We can attack religion all day long and not get anywhere with the general public. Here’s why: Your local church is entrenched in everyone’s community. And it can be a church or mosque or temple. It doesn’t matter. It is the center of the community in a whole hell of a lot of places.

The older I get the more I see this from family, friends and neighbors. None of them are hardcore religious fanatics, but these “regular” people are the ones who give religious institutions their power. Yeah, the really hard core religious people are the ones who get the headlines, but average parishioners who give their weekly donation and go to church a couple of times a month are the ones who fill the coffers of the various churches around the country and around the world.

Why do these people go? Again, most average people aren’t hard core religious fanatics. They aren’t trying to follow every last word of the Bible. But they also aren’t trying to push those ideas on peoples throat either. They aren’t the “bad” kind of religious people. But they go to church because ultimately life is hard. And boring. And lonely. And average people just feel the need to have a sense of community. It doesn’t matter where that place is, but people are social animals and need a certain level of human interaction once in a while. A community church gives them that. It gives them a place to get married. And to hold funerals in. There might be a local strawberry festival at the church where they see their aunt Mary or at service every few weeks where they see that cute girl they have been trying to build up the nerve to talk to. People don’t have a ton of those opportunities elsewhere. They really don’t. Once you are out of college, the number of friends you have drops dramatically and the opportunities to make new ones drops even more. You aren’t typically going to be going out to the bars every week past your 30s and asking someone out at a grocery story is creepy. Worse yet is trying to make friends or find partners at work. Your ability to actually socialize is incredibly limited after a certain age and church is a very easy way to do that.

But it isn’t just a way to socialize. When a flood hits or there’s a fire or some other disaster, a church is an easy location to organize these things. Some places use it as a voting location. It is an easy way for the church to embed itself into the community.

So why am I saying all these things? Because if atheists really want to rid the world of religion, it has to give people an alternative to the local church. Atheist groups should hold festivals. You don’t need to push the atheist-angle, but give people something to do and somewhere to go. If some building collapses and people are out of a house, try to organize shelter for them. Hold gathering celebrations for your town’s centennial or something along those lines. Make it a regular event that gives folks a sense of community that isn’t tied to a religious event.

I realize that very few people (if anyone) will actually read this, but as someone who has despised religion for a long, long time I see the uphill battle that atheists fight and unfortunately we fight the wrong people. The older I get, I realize that fighting the hard core religious fanatics is a waste of time. Giving the average people an alternative to going to church is the single best way to attack religion. No one event, no matter how heinous (i.e. priests and kids) will kill off a church, but a slow decline in attendance over the years will.

  • Hazdaz@lemmy.worldOP
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    1 year ago

    They will always cling onto the remaining percentages because there are few (if any) alternatives to the social events that I mentioned.

    Where do atheists hold a funeral service? Even non religious people hold funerals at a church versus a funeral home.
    I know that some people get married at a town hall or maybe at a beach or similar, but the vast majority of non-religious people (maybe not full atheists, but people that just don’t think about religion) still get married in a church.
    Yearly festivals or weekly bingo night.

    I see it in a lot of the people that I know. They aren’t pushy with their religion and these are the folks that could easily be convinced to simply stop going if only there was an alternative. But they enjoy the social interaction. A weekly gathering to see long time friends and family. They wouldn’t see these people otherwise. Atheism just don’t offer an alternative and religion will cling to these events for a long, long time and remain a part of everyone’s community.

    • Leraje@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Crematoriums in the uk are non denominational. If youre religious, then a priest officiates. If not, a humanist or whatever.

      I think you might be seeing American xtianity as representative of the whole. But even in America, a time will come in the next 60 years or so when xtians aren’t anything but a minority. Services will change, things will move on. Its inevitable.

      • Hazdaz@lemmy.worldOP
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        1 year ago

        I am not nearly as hopeful as you in thinking that it is an inevitability.

        In fact, I see things like this working like a pendulum. Throughout our history (in the US, but elsewhere as well) you swing from a time of a lot of religious support to times of low religious support. And back and forth.

        Much of it tied to the things that are happening in the rest of life and society. For instance, the cold war brought renewed faith in the US as the evil communists were sold as being unreligious (so being their enemies, we had to do the opposite). On the flip side, during the Enlightenment when new scientific discoveries were being made left and right, religious power was greatly diminished. Then of course when we are having difficult times like the Great Depression, people tend to look for some kind of help and religion is part of that for many. Again, I think there has been a downward spiral in religiosity in the US overall, but the pendulum can easily swing the other way with the rise of these fascist fucks who are trying to radicalize people and one way is to manipulate religion.

        • Leraje@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Sure, there’s always periodic swings, but overall the graph is heading steadily downward for xtians. Over 90% of US citizens identified as christians in the early 90’s. It’s now 63% and at the same time, atheists have risen from practically zero to nearly 30%.

          Globally, the same pattern is seen and whilst they’ll always be periodic swings up and down, overall the global trend is still going down and there’s no real reason to suppose that will reverse.

          Islam on the other hand, is growing. It’ll probably outstrip xtianity worldwide sometime in the next 25-30 years and atheism will probably decline overall as Islam increases.

    • Tavarin@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Where do atheists hold a funeral service?

      In the case of my grandfather, at my dad’s house.