Atheism For Dummies (For Dummies (Religion & Spirituality)) (92 page)

“I miss the feeling of connection and common purpose.”

“I miss feeling a part of something greater than myself.”

“The fellowship and feeling of community is about the only thing I miss about church.”

Fellowship, community, joining, belonging — why, it’s the same list of reasons people actually go to church!

There’s no end to the fascinating experiments in humanist community going on right now. A group called the Fellowship of Freethought unites more than 700 humanists and atheists in the Dallas, Texas area around a busy calendar of volunteering, improving their community, learning, and connecting with others. Texas is a particular proving ground for these unique communities, including the North Texas Church of Freethought, the Houston Church of Freethought, Atheists Helping the Homeless in Austin and Dallas, and many more. Scores of other nontheist groups across the United States are discovering the satisfaction of these other aspects of community, from the Humanist Community at Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to the Fellowship of Humanity in Oakland, California.

Finding other tribes

Many atheists and humanists talk about being “citizens of the world.” It’s a beautiful, positive way of getting past the us-versus-them mentality that causes so much grief between people. But I also have an undeniable human desire to find a tribe, a smaller group of people who are like me in some meaningful way. I need a community I can wrap my head around, one that gives me a sense of belonging.

I felt this in a big way during my first few weeks as a freshman in college. I was one of 32,000 undergraduates, and I felt lost. (Think of the way the word “lost” is used in religious terms, and you can start to see the human needs under the surface.)

But I wasn’t just one of 32,000. I was also part of the college marching band, an organization of 160 students with more than a century of traditions, a common purpose, even its own values and principles, one that met on a regular basis and accomplished things together. It was my tribe. Sometimes when I’d walk across campus, I’d start to feel lost in the sea of humanity — then I’d see another bandsman and
boom!
I had an identity, a tribal connection.

You’ve probably experienced the same thing. Though different people feel the pull of community to different degrees, people are social, tribal animals, and belonging to some special, graspable corner of the human community can be really helpful. Sometimes I don’t need it. When I’m feeling confident and successful, I can wade out into the world on my own with no problem. But when I’m feeling less confident, when things aren’t going as well and the world’s treating me like something sticky on the bottom of its shoe, that’s when I seek out that special corner of people who care about and are connected to me.

For many people, church community provides this special corner, a tribe connected by shared beliefs. For others, including atheists, the glue of community can be a shared interest, such as hiking or volunteering or making music. Community can be a matter of geography, like neighbors in a neighborhood, or fans of the home football team. It can revolve around stated values, like the UU principles I mention earlier in this chapter (“Experimenting with humanist community”). Or it can simply be the connection and support of a close, caring family.

There’s a downside to tribalism, of course. It can divide people — by beliefs, language, culture, nationality, whatever — and set them against each other. One of the biggest complaints many atheists have about religion is its strong tendency to do exactly that, dividing Catholics from Protestants, believers from nonbelievers, the saved from the damned. The best expressions of religion and irreligion alike work hard to widen the tribal circle to include all of humanity, even as individuals continue to define their own little comfortable corners of the tribe. Striking that balance, with or without religion, is one of the challenges of modern human life.

Celebrating Special Days

Like most people, nonbelievers enjoy the way celebrations of all kinds — birthdays, holidays, rites of passage — shape the curve of the year, mark life’s most meaningful moments, and connect people to other people, other years, and other times in their lives. There’s no end to the variety of ways nonreligious people can and do celebrate these special days without a hint of religion. I discuss a few of these ways in the following sections.

Enjoying the holidays

Holidays are a perfect opportunity to take the best of a religious concept and leave the theistic parts behind.

Many holidays were originally holy days. But any holy day that relates to natural human needs and emotions eventually develops a secular version as well, while the more specialized or weird holy days stay in an obscure corner of the church calendar. So the Feast of St. Polycarp, patron saint against earaches and dysentery, is a holy day but not a holiday, while the feast of St. Valentine, patron saint of love and marriage, makes the crossing to a secular celebration. And why not? Good things are worth borrowing. (Valentine was also patron saint of the plague, but very few chocolates are exchanged on that theme.)

Consider these holidays and perspectives:

Thanksgiving:
It’s a particular favorite of mine. You may have heard that the hardest moment for an atheist is when he feels grateful but has no one to thank? Honestly, this isn’t a problem. I’m a very lucky and deeply grateful guy, and I’ve never had any trouble finding real live people to thank. Even when the thing I’m grateful for doesn’t have a human origin — a sunrise, my health, a quiet forest — there’s no problem saying, “Wow, I’m so grateful” without having to point that gratitude
at
someone. And I love having a whole holiday to focus and express the unending gratitude I feel for this wonderful, astonishing life.

Christmas:
I’m also a big fan of Christmas, as are most of the atheists I know. Not all, of course — search online for
Tom Flynn Christmas
for the best atheist arguments against the holiday. But those atheists who enjoy it have no trouble doing so without a hint of religion. Honestly, I was about ten years old before I even found out there was a religious version.