The World Needs a Secular Community Revolution

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."

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.

I visited Thailand three times, it is around a Buddhism community. Quite different from the Christian communities you'd see in the USA. Christians are a small minority in Thailand and there are more Muslim and Chinese than Christian. Each one has their own community. I visited a Muslim community because one of my wife's cousins had married a Muslim man. They were very nice to me and my family. Five times a day a car would loud speakers would drive around for their daily prayer. There was no pork or alcohol for sale before their religion forbids it. They cut their chicken differently from us, but it tastes good.

I am not sure if they'd go for a secular community. They already got one of their own religious communities and have done this sort of thing for most of their lives.

Moving away from religion and becoming secular is a western thing not an eastern thing.

I see the Dawkins Foundation was mentioned, a lot of times they criticize and attack religions when they could have used the resources to help out people in the community instead. Using hate instead of love, and then sometimes having to retract web pages when proven wrong like the Jesus is Horus thing or the Easter is Ishtar thing.

You have secular communities in the USA and UK, but they are small and limited.

Public schools in the USA got rid of religion, but didn't find anything to replace it to teach morals and ethics instead like critical thinking.

The problem is when you get rid of religion you get rid of a lot of good stuff too, and if you claim religion is bad and you get rid of it, it is like tossing the baby out with the bathwater. A lot of Christian charities did adoptions, and got attacked because they didn't support same sex marriage, so they went out of business and left a big hole to be filled. The same with Christian homeless shelters, many had to close down due to being attacked and criticized. There were no secular homeless shelters to replace them.

As the community moves away from religion and towards secularism, they have to replace the structure that was there by religious communities. It takes a lot of money to do that and a lot of volunteers.

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.