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Comment by jimt1234 | Hacker News Reader

I came to California, in part, because my family in the Midwest is a bunch of Jesus freaks - not the "love thy neighbor" kind, more like the "God hates fags" kind. So when a girlfriend (in California) invited me to her church for some volunteer work, I went prepared to hate on everyone. However, I was blown away, as they were the nicest people I'd ever met in my life. They all went out of their way to help one another, just to be helpful, not to destroy the "gay agenda" or "save the unborn" or whatever. No one preached to me, no warnings about burning in hell.

My point is that, love it or hate it, church can be a great way to meet good people. I'm still anti-religion, anti-church, although a bit less. But I can't deny the social support church can provide.

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I’ve been thinking about this lately. I started going to social events at a friend’s church in around 8th grade, and regularly went to church and church events through high school. My mom came with me through much of it (dad isn’t big on religion or social events, which I get). I don’t think either of us was particularly invested in the religious part, but we both made a number of long term friends, and I had a strong sense of community and belonging that I didn’t get at school.

The church took a hard right turn, and I gave up any semblance of belief when I went to college. But as an adult with kids of my own, I do wish that I had a “third place” to take my family for community and kinship. I don’t really want to raise the kids in a religion, but I’ve occasionally considered trying to find a “light” church or something so they get the same sense of community that I had.

I am sometimes jealous of religious people. They have a clear vision of the meaning of life and churches give them a social group they can join.

Us atheists don’t really have something like that.

Skill issue.

Plenty of atheists are capable of finding both meaning in life and social groups to join.

I agree about skill. It’s just easier with religious groups.

Because they have a common goal. The challenge for atheists is to find group of people with the same goal as theirs.

I think that kind of misses the point. Sure, of course plenty of atheists find meaning in life and social groups to join.

Point being, in a religious environment you don't have to have skill - the meaning in life and social groups are automatic and baked in. That's not the case for atheists so it's easier to get "left behind" if you happen to be "unskilled", as you put it.

Look into the Unitarian Universalist (UU) church. I'm a recently retired atheist and moved to a new city. My wife was brought up UU and they welcome all beliefs. We started attending services at a local fellowship a month ago and have been welcomed and are starting to make some friends there.

As someone who has looked into it, it's unfortunately far from actually being a universal option in practice. I understand that my situation isn't typical, but the commute to an actually-inclusive UU congregation (there are "conservative" ones) would be a significant burden for me, whereas I could easily walk to the closest church that routinely funds "missions" to Africa to spread the "Good News".

I've been further down that rabbit hole that most, so believe me when I say there is no such thing as a free lunch.

I’d be quite interested in comparing notes with you on this, I have also been very deep down this rabbit hole. Some dark, dark things happen under the guise of religion.

> They have a clear vision of the meaning of life

What you describe is probably a minority amongst folks who claim to believe in a religion.

I wouldn't say that vision is clear. Not at all. It's constant thinking about faith, life questions, shaping values, etc. It's not easier path for sure.

I had a similar bad experience with religion growing up that left me very anti-organized religion. It wasn't until adulthood that I met people for whom religion appeared to be a positive developmental force on their personality. I am much more respectful of religious views in general now, even if I don't believe it myself.

Most religions really do center themselves on very useful concepts like mindfulness, gratitude, and helping others. But like anything, religions can be coopted by those with personality disorders to exercise their need for control, tribalistic exclusion, etc.

Whatever fosters a good healthy community is good, and church does play a role but as you state it’s not always positive and healthy. It’s good to know they’re not a uniform monolith and if you don’t find one you like you should keep on looking.

That's nice and all, but when you don't believe in their god, it becomes rather awkward.

That depends, as the comment you replied to shows, on how they respond to that. I'm an atheist, but one of my wife's best friends is a dyed-in-the wool catholic, and we get on really well despite that fundamental difference. He has a great line in self-deprecating humour, where he talked about "going Taliban" during lent, of which he is very observant. Not all religious people - and, I would suggest, probably very few in fact - are nutters. They're just the loudest ones.

Yes and no, if you join a group that is not overzealous you can just skip the religion talk altogether and involve with community projects instead.

I thought so too, until I realized that if atheists see God as a deep aspect of the human mind, that evolved that way for reasons, then we don't miss much of the Judeo-Christian story. I stopped by a local church for Bible study just in order to challenge my assumptions and found that they had no problem with that formulation at all. I expected way more awkwardness and even pushed the issue, to no avail. The result was a delightful experience of people sitting around interrogating ancient texts and being attentive to each other's life challenges.

I found that the structure of the Christian congregation is equivalent to the anarchist affinity group. I realized that, unlike us, Christians build infrastructure to support their organizing, and we should probably adopt that.

I'm still the same atheist, just a churchgoing one. I don't go to mass often or ever recite the Nicene Creed, but otherwise it's been a fantastic social outlet, great intellectual company, and the organ festival is off the hook.

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