This is the sort of thing I’ve been advocating all along:
…A place where people can form a community, contribute to charity, participate in activities, etc, WITHOUT the magic daddy figure in the clouds overshadowing everything.
I dunno if I’d use the word “church”; I’ve been thinking along the lines of simply “community center”… but as long as it’s clear this is NOT religious, if the word “church” helps people understand the concept, I think I’m OK with it.
I understand the argument against using the word though — an “atheist church” just feeds the “See! Atheism is a religion! So there’s no such thing as separation of church and state, it’s either THEIR church or OUR church!” argument…
And it DOES feel like fighting the battle on “their ground”…
What do you guys think?
4 comments
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Don
March 12, 2013 at 8:38 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
In our community a secular, church-like entity would have a lot of overlap with the Unitarian Fellowship.
John
March 15, 2013 at 12:01 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
I don’t care to use the term “church” (or “temple,” “mosque,” “synagogue,” or the like) to refer to an atheist or secular organization or meeting place. It can cause confusion, and gives ammunition to those religious people who assert that “atheism is just another religion.”
A meeting place that is open to all and neutral on the issue of religious belief might well be called a “Community Center.”
A meeting place sponsored by an atheist/Humanist/freethought group would better be named to reflect its sponsorship, such as “Humanist House,” “Atheist Center,” or “Freethought Hall.”
Reed
March 15, 2013 at 2:20 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
John:
Were you logged in when you replied to this? (Did it ask you to enter an email address?)
WordPress asked me to approve your comment for posting; I shouldn’t have had to do that…
John
March 15, 2013 at 2:42 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Reed–
Yeah, I was logged in. Nope, it didn’t ask for an email address. I was surprised when it didn’t post right away. I was going to ask you about this.
By the way, this “Leave a Reply” box is partly covered by the “Categories” box at the right. This is hiding a small amount of the text I’m typing now. (I’m using Firefox.)
Could the name of the “Atheism” category be expanded to “Atheism/Humanism”?
–John