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Athiest Churches Spring Up

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So, they want to cut out God, but keep the sheepish group worship attitude. That sounds dreamy, where do I send my money?

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As an anticlerical atheist, I say this is dumb.

You want to prove that you're charitable? Give to charity. There are plenty of charities and NGO that are not tied to a particular faith.

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To be fair, as much as I don't like the idea of a mega church, churches can cultivate a strong sense of community. Ditch the brain-dead dogma and get to know your neighbours! This is a good thing! Sure, *I* wouldn't go to one, but I spend my days ignoring my co-workers to go home and post about 20 year old video games on the internet. Who am I to tell anyone how to be social?

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If you want to get to know your neighbours, throwing a BBQ party seems like a better way than donating big money to an overly ornate community center for weekly reinforcement of your world views. "Strong sense of community" IS a sort of brainwashing and this church just has some hippy bullshit replacing God.

...spearheaded by two prominent British comedians...

I bet it started as a one-off joke, but then someone smelled the intoxicating fragrance of other people's money. Maybe even recalled the immortal words of Ron L. Hubbard.

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Some people just like the church lifestyle dude. It might be hard for someone who didn't grow up in a non-crazy person church to understand but they can, and in fact are often; legitimate forces for good, sort of a half way between a club and a town hall. Do you get all preachy (lol) at people who fund sports clubs because they don't just send that money to the red cross and just play in the local park?

Churches do often take collections for actual charities on regular occasions (or at least the catholic one I went to as a child did).

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Next up in the building project, football stadiums for people that have no interest in football...

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Man, I wish had come up with this idea earlier. I could've been rich and retired right now in a foreign Island outside of the US control, covering my tracks with magical atheist juice that all of atheist followers drank to prove their worth to the atheist atheists that were their neighbors. What a goldmine!

I think it's time to open up the Denomination Of Organic Monotheism and make sum buck$.

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While I don't much care for religion, I do see it as a positive. You can either have an empty lot on a corner or a church. Churches get free land, don't pay taxes, but really they better the community. Social functions, being forced to listen to outdated stories.

I had an ex gf that took me to a 'franchise church' called the Chapel. There were 3 the Chapels in the area. Basically giant rock and roll churches with big screens and in the basement, they have what I can only describe as Chuck E Cheese daycare. For how much money went into the production of this 'church' I can't imagine it ever making any money. Plus it didn't actually have a religion. It had a god, just not a religion.

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I have a feeling that if these places of meeting were called anything besides a "church" that their reception would be a lot less negative.

As far as any social institution like this goes, religious or not, they take money to run, and that money has to come from somewhere. Donations are a much better alternative to dues, in my opinion. As wrong as it would be for donation money to be pocketed by individuals, perhaps that speculative evil is offset by the joy the participating atheists are having, regardless of whether a "sheeple" mentality is enabling such joy or not.

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Great, now we atheists can have a building to circle-jerk in rather than Reddit.

I'm guessing these buildings will have safe zones for women and no elevators.

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Technician said:

Great, now we atheists can have a building to circle-jerk in rather than Reddit.

I'm guessing these buildings will have safe zones for women and no elevators.

NO KING REoL DEMANDS ELEVATOR

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Sounds kind of weird, though maybe some people really like the group worship aspect of religion. I can't see it catching on, though.

Personally it's hard for me to see the point of something like this, but I can understand why atheists living in heavily-religious areas might want to band together to support one another. The Atheist Community of Austin (Texas) is an example of one group that has done something like this for years.

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Well, being an atheist, I think this is a bad idea.

Quast said:

Next up in the building project, football stadiums for people that have no interest in football...


I was thinking something similar. I could say that it's like making a My Little Pony subforum at Doomworld.

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Zed said:

Well, being an atheist, I think this is a bad idea.

It make us look downright stupid. If it's not a Christian place of worship, it can't even be called a church without being obnoxious.

I dare these guys to build their own atheist mosque. But that would be Islamophobic and the hard-left atheists wouldn't want that.

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I see this appealing mostly to two groups:

1. Atheists who grew up in church and like the social aspect and routine.

2. Atheists who live in extremely religious communities and haven't figured out their own way to meet a group of like-minded people.

I don't have any desire to join one, but it doesn't look harmful. It might be a good thing, at least in the short term, by forcing more people to notice the atheists in their cities. I hear Americans in the south have problem with this.

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Yeah, I guess I just don't see the point in this. You want to create a greater sense of community among local atheists, but you can't think of any better way to do it than replicating the exact framework of a modern church? Try to be a little innovative, at least.

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Zed said:

I was thinking something similar. I could say that it's like making a My Little Pony subforum at Doomworld.


But even the the people who'd be attracted to that wouldn't be interested in it. What could that mean? What does it mean?

It's like creating a football stadium for use by people who have no interest in football, and as a result they never actually use it leaving a big empty football stadium there with no using it, and only those who you have no interest in football can use it, and then it becomes Detroit.

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Zed said:

I was thinking something similar. I could say that it's like making a My Little Pony subforum at Doomworld.

Don't even joke about this. I'd probably end up more popular than Doom General.

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Not really new. Sounds like an outgrowth of what was previously called "atheist Sunday School," which was a replacement of the obviously named institution for free thinkers and non-religious persons to take their children to learn about things like evolution, history, and science instead of stories about she-bears mauling 42 kids just like them and how great that makes God.

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You can complain all you want about how atheist "churches" are a mockery of Christian institutions, or how they're ineffective in demonstrating the charity that atheists are capable of, or how they're "unoriginal," or how atheists could just join some other social institution. Some atheists are still going to want to form and attend churches for the same reason as any other churchgoer: it feels good. It feels good to be a small part of a large community, where the pressure's off and you can just be yourself, even if that means sitting worshipfully in the back and not saying a word to anyone before you leave. It feels good to know there are other people out there who don't see your beliefs as character flaws. It feels good to hear messages about how to be a force for good in the world, even if you plan on continuing your privileged lifestyle unaltered. Why should atheists be forced to abstain from these simple pleasures? Where exactly is the harm?

Honestly, I would probably go to one of these if there was one in the area. I grew up a church-goer and I still go when I'm not too lazy. There's nowhere else that I get to sing in four-part harmony.

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Creaphis said:

I still go when I'm not too lazy.


This is pretty much why I and most people I know don't go to church anymore. Sunday can be used for so many other things, like Doom, porn, drinking, and homework.

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Creaphis said:

You can complain all you want about how atheist "churches" are a mockery of Christian institutions, or how they're ineffective in demonstrating the charity that atheists are capable of, or how they're "unoriginal," or how atheists could just join some other social institution. Some atheists are still going to want to form and attend churches for the same reason as any other churchgoer: it feels good. It feels good to be a small part of a large community, where the pressure's off and you can just be yourself, even if that means sitting worshipfully in the back and not saying a word to anyone before you leave. It feels good to know there are other people out there who don't see your beliefs as character flaws. It feels good to hear messages about how to be a force for good in the world, even if you plan on continuing your privileged lifestyle unaltered. Why should atheists be forced to abstain from these simple pleasures? Where exactly is the harm?

Honestly, I would probably go to one of these if there was one in the area. I grew up a church-goer and I still go when I'm not too lazy. There's nowhere else that I get to sing in four-part harmony.


Well, I'm not exactly complaining, but I find the idea really stupid to say the least. I think we, as atheists, need to keep a distance from things that are inherently related to religion, in this case, churches. It reminds me of Einstein's "God does not play dice with the universe" quote. Every single believer I've met is completely convinced that it's a proof that Einstein believed in God (if he, indeed, believed in God is another thing). All this is going to cause are reactions like "I knew it, you atheists DO believe in God, but are too obstinate/arrogant/whatever that you prefer to make your own 'churches'". Einstein did us a disservice with his quote. This isn't helping either.

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Zed said:

Einstein did us a disservice with his quote. This isn't helping either.

Physicists as a whole still refer to the proverbial God frequently, including the couldn't-be-less-atheist Dr. Hawking, whose most quoted quip on the subject has something to do with the light cone of the Big Bang and how it places a limit on the time frame and manner in which God could have acted to create the universe, something that really gets under theists' skin, from my very personal experience.

They do this mainly because there is an undeniable mathematical order and precision to the universe which is hard to name in any other term in our language. Some of them may very well believe in a deistic world view, of a hands-off creator that put all these natural laws into motion somehow. Many do not, though, and mean such things in a strictly figurative manner.

That creationists and other fundies can't distinguish figurative language from literal language should come as no surprise, given the basis their own favored arguments comes from. It's some kind of brain disease if you ask me, where everything heard is taken at a subjective face value.

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Einstein was raised in a Jewish home, and maybe with the exception of Ultra-Orthodox Jews, the religion is known for portraying Gd in very abstract manners, with each Jew having a different, yet still acceptable, perception of what exactly Gd is. Einstein's use word "God" was likely a convenient way to encapsulate all of the phenomena of the universe, and not a reference to the theistic deity commonly associated with the word "God".

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Zed said:

Well, I'm not exactly complaining, but I find the idea really stupid to say the least. I think we, as atheists, need to keep a distance from things that are inherently related to religion, in this case, churches. It reminds me of Einstein's "God does not play dice with the universe" quote. Every single believer I've met is completely convinced that it's a proof that Einstein believed in God (if he, indeed, believed in God is another thing). All this is going to cause are reactions like "I knew it, you atheists DO believe in God, but are too obstinate/arrogant/whatever that you prefer to make your own 'churches'". Einstein did us a disservice with his quote. This isn't helping either.


Fine, so forming atheist churches isn't useful in the whole religion versus atheism "debate." I don't disagree. I just don't think that these churches are intended as a rhetorical stab in one direction or the other. I think that these are just people who want to spend time together and forget about the political ramifications of their actions for one fucking morning of the week. If a religious person can't see an atheist church as anything other than a concession or an insult then that's their problem.

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Creaphis said:

I think that these are just people who want to spend time together and forget about the political ramifications of their actions for one fucking morning of the week. If a religious person can't see an atheist church as anything other than a concession or an insult then that's their problem.


I agree, but the point is that calling them "churches" is not a good idea. Why not "club", "organization", "group", etc.? They already exist, even in my country (where I haven't met a single self-called atheist in 30 years). Trying to make an "atheist church" seems disrespectful to both Christians and atheists. I mean, when you talk about a church, you are talking about a place of worship. Atheists, by definition, don't worship anything. So, again, why call them churches? Sorry, but it doesn't makes sense to me.

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