournament. I've recently thought that they need to adapt in order to attract younger people (I'm 40 and I feel young around them) or a new organization needs to start (see my other comment in this thread).
What I like about the group is they build real, face-to-face relationships with one another. Plus, they do a lot to raise money for the community (helping local HS groups, families in need, etc.).
Maybe some joint effort with rotaries and young professionals networks? There are quite a few YPNs, and while their interests are aligned, the YPNs I don't think really talk much in terms of codes of honor or social engineering (political, not hacking).
Rotary has the lesser known Rotaract program for 18-30s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotaract Here in the Cayman Islands the Rotaract club is pretty active. (My father is a Rotarian, but I haven't felt like joining Rotaract, yet.)
While somewhat on the side of the organizations listed, AFS Intercultural Programs[1] (formerly American Field Service -- volunteer ambulance personnel for WWI and WWII) does share some of the ideas as one might want from such an organization -- while focusing on (student) intercultural exchange as a the main method with which to increase what could be called positive globalization.
I liked the article, but this is like the cultural equivalent of Not Invented Here. Does it really matter that organized Christianity believes that a guy woke up from the dead? If you want a sense of community and the rituals that go along with it, then you could absolutely join a church of your choosing and just not believe in zombie messiahs.
The wife and I have been talking about this at great length as of late. We are not wired to believe in the supernatural, but I am having a hard time coming up with reasons why that would prevent us from finding a church to go to. It does limit which churches might be accepting of us, as I will not be handling snakes or washing anyone's feet. But as churches get more and more devoid of fundamentalism (a survival maneuver), they become more and more like the thing being talked about in the fine article. Maybe it'll all meet in the middle one day.
One popular meme you'll see is the pre-christian greco-romans didn't saw religion and belief as somewhat orthogonal. So you went to the ritual/party at the temple to hang out, show off your (purchased) social class within the temple, and do the ritual, show off to everyone else that you did the ritual, show off how well you memorized the allegorical tales, etc. Personal belief was not a terribly high priority. How much of this is "real" analysis vs Victorian era make believe is not entirely clear.
If you join a fundamentalist cult, then yes. Lots of modern churches are non-denominational and quite relaxed. In fact, they are surprisingly similar to the entity being described in the article.
I'm pretty sure a belief in the major parts of the bible are necessary, are they not? I mean, I thought the resurrection of christ was the whole point of anything describable as Christianity?
Generally churches have a minimum set of beliefs to be accepted as an official member. However, most churches welcome people who don't believe to be part of the community. There are limitations--non-believers usually can't be part of leadership (one of the reasons being the reason you gave)--but it's part of the Church's mission to bring to goodness of God, community included, to non-believers.
> I thought the resurrection of christ was the whole point of anything describable as Christianity?
Yes: "But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith." 1 Corinthians 15:12-14
I don't think it's very useful to quote the bible as a source of what Christians believe. So far as I can tell, only a tiny sliver of Christians believe the work in its entirety.
I've always assumed the reason is because only a tiny sliver of Christians have actually read the whole bible - so they probably have no idea what it says. A quick google search seems to confirm my assumption [1].
I've always assumed it's because if you read it it's filled with some awesome love/acceptance/transcendence stuff and some really terrible bronze age horrors. It would be too terrible to actually take it at face value.
The whole point of Christ dying was to forgive sins.
In the old testament they would sacrifice animals and use the blood of the animals to wash away sin. People would sacrifice animals at the temple with a Priest and collect the blood to wash away their sins.
Christ was God's sacrifice to end that practice Christ's blood was shed to wash away our sins. Christ was dead for three days to build a bypass from hell into heaven. Before that it wasn't possible to reach heaven. Christ rose from the dead and promises on judgement day when he returned to raise the dead and judge them.
Islam differs on Jesus they see him as a Prophet didn't die on the cross, and converted to Islam, and there is no trinity in their religion. Jesus is not the son of God or Messiah but a Prophet instead named Isa.
Some churches are converting to Chrislam where they rewrite the Bible to be compatible with Islam. One that Christ doesn't die and isn't resurrected.
You'll find that there are many different versions of Christianity, even Atheist Christians who follow Christ's teachings but don't believe he is a God.
Many Christians became non-practicing because they got busy with their jobs or they just stopped believing. A lot of atheists used to be Christian at one point, and just didn't believe in God any more.
In modern times people worship science and technology and don't see a need for God anymore.
When you visit a church you see elderly people, and the sick and disabled, the sort of people who need God. You don't see very many of the young adults who are healthy, if there are any young people they come in with their parents.
> When you visit a (fundamental) church you see elderly people, and the sick and disabled, the sort of people who need God. You don't see very many of the young adults who are healthy, if there are any young people they come in with their parents.
An observation of the fundamental church at large reflects your statement. I would delimit that statement though to say that there are pockets of thriving 'resistance', so to speak. I happen to belong to a fundamental church that bucks the trend of an ageing population.
I really cannot visit every single church in the USA.
The ones I do visit they are trying to figure out how to get young people involved with them. The Catholic church for example has a shortage of priests and they need more young priests and young volunteers. They need more young people to attend church and donate money as well.
It may be different in where you live because your church has a connection with young people. But near me in the St. Louis MO area, young people are dropping out of church to become non-practicing or atheists.
There are lots of good sibling comments to this one, but I want to get one more point in before we all move on.
Spending an hour yielding to something larger than yourself is probably good for the soul and definitely good for the ego. You can walk into almost any church, and there you will find a quiet space where you can meditate/pray. You can find a sort of comfort in its 2000 year history, and in the myths/rituals of our past and the people who believe in them. If you are made to feel uncomfortable, then try another one or stop going altogether, there are literally zero negative consequences to it.
The point of this is that you don't have to swear an oath to little baby jesus to get a benefit from a modernized church. You can make of it what you want, they won't mind in the least.
At my previous neighborhood mainstream church (Methodist) which I attended for a while, many attendees did not really believe in most of what was preached. For them it was mostly a social gathering, an opportunity to sing enthusiastically together (and how often do you get to do that today?), and a lot of social events (church picnics etc). As a social group it worked very well. People really would help each other out. The subject of religion rarely came up in any of these social events, and you could certainly get by without having any real belief or even much knowledge of traditional Christianity.
I've been trying to think why it worked while secular communities do not, since it was in a sense a secular community. All I can think of is that most members had been there all their lives, it was what they grew into, and it was welcoming to outsiders.
If you can handle the cognitive dissonance of listening to sermons every week that you do not really believe, I think it can be a plausible way of getting that kind of social engagement.
Rituals, let's just call them recurrent events, are a great way to bring people together. When people get together lots of good things can happen. However it has to be tied to something that people care about, not just some made-up gathering without purpose. The ancient greek agora comes to mind.
He has actually started his own version of what the article talks about. It's called The School of Life. People get together in a church-like setting, listen to sermons and sing. It's quite interesting and I'd definitely go if they had one in the Bay Area.
I think it provides a really interesting answer to the problem: "If we don't have God to talk about, then what the hello are we doing here?". Their answer is to focus on how to live better lives and they tackle the problem in a way that's very smart and contemporary.
The first half of the article matches my experience.
I'm a software developer living in the (American) South. We just had our fourth child. A few days later my wife had some complications. We went to the hospital, taking the newborn with us. The first week, pre-hospital, I was averaging four hour of sleep a night, but then in the hospital that went down to two hours of sleep in two days. (Wife was not able to hold the newborn, we weren't in the maternity area, I needed to chase down absent doctors, etc).
Since we've been back from the hospital there's been a non-stop train of people from our church bringing food (three different people one day), teenagers to watch the older kids so we can sleep in the day, and sometimes grandmothers came to hold the new one too. The lawn has been mowed by somebody who just showed up and started mowing.
This wasn't even organized - someone just sent out an email saying we needed help, and people we knew started showing up left and right.
I, personally, don't have a hole in my life where religion should be.
I know people that do, many of them come from religious backgrounds and seek something to replace the religious structure that used to be in their lives.
For the most part, my personal experience matches yours, but this is a pretty myopic way of looking at the article. I have great friends that are wonderful and amazingly supportive, but there is something just...different about the church community I grew up in.
Take the example of the truly unfortunate disaster, for example as another commenter mentioned, complications with the birth of a 3rd or 4th child. A "good" church community (that seems like a weird phrase, but go with me for a second) would involve people that you might only have passed in the hallway bringing you food, helping out with your other kids, or other chores that you simply don't have the time or energy to do during your emergency state.
Unless you are truly a social juggernaut with a lot of friends that really care about you that much, you're probably going to end up either suffering substantially on your own trying to keep things together, or your close friends are going to resent you for leaning on them so heavily (particularly if the hypothetical emergency at hand is long lasting).
That was waaay more than I meant to write, but I was honestly having the same thought as you and trying to think through it. I think one of the important things this post is saying is missing is more about a community of support with a broader surface area for support beyond just those closest to you.
I can see that might be appealing to some, but it still doesn't really appeal to me. I'm not sure I'd want a wider community of people I hardly know to rally around me like that.
Perhaps I just haven't been in a bad enough situation, perhaps I do trust my friends and family that much, perhaps I'm just more insular than that. I don't know.
My trans friend recently moved to stay with me in California. Her experiences, and the experiences of others, have helped me realise that gender is really important to many people—and I just don’t have a slot for it in my personality.
Same goes for religion—my folks tried to teach me about their religious background from a young age, but I never had the ability to believe in it.
I just try to respect people, and shut my opinion-hole and acknowledge when I just don’t get it.
Oh I'm absolutely not saying it's wrong for other people to do this or want to do it, it just shouldn't be assumed that everyone is looking for something like that.
How would you even know if you did? What would you have to see or experience about reality or yourself to make you change your mind? How can you know that you haven't already experienced such a thing and just didn't recognize it?
To me that's kind of like saying "how would you know if you're addicted to nicotine if you never tried smoking? You could be feeling the pull of the addiction already and not even know it!"
I know that's an extreme example, and quite negative, so may not map fully to what we'e talking aabout. It just sorta popped in there.
The world has a secular community revolution, and HN is a exemplar! HN has shared values, ideology, taboos, status, law-givers and exiles. Don't know if it's an improvement over what came before, but IMHO communities like HN are the secular community revolution.
Houston Oasis is a secular community in Houston that I attend. It seems to be addressing all the points that the author of this article brought up, with perhaps exception to "Ritualize." It has a diverse group of people that attend and seems to gradually be gaining attendance. It is extremely refreshing to be with such a large group of people that have a human and reason based focus. I hope more people will get the opportunity to be a part of something like this.
Community living is difficult. If one looks at historical and contemporary mendicant communities in the Catholic West (e.g. Franciscans, Dominicans, Missionaries of the Poor, etc.), it is not uncommon for their members to both praise community life as a great blessing while simultaneously explaining it and experiencing it as a hard and unyielding cross in their daily lives (cf. Luke 9:23).
However, from a Catholic religious perspective, crosses are all the more bearable as one learns to experience them as a means of personal sanctification (closer personal union with Christ crucified) and an opportunity to practice and grow in virtue – "dying to self" more and more so that joyful generosity truly becomes the rule of life. In this way, community-life-as-a-cross becomes a means for both individual and community to give glory to God and work toward the salvation of souls.
Can secular motives truly substitute for that transcendent motive and outlook? I certainly think it's an interesting question.
Do the things you enjoy with people you enjoy and you will never be lonely or bored. Your current group of friends don't share your interests? You're going to lose them eventually anyway. Might as well start making new ones now.
I don't think it's necessary to emulate religion/church to achieve the desired benefits. People in modern times can self-organize around all sorts of communities. From independent music "scenes", to Hello Kitty conventions, to Halo, there are plenty of ad hoc communities out there that support their members in many of the ways that matter.
The Francs Maçons in France is such an organization. It has all the described properties.
It is unfortunately a bit abused by people using the community for career promotion or commercial advantages due to the solidarity among people belonging to this community. Religious comunities display the same perversion.
The reading of the OP's article made it clear to me that our occidental societies are apparently in a strong cultural evolution. I share the conclusion of the author.
Irrationality, dogmas and beliefs have still too much legitimate space in our society. It is a disease when it is used to justify inhuman actions.
We already have plenty of secular communities.
Hacker News, sports fans, standup comedians, book clubs, students in college, nerdfighters, groups organizing around hobbies and interests, groups of friends.
Community forms not because religion has something sepcial about it, but because people tend to form communities around any subject they are interested in.
Just because religion used to be there, doesn't mean we have to replace it. We do not need something big and ritualized.
You can't start with an idea to create a community and then invent a set of values that fits everybody, at best nobody will care enough to participate in it. It works in the reverse order.
Whenever there's something worth believing in and organizing around - peoole do that naturally. So instead, we will end up with a lot of small "tribes", communities formed around shared interests, friendships, etc. You can look at reddit to see how process naturally works, and what works well.
I've always felt that calling online forums "communities" was wishful thinking on the part of forum participants looking for a sense of belonging. Hacker News and nerdfighters, to use examples you posted, never felt like communities to me, just people coming together to talk about things they all liked, organizing around hobbies and interests. A group of friends does not make a community.
I think physical proximity is an absolute requirement for a community. Students in college inevitably form communities. They come together to help each other. Online forums like reddit more often drive people apart than join people together.
> physical proximity is an absolute requirement for a community
Quite possibly, but what happens when you move? Labour mobility is an inescapable part of the modern world, as is the desire for young people to move to the "big city".
This is particularly bad for inter-generationality. Perhaps that will improve once the long term diversity acceptance values shift has completed.
That's an interesting perspective, but I'm not sure how well such ad-hoc communities can deal with important life events.
For example, if a loved one dies, will your book club friends help you organize the funeral (or even attend)? If you can't rely on them in cases like that, it's not really the kind of community the OP is talking about.
You should probably read the article. The author is talking about organisations that entail "inter-generational communities who interact regularly and who share values and worldviews; networks of mutually supportive long-term relationships; opportunities for fellowship and social bonding; and ritual commemorations of life’s most meaningful events".
As someone who is deeply involved in a church I feel your comment illustrates the problem. You appear to think you have a greater depth of relationship/community than you do.
I have noticed that the set of values is very much the binding force that holds, at least the church community that I am part of, together. I have very different interests with the people I have most to do with, but we live by similar moral codes. It's hard to describe but very different to what you are discussing. And the level of involvement is much higher than normal relationships.
Tightly woven communities are absent from modern lives as there has been a big push for individualism and materialism.
Tightly woven communities are absent from modern lives as there has been a big push for individualism and materialism.
True, though tightly woven communities have many implicit rules, sometimes explicit, that can govern anything from sexuality to what you wear and where you live. Individualism allows a broader definition of who you are and what you can align with at the cost of a tighter support network.
I feel that the increase in acceptance and support of people with different gender identities and sexuality is a direct result of individualism. The same applies to feminism. Even people who would ordinarily feign a religious belief because flipping the bird at the pastor and screaming I'm an atheist would not only affect their relationship with that person, but their whole community. They'd be an outcast, just as the feminist would lose the support of those who had accepted their assigned gender roles and rules.
Humanity has become more liquid but lacks a deep connection to their neighbor as a result. Everything has a positive and negative side.
Personally, this really resonates with me. Growing up Catholic (but later abandoning it), I find that the sense of community you get out church is pretty much unrivaled by anything else. I do miss that. The relationships you have with friends, family, coworkers, people who you share a hobby with, etc. is just different.
Also, growing up in a religious environment, you are used to thinking about things higher than yourself such as the meaning of life and morality. I find these questions to still be relevant, and yet, there aren't a lot of spaces outsides religion to explore these topics in a serious way. Philosophy meetups in a bar just don't quite do it for me.
Personally, I think that we've given up a lot more that we think by giving up religion.
I think The School of Life does a good job of tackling this problem. They're not religious, but they've created a community of people who want to actively question and improve how they live in a deeper way than most regular, secular people do.
> Also, growing up in a religious environment, you are used to thinking about things higher than yourself such as the meaning of life and morality. I find these questions to still be relevant, and yet, there aren't a lot of spaces outsides religion to explore these topics in a serious way.
This is extremely arguable. Some religious environments promote the exact opposite: proxying of morality and any question about the meaning of life so that you don't have to think about it.
Agreed. Just talking about my own personal experience.
That being said, religious environments that impose these world views on people have a much higher success rate at having people think about these things than they would in almost any other way (even if they accomplish this by making people rebel against religion). They're certainly not going to get that from the media and pop culture.
It's interesting that the most philosophically profound individuals I've met (again, personal experience) are mostly people who were religious and then abandoned their fate. I think that has to do with the combination of wanting to rebel against the imposition of those beliefs with trying to somehow find something to substitute it.
This is extremely unlikely under the current political system (capitalism). Communities take care of their members, which reduces their dependence on the economy, which slows economic growth, which is one of the core goals of capitalism.
Funny to find one of the most systemically insightful comments at the very bottom of the pile. It makes a nice meta-point about communities (that has been mentioned before), which is that they have a strong need to be ideologically homogenous.
In the same vein, look at how the article's second recommendation, "Appeal to all kinds of people", which is described as a "necessary aspiration", is utterly unadorned with empirical proof. We can assume that diversity is rather just a strong part of the value set of the researcher's own community.
Secular Communities don't really need a revolution. There are strong and well founded communities all around the world, and many in the states. They are bonded over like interests, and often strengthened by a total lack of interest in recruiting those who aren't actively seeking them.
In the american north west, I have met many secular art-festival goers, academics/research scientists, swingers, like-sports fans, and community living persons who have total support from their communities. The groups that I've seen most supportive are very inviting, but don't actually recruit at all, nor advertise themselves much.
I have a prediction (made a while back) that YC will fund a non-profit in this space. It will be an amalgam of a christian church and a lodge/service organization like Rotary. It will have a focus on building relationships and serving the community, have some sort of program for children, maybe time for meditation and short, TED-like teaching.
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[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 226 ms ] threadBut despite there being UU churches in every major city I've lived in, I haven't been back in a serious way since high school. For me at least, part of the 'implementation' thats missing is the lack of pull to the weekly service. I'd love the community, but don't feel particularly drawn to the actual meat of it. Kinda like wanting to join a soccer team without liking soccer too much.
Community needs some kind of core that is valuable to people in order for a community to form around it and I'm not sure those secular weekly services have the same kind of broadly appealing gravitas that traditional religion provides. As well as there not being enough family-driven guilt to pull early-twenties people back to church during those times when spirituality is less interesting compared to other things in life.
I really liked the Marianist and Jesuit idea that you should be able to challenge your religion so much that you have to come to logically understand and accept it; They are both great at Logical argument and reduction, especially about faith.
I think this type of introspection helped me quite a bit as an engineer even if it didn't work in making me a faithful person.
They're nice enough people, I suppose--I've been meaning to get out to a service myself--, but they do seem to be a little on the urbane mid/upper class side of things.
Sunday Assembly in London looks interesting, I just might join. Everyone needs a prophet.
Nah.
A set of shared values is nice until it fails to change in response to changes in the values of individuals. For example, the Catholic Church has been slow to accept the rights of gender and sexual minorities, even as many individual Catholics become more accepting of these rights. The result is a split in the church, between those who want an updated set of values and those who prefer the old set.
Individuals may also dislike some of rituals associated with religions, perhaps because they take time or have some other cost that the individual doesn't want to pay (fasting, reduction of pleasure, etc.).
A secular community that adopts a shared set of values and rituals may only take on some of the problems leading to less religiosity, rather than solving them.
Or maybe 'flexibility' is the wrong word, since the groups I mention are activity-specific, and one's interest in the activity ebbs and flows, whereas one's interest in fellowship with other people in the quest for some kind of human-level goodwill would presumably be constant.
On the same topic, but contrary to what you are saying, organized secularism with rituals, values, expectations may only draw out this natural propensity towards "religion" in people even further.
Touching on your point further, Protestant churches actually fare pretty well with some of these cultural issues that force change. If someone disagrees about gay marriage or another controversial topic, they just start a new church and half the congregation goes there. It makes Protestant churches at the same time possibly more extreme but also much more varied in their belief systems and allows for religion to evolve. (This is not an endorsement of Protestantism, just an acknowledgement).
I dislike the notion of organized secularism because it creates an us vs them attitude. You have churches and then secular churches when the real solution (whatever it may be) should be a less dogmatic form of outreach that grabs at people from all walks of life and engages them. That's how people change, that's how they get better.
Sociologically, people mostly become less religious when they feel that they control their own fate, and feel no need to ask for divine intervention. Hence why societies grow less religious as they grow rich and egalitarian, while highly unequal and/or poor societies have a tendency towards greater levels of religiosity.
[1] http://www.epjournal.net/articles/the-chronic-dependence-of-...
[2] http://edge.org/3rd_culture/paul07/paul07_index.html
Nevertheless, it is not actually necessary to go to extremes (see fallacy of excluded middle). The outside is closer to where you are now, than you might imagine.
Specifically to the extreme, during that time I re-evaluated possible philosophic systems. I am an absolutist. I think there is Truth. Without a god, I needed to see if there was any system that provided a similar world view. Existential nihilism does. It says that the only fact we have is that nothing fundamentally matters (I'm treating existential nihilism apart from the extreme skeptics that deny the existence of things). The universe will die, or collapse and re-expand. Regardless to the exact details, every invention and power of man amounts to nothing. Therefore since every man is within the group man, individual acts amount to nothing. I've not seen a more honest system than this. I want an honest system
Most other systems are predicated on a quasi-Christian-like system. They believe that people are somehow different than everything else in the universe. That they have intrinsic meaning while nothing else does. Or they go to the other extreme that makes everything equally special, and as we're taught in the movie The Incredibles, nothing is special then. As we've seen in this thread, the view might boil down to "it makes me feel good to help people".
The problem that I have with such systems is that they ultimately anchor to a feeling or some other arbitrary truth. Upon that rock an edifice is made from which various dogmas are shouted. If I were to throw away one system of belief with that behavior, why would I adopt another?
As a result, I find that there are only two systems that could be true given what humanity knows: some form of theism or nihilism. I'm convinced of the former, specifically Jesus as the Christ, but I find no honest system possible other than nihilism if my feeling and beliefs were some how shown to be false.
You seem comfortable with the arbitrariness of your faith now. So why not any other? A hypothetical true-believer in the Flying Spaghetti Monster would (by most reasonable criteria) be moving in the right direction if he/she were to become a Christian instead. Even though both faiths may be unanchored, there are wider considerations too.
My reason is entirely based on experience. I have not felt the spirit of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, nor his noodlely appendage. I have felt the Spirit. This makes it not arbitrary. It's rooted in God. It's rooted in the absolute.
That's why if I ever stopped believing in the Trinity, I would be a nihilist. It's a good starting point. It admits that everything is arbitrary. As such, I think we could build on it to a Utilitarian system. We all agree that core set of values is arbitrary, but that it's build on avoiding pain. Avoiding pain is an arbitrary metric, but well, the majority doesn't want to be kicked, so let's agree that we shouldn't do that to each other.
You seem to apply two standards. To yourself, your personal experience is sufficient. Yet from others, a more rigorous justification is expected.
By analogy: if I were Japanese, I would definitely prefer Buddhism over Shinto. Yet, I am not Japanese, which rather undermines my argument. Under such hypothetical circumstances my perspective would surely be other than it actually is now.
The reason I pursue this point is that, historically, people with faith have argued unreasonably that the only viable alternative to their unique faith is [name_a_specific_extreme_and_scary_philosophical_position_here]. To be fair, if you are doing this at all, you are doing so only subtly.
In particular, the factual claims about Christ, his life, his death, his resurrection are central to any evangelical Christian's faith. Disprove them and it's game over for Christianity. Paul says as much in his letter to the early church in Corinth [0]. Beyond factual claims about Christ, there are many other sections of the Bible which would become fatal to the central Christian message were they proven false. (The flood, the plagues in Egypt, the Hebrew Exodus from Egypt, the prophecies in Ezekiel, Daniel, Isaiah, etc.)[1].
Start with any one of them and offer a credible disproof and you can go down in the history books as the person responsible for dismantling the arbitrary Christian faith.
[0]: https://www.bible.com/bible/59/1co.15:14-19
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_and_messianic_prophecy#V...
Anyway, let's try starting at one of the most obvious. I understand the Bible says the world was created in 7 days. Has that been credibly disproven yet?
[1]: http://lesswrong.com/lw/93l/the_value_and_danger_of_ritual/ [2]: http://lesswrong.com/lw/9aw/designing_ritual/ [3]: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2000477/SolsticeEve_2012...
"it was good for my dear old daddy / and my dear old mommy too...i don't need nothing new"
I love this question, because its humble, searching, sincere. Why does God want our praise? He, or any deity, is far far above it. Why go through all this trouble creating this elaborate mess just to talk to a bunch of specks of protein. None of it, none of Christianity made sense to me. The purpose behind it all. Its just stupid.
But there it was in Ephesians 2:7, God's reason. I was relieved because it is a selfish reason. I couldn't stand the idea that God is just love love love... it was just giving and getting nothing in return. And it didn't reflect the Jehova of the Old Testament. But Ephesians says he did it for the glory. Who's going to be the witness of that? What peer-group or other beings would God point to and say "There I did it, I'm amazing."? I have no clue. However, this is so refreshing to me, because it shows that God is possessive and jealous, and very much like us, who were "made in his image".
But, I have to agree with agnostics... humans are far from the center of the universe. God is. Its his game. His strange, fearsome, terrible, wonderful work.
To break it down: God is completely pure (without sin). To be with God (which is what we would call 'salvation') we would also need to be without sin. Obviously, no human is without sin - meaning we could never be with God. Prior to Jesus, we were required to sacrifice things in order to atone for our sins and get right with God. Jesus provided an eternal, perfect sacrifice to pay for everyone's sins. It isn't so much that we need to worship Him, more that we need to accept the sacrifice He has already provided - if we reject the sacrifice, the full penance for all our actions is on us, and we can never be with God.
Objection: Not obvious in the slightest.
Sarcasm aside, though, it's such a wonderful little rhetorical trick to introduce an otherwise indefensible point with the prefix that it is "Obvious" that to let it go unmentioned would be criminal.
No, no, please. Castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful guys.
No thanks. This is the first thing I started to dislike about being raised Catholic, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.
Also see sports as ritual, fellowship with the boys coming over and grill some brats and burgers while consuming mind altering substances while watching a ritual. Burnt Offering. Stereotypical non-sports party is almost as ritualistic.
As an agnostic, I've never thought, "we need an alternative." That probably has to do with the fact that marriages and funerals, even religious ones, are already highly personal, custom affairs.
> secular alternatives for [...] baptisms
An initiation ceremony for secularism? I find that bizarre.
Nothing of the sort. It's a secular christening, .i.e. a party for friends and relatives after the baby is born. I think some European Humanist groups call them naming ceremonies but I haven't been to anything that formal.
[1] http://www.humanism.ie [2] http://corkhumanists.weebly.com/
[0] http://lesswrong.com/lw/8x5/ritual_report_nyc_less_wrong_sol...
Possibly the principals of "think for yourself", "relative and perspective", "freedom of association" are antithetical to these kind tight knit groups. It's a shame in some ways and definitely more lonely. But, looking at the types of people some more radical religions attract, possibly lonely is the better option.
In the meantime, if we really need a community support group without the superstition and hoopla, I guess there is always the possibility of joining a street gang....
Military has a code. Street gangs have codes. There is something about a shared and enforced set of rules, however inflexible, that binds people together.
And the answer is - no, it is not.
The core of these organizations was small business owners, a group which once ran their small towns, and no longer does. Some of those organizations existed to push back against big business, especially railroads, back when railroads had a monopoly on shipments to small towns. That function evaporated as trucks took over.
Rotary has a moral code, the Rotary Four-Way Test:
That's a morality for business people, created by business people. It seems archaic today. It was once taken quite seriously.I'd like to promote activities that are detrimental to some institutions and beneficial to others because I believe there are institutions that should be dismantled.
Call me cynical, but I get the feeling that morality and honor got sacrificed for competitiveness. Internet businesses are a special case here, they can afford to be fair to the employees and to care in a way, and yet there are still lots of them that are harmful to the society.
I thought you were talking about internet businesses!
You need an thing for all ages.
The 'pushback against big business' angle was news to me, though. Interesting perspective. Any references you could recommend to dig into that aspect?
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2009/09/14/masons-and...
The problem is organizations founded to oppose the Masons are religious just as well for the most part. The ones that are secular aren't that big and don't have the money and volunteers to help out.
Corporations have gotten secular like Microsoft and Google and Apple. They try to do things to give back to the community. But still some claim they are like the old railroad companies and in it for the money.
Like I said. Any sort of good principles, like religious tolerance, was a by product of wanting to put personal wealth as the center of power over religious affiliation. If you want to supplant the church, you don't oppose it directly, you route around it by making it a non-issue.
Only thing is that sometimes churches get up on technology, science, and social issues like when Pope Francis supports evolution over creationism and then talks about working with atheists to fight climate change.
Science only deals with the observable universe, it cannot deal with spiritual things that cannot be observed. The only thing close to evidence of God is neurotheology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurotheology
There is no such thing as a God-o-meter that can measure God. If God lives in Heaven and the only way to get there is to die and be judged good, how can one observe that? Once you go to Heaven you can't go back to Earth.
It might even end up being that God is an alien, the last of his race that was created early in the universe and has evolved for billions of years ahead of us and visited us during early stages of our development to help us along. Last seen over 2000 years ago and went home never to be heard of again.
Then again people argue that complex patterns in the universe and life itself is evidence of a creator, and skeptics claim that it came from random chance and not a creator. For every claim to evidence for a creator a skeptic will come up with an alternative to it.
I have to say that science does not have evidence against God nor does it have evidence for God. Atheists have taken over science to claim evolution proves God does not exist, etc. When Darwin was doing his theory he just left out God like Newton did with Gravity theory. So that it wouldn't be creationism and it would answer questions he had about creationism.
But yes the Catholic Church learns from its mistakes.
This history of the Texas Railroad Commission may be helpful.[1]
[1] https://www.tsl.texas.gov/exhibits/railroad/fight/page2.html
What I like about the group is they build real, face-to-face relationships with one another. Plus, they do a lot to raise money for the community (helping local HS groups, families in need, etc.).
http://www.ioof.org/ - "Do you believe in a supreme being, the creator and preserver of the universe?"
http://www.ioof.org/IOOF/FAQ.aspx - "Founded on the inspired word of God as revealed to man in the Holy Bible."
[1] http://www.afs.org/
The wife and I have been talking about this at great length as of late. We are not wired to believe in the supernatural, but I am having a hard time coming up with reasons why that would prevent us from finding a church to go to. It does limit which churches might be accepting of us, as I will not be handling snakes or washing anyone's feet. But as churches get more and more devoid of fundamentalism (a survival maneuver), they become more and more like the thing being talked about in the fine article. Maybe it'll all meet in the middle one day.
One popular meme you'll see is the pre-christian greco-romans didn't saw religion and belief as somewhat orthogonal. So you went to the ritual/party at the temple to hang out, show off your (purchased) social class within the temple, and do the ritual, show off to everyone else that you did the ritual, show off how well you memorized the allegorical tales, etc. Personal belief was not a terribly high priority. How much of this is "real" analysis vs Victorian era make believe is not entirely clear.
The other people in your church who do believe in zombie messiahs might all get a bit hacked off when they find out though.
Without that, well is that 'church' ?
Yes: "But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith." 1 Corinthians 15:12-14
[1] http://www.christianity.com/1270946/
In the old testament they would sacrifice animals and use the blood of the animals to wash away sin. People would sacrifice animals at the temple with a Priest and collect the blood to wash away their sins.
Christ was God's sacrifice to end that practice Christ's blood was shed to wash away our sins. Christ was dead for three days to build a bypass from hell into heaven. Before that it wasn't possible to reach heaven. Christ rose from the dead and promises on judgement day when he returned to raise the dead and judge them.
Islam differs on Jesus they see him as a Prophet didn't die on the cross, and converted to Islam, and there is no trinity in their religion. Jesus is not the son of God or Messiah but a Prophet instead named Isa.
Some churches are converting to Chrislam where they rewrite the Bible to be compatible with Islam. One that Christ doesn't die and isn't resurrected.
You'll find that there are many different versions of Christianity, even Atheist Christians who follow Christ's teachings but don't believe he is a God.
Many Christians became non-practicing because they got busy with their jobs or they just stopped believing. A lot of atheists used to be Christian at one point, and just didn't believe in God any more.
In modern times people worship science and technology and don't see a need for God anymore.
When you visit a church you see elderly people, and the sick and disabled, the sort of people who need God. You don't see very many of the young adults who are healthy, if there are any young people they come in with their parents.
An observation of the fundamental church at large reflects your statement. I would delimit that statement though to say that there are pockets of thriving 'resistance', so to speak. I happen to belong to a fundamental church that bucks the trend of an ageing population.
The ones I do visit they are trying to figure out how to get young people involved with them. The Catholic church for example has a shortage of priests and they need more young priests and young volunteers. They need more young people to attend church and donate money as well.
It may be different in where you live because your church has a connection with young people. But near me in the St. Louis MO area, young people are dropping out of church to become non-practicing or atheists.
Spending an hour yielding to something larger than yourself is probably good for the soul and definitely good for the ego. You can walk into almost any church, and there you will find a quiet space where you can meditate/pray. You can find a sort of comfort in its 2000 year history, and in the myths/rituals of our past and the people who believe in them. If you are made to feel uncomfortable, then try another one or stop going altogether, there are literally zero negative consequences to it.
The point of this is that you don't have to swear an oath to little baby jesus to get a benefit from a modernized church. You can make of it what you want, they won't mind in the least.
I mean, other than the whole universe I suppose, but I find the night sky in a remote location gives me the headspace I need to appreciate that.
At my previous neighborhood mainstream church (Methodist) which I attended for a while, many attendees did not really believe in most of what was preached. For them it was mostly a social gathering, an opportunity to sing enthusiastically together (and how often do you get to do that today?), and a lot of social events (church picnics etc). As a social group it worked very well. People really would help each other out. The subject of religion rarely came up in any of these social events, and you could certainly get by without having any real belief or even much knowledge of traditional Christianity.
I've been trying to think why it worked while secular communities do not, since it was in a sense a secular community. All I can think of is that most members had been there all their lives, it was what they grew into, and it was welcoming to outsiders.
If you can handle the cognitive dissonance of listening to sermons every week that you do not really believe, I think it can be a plausible way of getting that kind of social engagement.
Rituals, let's just call them recurrent events, are a great way to bring people together. When people get together lots of good things can happen. However it has to be tied to something that people care about, not just some made-up gathering without purpose. The ancient greek agora comes to mind.
I think it provides a really interesting answer to the problem: "If we don't have God to talk about, then what the hello are we doing here?". Their answer is to focus on how to live better lives and they tackle the problem in a way that's very smart and contemporary.
http://www.theschooloflife.com/london/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFnNgTSkHPM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46YQ09Q3FNk
I'm a software developer living in the (American) South. We just had our fourth child. A few days later my wife had some complications. We went to the hospital, taking the newborn with us. The first week, pre-hospital, I was averaging four hour of sleep a night, but then in the hospital that went down to two hours of sleep in two days. (Wife was not able to hold the newborn, we weren't in the maternity area, I needed to chase down absent doctors, etc).
Since we've been back from the hospital there's been a non-stop train of people from our church bringing food (three different people one day), teenagers to watch the older kids so we can sleep in the day, and sometimes grandmothers came to hold the new one too. The lawn has been mowed by somebody who just showed up and started mowing.
This wasn't even organized - someone just sent out an email saying we needed help, and people we knew started showing up left and right.
I know people that do, many of them come from religious backgrounds and seek something to replace the religious structure that used to be in their lives.
But I .... just don't.
Take the example of the truly unfortunate disaster, for example as another commenter mentioned, complications with the birth of a 3rd or 4th child. A "good" church community (that seems like a weird phrase, but go with me for a second) would involve people that you might only have passed in the hallway bringing you food, helping out with your other kids, or other chores that you simply don't have the time or energy to do during your emergency state.
Unless you are truly a social juggernaut with a lot of friends that really care about you that much, you're probably going to end up either suffering substantially on your own trying to keep things together, or your close friends are going to resent you for leaning on them so heavily (particularly if the hypothetical emergency at hand is long lasting).
That was waaay more than I meant to write, but I was honestly having the same thought as you and trying to think through it. I think one of the important things this post is saying is missing is more about a community of support with a broader surface area for support beyond just those closest to you.
Perhaps I just haven't been in a bad enough situation, perhaps I do trust my friends and family that much, perhaps I'm just more insular than that. I don't know.
My trans friend recently moved to stay with me in California. Her experiences, and the experiences of others, have helped me realise that gender is really important to many people—and I just don’t have a slot for it in my personality.
Same goes for religion—my folks tried to teach me about their religious background from a young age, but I never had the ability to believe in it.
I just try to respect people, and shut my opinion-hole and acknowledge when I just don’t get it.
I know that's an extreme example, and quite negative, so may not map fully to what we'e talking aabout. It just sorta popped in there.
However, from a Catholic religious perspective, crosses are all the more bearable as one learns to experience them as a means of personal sanctification (closer personal union with Christ crucified) and an opportunity to practice and grow in virtue – "dying to self" more and more so that joyful generosity truly becomes the rule of life. In this way, community-life-as-a-cross becomes a means for both individual and community to give glory to God and work toward the salvation of souls.
Can secular motives truly substitute for that transcendent motive and outlook? I certainly think it's an interesting question.
It is unfortunately a bit abused by people using the community for career promotion or commercial advantages due to the solidarity among people belonging to this community. Religious comunities display the same perversion.
The reading of the OP's article made it clear to me that our occidental societies are apparently in a strong cultural evolution. I share the conclusion of the author.
Irrationality, dogmas and beliefs have still too much legitimate space in our society. It is a disease when it is used to justify inhuman actions.
Community forms not because religion has something sepcial about it, but because people tend to form communities around any subject they are interested in.
Just because religion used to be there, doesn't mean we have to replace it. We do not need something big and ritualized.
You can't start with an idea to create a community and then invent a set of values that fits everybody, at best nobody will care enough to participate in it. It works in the reverse order.
Whenever there's something worth believing in and organizing around - peoole do that naturally. So instead, we will end up with a lot of small "tribes", communities formed around shared interests, friendships, etc. You can look at reddit to see how process naturally works, and what works well.
I think physical proximity is an absolute requirement for a community. Students in college inevitably form communities. They come together to help each other. Online forums like reddit more often drive people apart than join people together.
Quite possibly, but what happens when you move? Labour mobility is an inescapable part of the modern world, as is the desire for young people to move to the "big city".
This is particularly bad for inter-generationality. Perhaps that will improve once the long term diversity acceptance values shift has completed.
For example, if a loved one dies, will your book club friends help you organize the funeral (or even attend)? If you can't rely on them in cases like that, it's not really the kind of community the OP is talking about.
I have noticed that the set of values is very much the binding force that holds, at least the church community that I am part of, together. I have very different interests with the people I have most to do with, but we live by similar moral codes. It's hard to describe but very different to what you are discussing. And the level of involvement is much higher than normal relationships.
Tightly woven communities are absent from modern lives as there has been a big push for individualism and materialism.
True, though tightly woven communities have many implicit rules, sometimes explicit, that can govern anything from sexuality to what you wear and where you live. Individualism allows a broader definition of who you are and what you can align with at the cost of a tighter support network.
I feel that the increase in acceptance and support of people with different gender identities and sexuality is a direct result of individualism. The same applies to feminism. Even people who would ordinarily feign a religious belief because flipping the bird at the pastor and screaming I'm an atheist would not only affect their relationship with that person, but their whole community. They'd be an outcast, just as the feminist would lose the support of those who had accepted their assigned gender roles and rules.
Humanity has become more liquid but lacks a deep connection to their neighbor as a result. Everything has a positive and negative side.
Also, growing up in a religious environment, you are used to thinking about things higher than yourself such as the meaning of life and morality. I find these questions to still be relevant, and yet, there aren't a lot of spaces outsides religion to explore these topics in a serious way. Philosophy meetups in a bar just don't quite do it for me.
Personally, I think that we've given up a lot more that we think by giving up religion.
I think The School of Life does a good job of tackling this problem. They're not religious, but they've created a community of people who want to actively question and improve how they live in a deeper way than most regular, secular people do.
This is extremely arguable. Some religious environments promote the exact opposite: proxying of morality and any question about the meaning of life so that you don't have to think about it.
That being said, religious environments that impose these world views on people have a much higher success rate at having people think about these things than they would in almost any other way (even if they accomplish this by making people rebel against religion). They're certainly not going to get that from the media and pop culture.
It's interesting that the most philosophically profound individuals I've met (again, personal experience) are mostly people who were religious and then abandoned their fate. I think that has to do with the combination of wanting to rebel against the imposition of those beliefs with trying to somehow find something to substitute it.
In the same vein, look at how the article's second recommendation, "Appeal to all kinds of people", which is described as a "necessary aspiration", is utterly unadorned with empirical proof. We can assume that diversity is rather just a strong part of the value set of the researcher's own community.
In the american north west, I have met many secular art-festival goers, academics/research scientists, swingers, like-sports fans, and community living persons who have total support from their communities. The groups that I've seen most supportive are very inviting, but don't actually recruit at all, nor advertise themselves much.