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Comment by emodendroket | Hacker News Reader

That sounds like a secular version of a church or something. Am I in the right ballpark?

Not a Mason, but yes, that's my take. Lodges provide the essential community functions and the recognition of a "universal brotherhood", without requiring any specific theological pronouncements (other than a basic acknowledgement that a "higher power" exists, which is vague enough to allow anyone). This allows virtually everyone in the community the ability to join and work together, more-or-less regardless of individual background or tradition.

Historically, secular fraternities like the Freemasons played a big role in keeping mixed-denomination communities communal, instead of fracturing off into hard, non-fluid segments. I would conjecture that we owe a lot of our cultural religious tolerance to the foundations of trust and community laid in the Masonic lodges of yore.

IMO it's a shame that these groups are not very widely established anymore (at least among "younger" people, who are now becoming "older" people). These fraternities do a great deal to help adults, families, and whole communities.

The only reason I haven't personally seriously inquired into joining such a group is that I'm already in a very active church community that covers most of the Masonic functions, and I have enough trouble just keeping up with that. I'd miss too many lodge meetings, etc.

For anyone who is floating or looking for a consistent community to anchor against, that will be there as an instant community even if you move around, Freemasonry or similar orgs are really worth investigating.

As you said, these organizations aren't too friendly to atheists, and non-atheists are likely to be members of some church, so of course they're going to be busy with that, as you yourself experienced.

I guess people in the past had more free time to spend on non-work activities like this.

Eh, kind of. There's a no atheists allowed rule last I checked (A belief in a supreme being and scripture is a condition of membership), but they're not picky about what god(s) you might worship.

That's the root of the problem of freemasonry.

It means that a freemason have to hold contradictory positions as true. One might be an atheist by one cannot reject the so-called supreme being, one might belong to an Abrahamic religion but one cannot reject the Hindu pantheon. And within the Abrahamic religions it's more contentious than anything.

It's an expression of the Orwellian "2 + 2 = 5", and it's a very dangerous anti-realist totalitarian ideology, and it should be rejected whether you're a theist or an atheist.

I don't think I follow. From what I've read here, the question is "do you believe in any higher power at all?" which everyone except a committed atheist could answer "yes" truthfully (and even then, an atheist could presumably accept some sort of "life-force" that isn't a god).

Correct. The question is "do you believe in a higher power y/n?" not "give us details on what you think of said higher power".

In ceremony/ritual we refer generally to "The Grand Architect of the Universe", instead of any specific diety.

BTW, Freemasonry is NOT intended to be a religion nor a replacement for one, and we don't want to be. We just use symbols and allegory that relate to the story of the building of King Solomon's Temple.

That's completely incorrect. Freemasonry expects religious tolerance. That is, Freemasonry generally believes people have the right to believe and practice religion as their conscience dictates. That also means that generally speaking, Freemasons should respect the religious beliefs of others. That doesn't mean Freemasons are required to adopt other people's religious beliefs or refrain from disagreeing with them.

The proper term is "Third place" [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place

> In community building, the third place is the social surroundings separate from the two usual social environments of home ("first place") and the workplace ("second place"). Examples of third places would be environments such as churches, cafes, clubs, public libraries, or parks.

Seems too broad to really be helpful in this discussion. The park in Chinatown where people gather to play xiangqi is a "third place" but nothing like a church or Masonic lodge.

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