Religion without God

Credit: AFP-JIJI

Credit: AFP-JIJI

I realize that people seem to have some kind of innate urge to congregate in like-minded groups — and the recent success of the so-called The Sunday Assembly shows as much — but nonbelievers holding what can only be called “church” services seems a bit over the top to me. After all, part of the criticism of religion in the first place is the zombie-like ritualism. And now, nonbelievers in Boston have also started a “church.” Like standard church services at First Baptist in Anytown, USA, these programs are replete with music, announcements, speakers and collection plates. The only difference: no God.

That’s not exactly a small omission. In any case, I think it can be beneficial for fellow nonbelievers to hold “meetups” in their communities to make friends with people who have similar experiences, since the path from faith to nonbelief is often fraught with difficulties, but I see a problematic distinction between merely hanging out with fellow skeptics and freethinkers in a public setting and forming congregations that do all the “churchy” stuff in the same way that it would be odd for a bunch of scientists to congregate and literally sing praises to the cosmos. I say this is problematic because no matter how much these atheist churches tout love, fellowship and community betterment — and kudos to them for it — adhering to rituals as a body of like-minded individuals can lead, in my view, to a kind of institutionalized, provincial mentality that is at the heart of organized religion. For proof of this, we need to look no further than the estimated 41,000 denominations just within Christianity, not to mention the local congregations that have suffered schism after schism based on an individual interpretation of laws or church practices. Of course, atheists do not have to worry about different interpretations of any holy book, and they most likely have more ideological similarities than differences, but when nonbelievers begin forming churches, it would seemingly create — again, and in reverse — a dichotomy between us, the churchgoers, versus them, the Sunday drifters.

Harmful? Certainly not. The potential for parochialism? Yes.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Too bad …

there is no hell for the scant few Westboro Baptist Church members that are still left. Margie Phelps, who has 6,300 followers, only managed two “retweets” of her toxic tweet yesterday morning, and one of them was from the pastor of this “church,” Fred Phelps (cult is more accurate).

I won’t dignify her message with a repost, but it called for picketing in Connecticut of all places. Sick fucks.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Georgia lawmaker living in Dark Ages

Georgia Rep. Paul Broun spoke recently Liberty Baptist Church in Hartwell and had these enlightening words for the flock:

God‘s word is true. I’ve come to understand that. All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and Big Bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell. And it’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who are taught that from understanding that they need a savior.

I would understand if Broun might claim that evolution and the Big Bang were from the “pit of hell” given his particularly nutty brand of rightwing skulduggery, but as a medical doctor, he would say that embryology, “the science dealing with the formation, development,structure, and functional activities of embryos”  is of the devil? Just bizarre. Even more peculiar, this supposed anti-scientific lawmaker sits on the state’s House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. Oh, the irony.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Southern Baptist Convention’s struggle for relevancy

This essay is lengthy but well worth a read about how the Southern Baptist Convention is in the process of rebranding itself to be more “marketable” here in the year 2012, you know, roughly 1,979 years after Christ supposedly said that “this generation” will not pass for the kingdom of God will come (also Matthew 16:28). It opens:

The Southern Baptist Convention is a force to be reckoned with. As the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, with over 45,000 affiliate churches, it have been shaping and channeling conservative Christian sensibilities since the Civil War, when Southern Baptists split from the North so they could advocate on behalf of slave owners. They fought to keep slavery and lost. Then they fought for Jim Crow laws and lost. Then they fought for segregation and lost.  Now, faced with eroding membership, the Southern Baptist leaders are fighting against irrelevance. Unfortunately, they have committed to a strategy that will make it harder for their members – and for all of us—to move toward a future based on collaboration, compassion and practical solutions to real-world problems. …

and closes:

… Whether they win or lose from the standpoint of re-filling church pews and bank accounts remains to be seen. What is regrettable, either way, is that by choosing to be competitive they have once again pitted themselves against the moral arc of history. Whether humanity can flourish in the 21st century will depend largely on whether we can move beyond competition to collaboration. Population growth, resource depletion and weapons technology have carried us to the point that there are fewer and fewer “winnable” competitions. Humanity desperately needs to find common ground in our shared moral core and dreams for our children. Just as they did on the questions of slavery and the full humanity of women, the Southern Baptists have positioned themselves as moral dead weight, which is a loss for us all. — Conservative Christianity’s Marketing Gimmick to Keep Its Old-Time, Heaven-and-Hell Religion Afloat

Terry Jones: wannabe media jewel?

Article first published as Terry Jones: Wannabe Media Jewel? on Blogcritics.

***

And so, thankfully, we hear that Terry Jones, the much-condemned pastor of Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Fla., will not, at least in the immediate future, oversee a Koran book-burning party that would have, according to any person with a functioning brain, and also to senior officials in the U.S. Military, sparked widespread protest and possibly widespread harm to American soldiers and even other Americans.

As is The New York Times‘ typical style, the newspaper is out ahead of any other potential angles related to this story. Surrounding this foray is a sense that Dove World Outreach Center is attempting, in a quite macabre and dangerous way, to gain some notoriety for itself. As we have already seen (see my related post) the congregation numbers about 50 people. Most very active but humble congregations range from 100-1,000 members, some more. But in this case, we are talking about a 50-person congregation. That’s a small number.

As the Times notes, “Mr. Jones was able to put himself at the center of those issues by using the news lull of summer and the demands of a 24-hour news cycle to promote his anti-Islam cause. He said he consented to more than 150 interview requests in July and August … By the middle of this week, the planned Koran burning was the lead story on some network newscasts, and topic No. 1 on cable news – an extraordinary amount of attention for a marginal figure with a very small following.”

Thus, correctly, the Times notes that a very, very – and I would add another “very” – small congregation that matters not in any substantial way has, for some reason, garnered the attention of not only the leader of the free world, but of the international community.

Since Jones’ plan of Koran-burning is problematic on so many levels, to the extent that it could have put his congregation and many Americans in jeopardy, it leads me to believe that it was, at least on some level, a subversive and also a very dumb and selfish attempt to gain attention for his very small church as much as anything else.