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Comment by dagw | Hacker News Reader

Religion has nothing to offer that secular society cannot offer.

While this might be true in theory, I have not found it true in practice. I am no longer religious and I have not attended church for 20+ years, but despite trying many of these secular 'alternatives' to church I have yet to find anything as open, welcoming and socially supportive as I found church.

edit: Yes, I know this isn't everybody's experience, and yes some churches can be extremely bigoted, exclusionary and downright evil to people they perceive as 'others'.

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What you say about churches being welcoming agrees with my experiences too, from what I've seen of others, given that I don't attend. But I think faith is only part of the reason for attending.

Essential in the choice to join a church is the desire to seek out a kind of 'marriage', where for better and worse, you promise to look out for others in an extended family and to help them when they need you. That sense of belonging is one of the big things that brings everyone in a church together -- the wish to be part of a community that regularly joins together and where you can share your life with others.

Membership in a social club can't do that.

In the strongest possible terms, I reject this entirely.

I'm trying to put into words how much I disagree and why, but I'm failing. Others have done a better job than I can.

I can only recommend you read the strong counter opinions to your position.

I wish you well. But I wont participate in these groups.

> Membership in a social club can't do that.

As someone who has been involved in both Churches, Church-associated social clubs, and no -Church social clubs, yes, it absolutely can; in fact, what you describe is explicitly part of the concept of many non-Church social clubs, some of which evolved from (or in the tradition of) organizations which started as sub-church organizations within churches by which this function was more tightly expressed for members than in the broader church.

But even where it isn't explicitly part of the deal, it's very common to evolve as an implicit part of a social club.

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