The World Needs a Secular Community Revolution
evolution-institute.org
evolution-institute.org
The core of these organizations was small business owners, a group which once ran their small towns, and no longer does. Some of those organizations existed to push back against big business, especially railroads, back when railroads had a monopoly on shipments to small towns. That function evaporated as trucks took over.
Rotary has a moral code, the Rotary Four-Way Test:
Is it the TRUTH?
Is it FAIR to all concerned?
Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?
Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?
I'd like to promote activities that are detrimental to some institutions and beneficial to others because I believe there are institutions that should be dismantled.
Call me cynical, but I get the feeling that morality and honor got sacrificed for competitiveness. Internet businesses are a special case here, they can afford to be fair to the employees and to care in a way, and yet there are still lots of them that are harmful to the society.
I thought you were talking about internet businesses!
You need an thing for all ages.
The 'pushback against big business' angle was news to me, though. Interesting perspective. Any references you could recommend to dig into that aspect?
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2009/09/14/masons-and...
The problem is organizations founded to oppose the Masons are religious just as well for the most part. The ones that are secular aren't that big and don't have the money and volunteers to help out.
Corporations have gotten secular like Microsoft and Google and Apple. They try to do things to give back to the community. But still some claim they are like the old railroad companies and in it for the money.
Like I said. Any sort of good principles, like religious tolerance, was a by product of wanting to put personal wealth as the center of power over religious affiliation. If you want to supplant the church, you don't oppose it directly, you route around it by making it a non-issue.
Only thing is that sometimes churches get up on technology, science, and social issues like when Pope Francis supports evolution over creationism and then talks about working with atheists to fight climate change.
Science only deals with the observable universe, it cannot deal with spiritual things that cannot be observed. The only thing close to evidence of God is neurotheology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurotheology
There is no such thing as a God-o-meter that can measure God. If God lives in Heaven and the only way to get there is to die and be judged good, how can one observe that? Once you go to Heaven you can't go back to Earth.
It might even end up being that God is an alien, the last of his race that was created early in the universe and has evolved for billions of years ahead of us and visited us during early stages of our development to help us along. Last seen over 2000 years ago and went home never to be heard of again.
Then again people argue that complex patterns in the universe and life itself is evidence of a creator, and skeptics claim that it came from random chance and not a creator. For every claim to evidence for a creator a skeptic will come up with an alternative to it.
I have to say that science does not have evidence against God nor does it have evidence for God. Atheists have taken over science to claim evolution proves God does not exist, etc. When Darwin was doing his theory he just left out God like Newton did with Gravity theory. So that it wouldn't be creationism and it would answer questions he had about creationism.
But yes the Catholic Church learns from its mistakes.
This history of the Texas Railroad Commission may be helpful.[1]
[1] https://www.tsl.texas.gov/exhibits/railroad/fight/page2.html
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.).
http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM5WBJ_The_Four_Way_Corner_San_Francisco_CAhttp://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."
I'm a software developer living in the (American) South. We just had our fourth child. A few days later my wife had some complications. We went to the hospital, taking the newborn with us. The first week, pre-hospital, I was averaging four hour of sleep a night, but then in the hospital that went down to two hours of sleep in two days. (Wife was not able to hold the newborn, we weren't in the maternity area, I needed to chase down absent doctors, etc).
Since we've been back from the hospital there's been a non-stop train of people from our church bringing food (three different people one day), teenagers to watch the older kids so we can sleep in the day, and sometimes grandmothers came to hold the new one too. The lawn has been mowed by somebody who just showed up and started mowing.
This wasn't even organized - someone just sent out an email saying we needed help, and people we knew started showing up left and right.
But despite there being UU churches in every major city I've lived in, I haven't been back in a serious way since high school. For me at least, part of the 'implementation' thats missing is the lack of pull to the weekly service. I'd love the community, but don't feel particularly drawn to the actual meat of it. Kinda like wanting to join a soccer team without liking soccer too much.
Community needs some kind of core that is valuable to people in order for a community to form around it and I'm not sure those secular weekly services have the same kind of broadly appealing gravitas that traditional religion provides. As well as there not being enough family-driven guilt to pull early-twenties people back to church during those times when spirituality is less interesting compared to other things in life.
I really liked the Marianist and Jesuit idea that you should be able to challenge your religion so much that you have to come to logically understand and accept it; They are both great at Logical argument and reduction, especially about faith.
I think this type of introspection helped me quite a bit as an engineer even if it didn't work in making me a faithful person.
They're nice enough people, I suppose--I've been meaning to get out to a service myself--, but they do seem to be a little on the urbane mid/upper class side of things.
Community forms not because religion has something sepcial about it, but because people tend to form communities around any subject they are interested in.
Just because religion used to be there, doesn't mean we have to replace it. We do not need something big and ritualized.
You can't start with an idea to create a community and then invent a set of values that fits everybody, at best nobody will care enough to participate in it. It works in the reverse order.
Whenever there's something worth believing in and organizing around - peoole do that naturally. So instead, we will end up with a lot of small "tribes", communities formed around shared interests, friendships, etc. You can look at reddit to see how process naturally works, and what works well.
I think physical proximity is an absolute requirement for a community. Students in college inevitably form communities. They come together to help each other. Online forums like reddit more often drive people apart than join people together.
Quite possibly, but what happens when you move? Labour mobility is an inescapable part of the modern world, as is the desire for young people to move to the "big city".
This is particularly bad for inter-generationality. Perhaps that will improve once the long term diversity acceptance values shift has completed.
For example, if a loved one dies, will your book club friends help you organize the funeral (or even attend)? If you can't rely on them in cases like that, it's not really the kind of community the OP is talking about.
I have noticed that the set of values is very much the binding force that holds, at least the church community that I am part of, together. I have very different interests with the people I have most to do with, but we live by similar moral codes. It's hard to describe but very different to what you are discussing. And the level of involvement is much higher than normal relationships.
Tightly woven communities are absent from modern lives as there has been a big push for individualism and materialism.
True, though tightly woven communities have many implicit rules, sometimes explicit, that can govern anything from sexuality to what you wear and where you live. Individualism allows a broader definition of who you are and what you can align with at the cost of a tighter support network.
I feel that the increase in acceptance and support of people with different gender identities and sexuality is a direct result of individualism. The same applies to feminism. Even people who would ordinarily feign a religious belief because flipping the bird at the pastor and screaming I'm an atheist would not only affect their relationship with that person, but their whole community. They'd be an outcast, just as the feminist would lose the support of those who had accepted their assigned gender roles and rules.
Humanity has become more liquid but lacks a deep connection to their neighbor as a result. Everything has a positive and negative side.
I know people that do, many of them come from religious backgrounds and seek something to replace the religious structure that used to be in their lives.
But I .... just don't.
Take the example of the truly unfortunate disaster, for example as another commenter mentioned, complications with the birth of a 3rd or 4th child. A "good" church community (that seems like a weird phrase, but go with me for a second) would involve people that you might only have passed in the hallway bringing you food, helping out with your other kids, or other chores that you simply don't have the time or energy to do during your emergency state.
Unless you are truly a social juggernaut with a lot of friends that really care about you that much, you're probably going to end up either suffering substantially on your own trying to keep things together, or your close friends are going to resent you for leaning on them so heavily (particularly if the hypothetical emergency at hand is long lasting).
That was waaay more than I meant to write, but I was honestly having the same thought as you and trying to think through it. I think one of the important things this post is saying is missing is more about a community of support with a broader surface area for support beyond just those closest to you.
Perhaps I just haven't been in a bad enough situation, perhaps I do trust my friends and family that much, perhaps I'm just more insular than that. I don't know.
My trans friend recently moved to stay with me in California. Her experiences, and the experiences of others, have helped me realise that gender is really important to many people—and I just don’t have a slot for it in my personality.
Same goes for religion—my folks tried to teach me about their religious background from a young age, but I never had the ability to believe in it.
I just try to respect people, and shut my opinion-hole and acknowledge when I just don’t get it.
I know that's an extreme example, and quite negative, so may not map fully to what we'e talking aabout. It just sorta popped in there.
A set of shared values is nice until it fails to change in response to changes in the values of individuals. For example, the Catholic Church has been slow to accept the rights of gender and sexual minorities, even as many individual Catholics become more accepting of these rights. The result is a split in the church, between those who want an updated set of values and those who prefer the old set.
Individuals may also dislike some of rituals associated with religions, perhaps because they take time or have some other cost that the individual doesn't want to pay (fasting, reduction of pleasure, etc.).
A secular community that adopts a shared set of values and rituals may only take on some of the problems leading to less religiosity, rather than solving them.
Or maybe 'flexibility' is the wrong word, since the groups I mention are activity-specific, and one's interest in the activity ebbs and flows, whereas one's interest in fellowship with other people in the quest for some kind of human-level goodwill would presumably be constant.
On the same topic, but contrary to what you are saying, organized secularism with rituals, values, expectations may only draw out this natural propensity towards "religion" in people even further.
Touching on your point further, Protestant churches actually fare pretty well with some of these cultural issues that force change. If someone disagrees about gay marriage or another controversial topic, they just start a new church and half the congregation goes there. It makes Protestant churches at the same time possibly more extreme but also much more varied in their belief systems and allows for religion to evolve. (This is not an endorsement of Protestantism, just an acknowledgement).
I dislike the notion of organized secularism because it creates an us vs them attitude. You have churches and then secular churches when the real solution (whatever it may be) should be a less dogmatic form of outreach that grabs at people from all walks of life and engages them. That's how people change, that's how they get better.
Sociologically, people mostly become less religious when they feel that they control their own fate, and feel no need to ask for divine intervention. Hence why societies grow less religious as they grow rich and egalitarian, while highly unequal and/or poor societies have a tendency towards greater levels of religiosity.
[1] http://www.epjournal.net/articles/the-chronic-dependence-of-...
Nevertheless, it is not actually necessary to go to extremes (see fallacy of excluded middle). The outside is closer to where you are now, than you might imagine.
Specifically to the extreme, during that time I re-evaluated possible philosophic systems. I am an absolutist. I think there is Truth. Without a god, I needed to see if there was any system that provided a similar world view. Existential nihilism does. It says that the only fact we have is that nothing fundamentally matters (I'm treating existential nihilism apart from the extreme skeptics that deny the existence of things). The universe will die, or collapse and re-expand. Regardless to the exact details, every invention and power of man amounts to nothing. Therefore since every man is within the group man, individual acts amount to nothing. I've not seen a more honest system than this. I want an honest system
Most other systems are predicated on a quasi-Christian-like system. They believe that people are somehow different than everything else in the universe. That they have intrinsic meaning while nothing else does. Or they go to the other extreme that makes everything equally special, and as we're taught in the movie The Incredibles, nothing is special then. As we've seen in this thread, the view might boil down to "it makes me feel good to help people".
The problem that I have with such systems is that they ultimately anchor to a feeling or some other arbitrary truth. Upon that rock an edifice is made from which various dogmas are shouted. If I were to throw away one system of belief with that behavior, why would I adopt another?
As a result, I find that there are only two systems that could be true given what humanity knows: some form of theism or nihilism. I'm convinced of the former, specifically Jesus as the Christ, but I find no honest system possible other than nihilism if my feeling and beliefs were some how shown to be false.
You seem comfortable with the arbitrariness of your faith now. So why not any other? A hypothetical true-believer in the Flying Spaghetti Monster would (by most reasonable criteria) be moving in the right direction if he/she were to become a Christian instead. Even though both faiths may be unanchored, there are wider considerations too.
My reason is entirely based on experience. I have not felt the spirit of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, nor his noodlely appendage. I have felt the Spirit. This makes it not arbitrary. It's rooted in God. It's rooted in the absolute.
That's why if I ever stopped believing in the Trinity, I would be a nihilist. It's a good starting point. It admits that everything is arbitrary. As such, I think we could build on it to a Utilitarian system. We all agree that core set of values is arbitrary, but that it's build on avoiding pain. Avoiding pain is an arbitrary metric, but well, the majority doesn't want to be kicked, so let's agree that we shouldn't do that to each other.
You seem to apply two standards. To yourself, your personal experience is sufficient. Yet from others, a more rigorous justification is expected.
By analogy: if I were Japanese, I would definitely prefer Buddhism over Shinto. Yet, I am not Japanese, which rather undermines my argument. Under such hypothetical circumstances my perspective would surely be other than it actually is now.
The reason I pursue this point is that, historically, people with faith have argued unreasonably that the only viable alternative to their unique faith is [name_a_specific_extreme_and_scary_philosophical_position_here]. To be fair, if you are doing this at all, you are doing so only subtly.
In particular, the factual claims about Christ, his life, his death, his resurrection are central to any evangelical Christian's faith. Disprove them and it's game over for Christianity. Paul says as much in his letter to the early church in Corinth [0]. Beyond factual claims about Christ, there are many other sections of the Bible which would become fatal to the central Christian message were they proven false. (The flood, the plagues in Egypt, the Hebrew Exodus from Egypt, the prophecies in Ezekiel, Daniel, Isaiah, etc.)[1].
Start with any one of them and offer a credible disproof and you can go down in the history books as the person responsible for dismantling the arbitrary Christian faith.
[0]: https://www.bible.com/bible/59/1co.15:14-19
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_and_messianic_prophecy#V...
Anyway, let's try starting at one of the most obvious. I understand the Bible says the world was created in 7 days. Has that been credibly disproven yet?
[1]: http://lesswrong.com/lw/93l/the_value_and_danger_of_ritual/ [2]: http://lesswrong.com/lw/9aw/designing_ritual/ [3]: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2000477/SolsticeEve_2012...
The wife and I have been talking about this at great length as of late. We are not wired to believe in the supernatural, but I am having a hard time coming up with reasons why that would prevent us from finding a church to go to. It does limit which churches might be accepting of us, as I will not be handling snakes or washing anyone's feet. But as churches get more and more devoid of fundamentalism (a survival maneuver), they become more and more like the thing being talked about in the fine article. Maybe it'll all meet in the middle one day.
One popular meme you'll see is the pre-christian greco-romans didn't saw religion and belief as somewhat orthogonal. So you went to the ritual/party at the temple to hang out, show off your (purchased) social class within the temple, and do the ritual, show off to everyone else that you did the ritual, show off how well you memorized the allegorical tales, etc. Personal belief was not a terribly high priority. How much of this is "real" analysis vs Victorian era make believe is not entirely clear.
The other people in your church who do believe in zombie messiahs might all get a bit hacked off when they find out though.
Without that, well is that 'church' ?
Yes: "But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith." 1 Corinthians 15:12-14
In the old testament they would sacrifice animals and use the blood of the animals to wash away sin. People would sacrifice animals at the temple with a Priest and collect the blood to wash away their sins.
Christ was God's sacrifice to end that practice Christ's blood was shed to wash away our sins. Christ was dead for three days to build a bypass from hell into heaven. Before that it wasn't possible to reach heaven. Christ rose from the dead and promises on judgement day when he returned to raise the dead and judge them.
Islam differs on Jesus they see him as a Prophet didn't die on the cross, and converted to Islam, and there is no trinity in their religion. Jesus is not the son of God or Messiah but a Prophet instead named Isa.
Some churches are converting to Chrislam where they rewrite the Bible to be compatible with Islam. One that Christ doesn't die and isn't resurrected.
You'll find that there are many different versions of Christianity, even Atheist Christians who follow Christ's teachings but don't believe he is a God.
Many Christians became non-practicing because they got busy with their jobs or they just stopped believing. A lot of atheists used to be Christian at one point, and just didn't believe in God any more.
In modern times people worship science and technology and don't see a need for God anymore.
When you visit a church you see elderly people, and the sick and disabled, the sort of people who need God. You don't see very many of the young adults who are healthy, if there are any young people they come in with their parents.
An observation of the fundamental church at large reflects your statement. I would delimit that statement though to say that there are pockets of thriving 'resistance', so to speak. I happen to belong to a fundamental church that bucks the trend of an ageing population.
The ones I do visit they are trying to figure out how to get young people involved with them. The Catholic church for example has a shortage of priests and they need more young priests and young volunteers. They need more young people to attend church and donate money as well.
It may be different in where you live because your church has a connection with young people. But near me in the St. Louis MO area, young people are dropping out of church to become non-practicing or atheists.
Spending an hour yielding to something larger than yourself is probably good for the soul and definitely good for the ego. You can walk into almost any church, and there you will find a quiet space where you can meditate/pray. You can find a sort of comfort in its 2000 year history, and in the myths/rituals of our past and the people who believe in them. If you are made to feel uncomfortable, then try another one or stop going altogether, there are literally zero negative consequences to it.
The point of this is that you don't have to swear an oath to little baby jesus to get a benefit from a modernized church. You can make of it what you want, they won't mind in the least.
I mean, other than the whole universe I suppose, but I find the night sky in a remote location gives me the headspace I need to appreciate that.
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.
These days, I help organize pop-up communities for people in and around tech (hackerparadise.org) and have gotten to see the "a bunch of strangers show up somewhere for a month and slowly become an honest-to-goodness community" experience five or so times so far. The secular community checklist is spot-on.
Our equivalent of Ritualizing, point 6, is a weekly group meal in which members go around and talk about what they are working on and ways that they would appreciate help from others in the community. It's a simple-enough practice but it does a great job of providing structure and reinforcing our values - curiosity about others, a belief in continuous improvement, and a willingness to be vulnerable and open to receiving help and learning from others.
I don't mean to suggest that everyone would have the same interests or that there aren't also a lot of people who just go to the festivals because they're fun festivals. Still, it has ticked a lot of the same "boxes" for me.
Ideally, it's a community that's based on participation. When you go to a burn, the idea is to bring something to contribute, whether it's interactive art to play with, food to share, a bar with great cocktails, or a comfortable place where people can hang out and relax in the shade.
I enjoy it because it provides both an outlet for my creative/artsy interests as well as my enjoyment of building things and working on interesting projects with other people.
When I go to one of the burn events, there are more people interested in talking to me and working with me on stuff than just about anywhere I've been and I'd imagine this is a lot like the hacker space scene. It's been a fun way to meet people with similar (or different) interests whereas at work I only interact with one or two people who I might do those sorts of things outside of the office.
If I go to another region or town, I can be reasonably assured that if there is a burner community, I'd have a place to socialize and meet people to work on projects with. The concept has spread worldwide so burners or people with similar interests are easier to find than I would've imagined.
As far as initiations and rituals, there are some good examples. The "burn night" is like a huge communal party and walking around I get wished a "happy Burnday". When you arrive (especially as a "virgin" at your first event) you can get a playful spank with a paddle or (if you don't want such a thing) maybe a hug or at least some smiles. People often give nicknames known as "burn names" or "playa names" that are probably closest to the nicknames people get in the military (sometimes jokingly deprecating, sometimes honorific, etc).
Instead of strict commandments or laws, there are principles. Principles allow for interpretation and discussion but still provide a framework and a unifying set of things most participants value to at least some level. Examples are participation, civic responsibility, communal effort, gifting, de-commodification, self-expression, and leaving no trace (since the events typically take place in a camping setting).
I know that Burning Man and the associated regional scenes have a reputation as being just big parties all about debauchery and crazy outfits (or none at all). While there is certainly an element of hedonism should you desire it, the communal effort and focus on working together and being yourself while not hurting anyone else or the community have really impressed me.
I've been going to some regional events for several years now and while I don't live the stereotypical "burner" lifestyle every day, I love having a community in most places I go and a group of people I can meet up with and find those with common interests who want to work on projects together.
And the best part is you get to share all of those projects and brainstorms with loads of other people when you attend one of the events. It's like a huge artsy, techie pot-luck where everyone brings something to share and gets to go try all the things the other people brought along. I'm always astounded by the amount of creativity, talent, and work on display when you get several people (or several thousand) all trying to bring their "A-game" to share with everyone else.
In Colorado, where I am, it's been really nice to be able to tap into at least the awesome friendly dance parties that are tied to some of the burner scene.
But yeah, I think Burning Man's rise had a lot to do with this vacuum for community. It offers a lot to people. So funny how much judgement there is of it from outside of it. Funny to imagine what people think it's about.
So I think this is a good time to point out that there's some new science on the subject. According to [1] which points you to [2], the above holds true only within societies where religiosity is the norm. The USA, being the most religious among prosperous Western countries, is not quite by coincidence the country where most such studies are conducted. In skimming one of many articles on the work of renowned expert Dr. Harold Koenig, I happened to note that one of the communities he sampled was in Texas.
The picture becomes different, apparently, when you consider countries or regions where "God" is not a household word. There, this effect isn't observed. The author of [2], published just this month, concludes that "the health and longevity benefits of religiosity are restricted to highly religious regions."
So sure, people who go with the flow are less likely to be stressed, more likely to be happy and healthy. But this seems to be a benefit of social conformity, not religion.
[1] https://richarddawkins.net/2015/07/link-between-religiosity-...
[2] http://spp.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/07/09/194855061559...
The gist of the references is that loneliness is a problem for old adults, and religious community helps them. Intuitively, religious communities could probably help other groups at elevated risk of loneliness (the youth, the poorly educated, the depressed, etc.) even though I don't see studies showing that they do. The article's statement that "people are lonelier than ever before" is not supported by the references (except insofar as the population is aging, and the elderly are lonelier than the middle-aged). Footnote 11 suggests increasing social isolation across society but is, imo, not conclusive. Footnote 15 explicitly asks "Are we getting lonelier?" and finds the results inconclusive.
On the whole, it seems consistent to say "I'm not lonely right now, but I think that more diverse, intergenerational communities would be good for society."
It is something we can all agree is important, something families can get plenty of enjoyment out of, something we can get together on a Sunday morning to work towards, provides a place for music, discussion, a good place for group holiday getaways, a unanimously good cause which is becoming more and more important as world population increases and the environment comes under more and more threat.
It doesn't require any faith or belief in made up deities. It doesn't make false promises of a wonderful afterlife but instead focuses on preservation of the earth for your own ancestors - something which could be considered a more motivating goal than eternal afterlife.
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 the meantime, if we really need a community support group without the superstition and hoopla, I guess there is always the possibility of joining a street gang....
Military has a code. Street gangs have codes. There is something about a shared and enforced set of rules, however inflexible, that binds people together.
And the answer is - no, it is not.
Rituals, let's just call them recurrent events, are a great way to bring people together. When people get together lots of good things can happen. However it has to be tied to something that people care about, not just some made-up gathering without purpose. The ancient greek agora comes to mind.
I think it provides a really interesting answer to the problem: "If we don't have God to talk about, then what the hello are we doing here?". Their answer is to focus on how to live better lives and they tackle the problem in a way that's very smart and contemporary.
http://www.theschooloflife.com/london/
No thanks. This is the first thing I started to dislike about being raised Catholic, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.
Also see sports as ritual, fellowship with the boys coming over and grill some brats and burgers while consuming mind altering substances while watching a ritual. Burnt Offering. Stereotypical non-sports party is almost as ritualistic.
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.
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.
[1] http://www.humanism.ie [2] http://corkhumanists.weebly.com/
[0] http://lesswrong.com/lw/8x5/ritual_report_nyc_less_wrong_sol...
However, from a Catholic religious perspective, crosses are all the more bearable as one learns to experience them as a means of personal sanctification (closer personal union with Christ crucified) and an opportunity to practice and grow in virtue – "dying to self" more and more so that joyful generosity truly becomes the rule of life. In this way, community-life-as-a-cross becomes a means for both individual and community to give glory to God and work toward the salvation of souls.
Can secular motives truly substitute for that transcendent motive and outlook? I certainly think it's an interesting question.
In the american north west, I have met many secular art-festival goers, academics/research scientists, swingers, like-sports fans, and community living persons who have total support from their communities. The groups that I've seen most supportive are very inviting, but don't actually recruit at all, nor advertise themselves much.
Make a non-profit startup that organizes secular communities via a website and an app. People can search for others in their area to join communities and help out or ask for help. To donate money or apply for grants to be helped. You can even have educational secular communities that teach programming and other IT skills.
Just search for people and communities nearby by zip code and all of that stuff.
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. Philosophy meetups in a bar just don't quite do it for me.
Personally, I think that we've given up a lot more that we think by giving up religion.
I think The School of Life does a good job of tackling this problem. They're not religious, but they've created a community of people who want to actively question and improve how they live in a deeper way than most regular, secular people do.
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.
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.
It is unfortunately a bit abused by people using the community for career promotion or commercial advantages due to the solidarity among people belonging to this community. Religious comunities display the same perversion.
The reading of the OP's article made it clear to me that our occidental societies are apparently in a strong cultural evolution. I share the conclusion of the author.
Irrationality, dogmas and beliefs have still too much legitimate space in our society. It is a disease when it is used to justify inhuman actions.
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.
[0] http://sundayassemblysiliconvalley.org/ [1] https://eastbay.sundayassembly.com/ [2] https://sundayassembly.com/assemblies/
In the same vein, look at how the article's second recommendation, "Appeal to all kinds of people", which is described as a "necessary aspiration", is utterly unadorned with empirical proof. We can assume that diversity is rather just a strong part of the value set of the researcher's own community.
"The PCP philosophy, which we call "Metasystem Transition Theory", is systemic and evolutionary, based on the spontaneous emergence of higher levels of organization or control (metasystem transitions) through blind variation and natural selection."
In any case, I do not share author's optimism. Believing in supernatural is not that bad; what is bad is we-vs-them mentality, fanaticism (you don't need a religion, but an ideology); and rituals, while comforting, tend to froze progress.
I'm intrigued that he suggests secular communities should "put fellowship first" and "appeal to all kinds of people" in order to do so, when the traditional religious communities that he says succeed don't set out to do those things.
In a functional Christian church (and granted, many US churches are not), the community's shared goal is to love and serve God and the people around them.
The community, and any appeal it has, are side effects.
This shared goal comes straight from the Bible. If you read the whole thing, you'll find the theme appears throughout, but Jesus espouses it very clearly in Matthew: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2022:36...
As a Christian who grew up in the church, and has watched various Christian communities function (and sometimes dysfunction), I think this belief, at the very core of Christianity, is exactly what makes many churches wonderful communities.
Each member of the church believes that the crafter of particle physics, the shaper of Mount Everest, the painter of the auroras, loves them so intensely that he took on human form and died to save them from the worst decisions they have made, the betrayals that devastated their friends, family, themselves, and him.
You may think that belief is ludicrous, and that we are naive, irrational fools for holding it.
Even so, it should be clear that those who believe it would feel compelled to follow that example, as much as they can. Caring for others that well is nigh-impossible, but it's the unattainable standard a church strives for.
Many churches have long forgotten what they once believed. Even when it's remembered, humans remain frail as ever. It is not easy to put others before yourself even when you like them, let alone when they belittle and insult you.
When it works, though, it's amazing to see.
I think that's why few secular communities or institutions have outlasted the Christian church. Right or wrong, the Christian vision has caring for others as an essential imperative.
That seems to me to be the very essence of a community.
I may be blinded by my bias, but I don't see how an explicitly secular organization could have as rich a community.
It cannot point to the perfect exemplar of their ideals and say "This is how you should strive to be." It cannot say "The earth and its works will be unmade and remade, but the communities you forge now will live into eternity."
"If we don't make better communities, we'll be sadder before we die" just doesn't seem as compelling.
You can arrange a secular org around any set of beliefs you want, but it's accepted what might serve the needs of the group could change, and at any rate you have a right to question it. Questioning is easier, and the inclusionary imperative is stronger.
Hospitals are also too quickly forgotten: Catholic and Masonic.
There was also a great article in The Economist recently (linked on HN?) about cheap & effective market schooling in the third world.
On the other hand, if the religious communities seem to be more fit enough that they are worth emulating, maybe that says something about evolution.
Disclaimer: I find evolution completely unpersuasive. The article just seems weird, like maybe the author has discovered a flaw in evolution without realizing it, but I can't quite describe why I find it weird.
Sunday Assembly in London looks interesting, I just might join. Everyone needs a prophet.
Nah.
No, no, please. Castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful guys.