onegoodmove

Do Atheists Need a Church of Their Own? -- Hell No!

Maybe we could all just start a book club or a weekly Atheist happy hour.

I hate the word client/consumer. I think it's use came out of perceived paternalism from bad doctors. Usually very bad doctors. This complaint has some justification. The reason I feel that we should stick with patients is that doctors have a higher responsibility towards their patients than any other profession has towards their clients. I mean we can't take holidays without finding someone to replace yourselves, you have to cover your patients 24 hours a day 65 days a year. You have to see patients even if they cannot or will not pay you if they are seriously ill. You cannot turn away a truly ill patient. You treat patients that spit at you, assault you, swear at you. You do this because as a doctor has a duty to care and relieve suffering. Medicine is becoming more and more just a business and believe me you do not want doctors just thinking of you as a client, you want them to have a higher responsibility for you as a patient.

Maybe we could all just start a book club

I'm in.

I'm in.

Me too.

I'm in.

Me too.

Sunday mornings are time for sleeping and political shows, Tuesday evenings work for everybody?

Sunday mornings are time for sleeping and political shows, Tuesday evenings work for everybody?

Are you suggesting meeting? I was thinking we would just all read the same book and use the 1GM site as the nexus. Norm posts a poll for us to pick the next book, and we review it in a thread a week/month later? Something like that?

Wow, These "attacks" on Obama are getting pretty funny:

Lawrence Lessig defending someone's elses right to use a song for parody, shows a video of a dancing jesus being hit by a bus using the copyrighted song "I will survive". Lawrence Lessig also supports barack Obama for his stance on Copyright and fair use. Therefore, Obama is supported by an anti-christian zealot.

Are you suggesting meeting?

I was mostly just kidding with that. Although I think the article also seemed to imply that atheists lack the weekly social interaction with a group of like minded people that those that go to church get. So internet based book clubs might not solve our problems.

"Bring It On II" - I read an op-ed the other day that put forth the idea that such "dares" are meant to fan the flames and keep the fire burning so that the war can continue. There is no sign this administration actually wants the war in Iraq to end and after all their "errors" it's getting hard to believe anyone could actually be so incompetent that they'd screw up every single time they woke up in the morning.

I'd never thought about these taunts as being intentional methods of continuing the war but after letting the idea ferment in my skull for a few days it has begun making more logical sense. What do y'all think?

I was mostly just kidding with that.

Ah, sorry. Work is numbing me today.

What I don't like about the notion of churches is the idea that moral and ethical debate should be reserved to a special meeting and not integrated to all aspects of life.

Atheists don't need our our church, we need our own pub. As evidenced in Greensburg, KS when there was a tornado that wiped out 90% of the town one of the few buildings standing was the bar, no churches remained.

So those who are on the fence and worried about offending a god can still come to the Atheist get togethers and feel safe that god protects bars.

using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises

I hate when that happens.

Do Atheists Need a Church of Their Own?

I've stated here before that I'm jealous of the community that religions enjoy. We should really organize.

I think the rational godless people should certainly organize. I think there is quite a bit of room for an organization that meets periodically to:

• build community;
• spread charity;
• give inspirational talks;
• discuss interesting (sometimes academic) topics;
• teach historically and anthropologically accurate comparative religion occasionally.

Many churches do exactly this. However, I would strongly oppose the word "church" and all of the baggage that also comes with it, including:

• irrational dogma;
• arbitrary proscriptions to attendees for living their lives;
• condemnation of those who believe differently;
• wishy-washy, mealy-mouthed and bland boring topics that put 50% of attendees to sleep on a Sunday morning.

I would love to find a community center that had the first list and avoided the second list. I think it would be a great way to find new friends, remind ourselves about what good we can do as community, find people to date, organize to push universal social principles (like assisting the impoverished), etc. And organizing it around a common thread of rational discourse would part of it. Just imagine a community charity organization that gave a much scaled down version of a TED talk topic every week or every month. Wouldn't that be cool?

Just don't call it a church.