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The World Needs a Secular Community Revolution

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Re: The World Needs a Secular Community Revolution

#71

Post by ptx »

dd9990 wrote: post #59
brandonmenc wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>An initiation ceremony for secularism? 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.

Re: The World Needs a Secular Community Revolution

#72

Post by scrollaway »

hiphipjorge wrote: post #67

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 you…

> 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.

Re: The World Needs a Secular Community Revolution

#73

Post by krschultz »

jonathankoren wrote: post #56
Animats wrote: post #25

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…

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 servi…

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.

Re: The World Needs a Secular Community Revolution

#74

Post by krschultz »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #68

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.

Finally, an explanation for why all the presidents are atheists.

Re: The World Needs a Secular Community Revolution

#75

Post by callmeed »

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.

Re: The World Needs a Secular Community Revolution

#76

Post by rayalez »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #41
jqm wrote: post #18

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…

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 inflexi…

The question is whether it is the kind of community that should exist, that you want to be a part of.

And the answer is - no, it is not.

Re: The World Needs a Secular Community Revolution

#77

Post by callmeed »

Animats wrote: post #25

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…

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.).

Re: The World Needs a Secular Community Revolution

#78

Post by virmundi »

mwcampbell wrote: post #51
cyorir wrote: post #4

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 ind…

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.

Out of curiosity, why secular humanism vs existential nihilism? I don't think I'll switch sides and time soon, but if I did it would be to nihilism.

Re: The World Needs a Secular Community Revolution

#80

Post by hiphipjorge »

scrollaway wrote: post #72
hiphipjorge wrote: post #67

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 you…

> 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 t…

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.

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