Chris: I don’t identify with the Brights at all. I don’t think I saw a single person who approved of the choice of the name, other than the Brights themselves. There are just so… many… things… wrong… with it. It manages to be self-congratulatory, arrogant, insulting and counter-productive all at once. And people thought scientists were supposed to be smart.

Interesting list of games there, although most don’t seem like that much fun!

Brooke: I completely agree with the distinction you make. The interesting thing is how people’s lives are shifting between those different areas. While in the past, ‘church’, ‘religion’ and ‘organised religion’ were all a single thing, nowadays they mean very different things. You can go to church without being religious, and vice versa – and that church may not belong to part of a larger organisation.

It’s interesting to look at religions other than Christianity. One of my friends is Jewish, and when I was talking to her about this subject, she told me how wonderful it was to be able to visit a completely foreign city and simply drop in at a synagogue to meet people, get advice, and generally say hello. Clearly this is a more extreme example than Christianity, which doesn’t have quite the same solidarity or cohesion as Judaism, but it’s telling that there really is *no* analog for atheists. The implicit trust that exists within those communities is staggering.

Sure, you could pretend that online social networks or coachsurfing are substitutes, but let’s face it, we all know that a ‘friend’ in those networks can mean nothing when many people have hundreds and you can add – or remove – them with a single click.

What’s more interesting are the thousands and millions of miniature communities that are springing up on the web around niche interests. I’ve been more to a few real world meetups of online communities such as Metafilter and Unfiction, and clearly those communities have built up a lot of trust. But ultimately, they mostly pale in comparison to what you get from real world communities that expect more than just posting on a forum.
You have to work and make sacrifices in any church in order to get something out, but as the cliche goes, the more you put in, the more you get out. Atheists don’t want to put anything in.

There’s a Universal Unitarian church just down the road from the home I grew up in. The concept of a humanist church sounded intriguing, but then I saw the episode of the Simpsons where Maude Flander died. Bart and the Flanders kids are playing a game of ‘Billy Graham’s Bible Blaster’, where you’re trying to convert heathens using a holy Bible gun.

Bart: Ooh, full conversion!
Rod: No, you just winged him and made him a Unitarian

That’s the way I feel about Unitarians. It’s pretty wishy-washy stuff that doesn’t address the issue of religion at all. I might abhor the methods of Dawkins, but I still don’t believe in any religion and I don’t think it’s necessary.

There is a way of having an institution that has all the positive parts of churches, but without religion. It just takes a lot of work, and it needs people to make a stand, not just for what they *don’t* believe in, but for what they *do* believe in.

I’m not sure how popular the Universal Unitarians are in the UK, they’re fairly easy to find in the more liberal areas in the US. A lot of people refer to them as the church for Athiests. They seem to recognize and celebrate the wide variety of beliefs held by people. And, because of that, they tend to talk in terms of moral guidance rather than a religious guidance. Which makes it much more Agnostic and Athiest-friendly. There’s a definite need or market for such an organization.

I was taken aback. This was exactly the sort of thing I do for a living, and yet I’d never had the opportunity to help out on such a fun event for kids.

The other day I was googling for sick twisted games (for entirely honourable, properly nefarious purposes) and was rather surprised to see that the top page was a list of suggestions for games that might be played at a youth ministry session at a church. Surprisingly aggressive stuff – but onward, Christian soldiers, and all that.