We should stop trying to be "sheep"

[zarus tathra]

Wherever I go, I see atheists trying to be Christians. They form groups, they proselytize, they hold meetings on Sundays.

We're not Christians. And i don't mean that in the obvious, literal sense. I mean that Christianity and atheism are complete opposites from a sociological standpoint.

Christianity is something that can only really exist with the help of priesthoods. People like to talk about how their particular denomination of Christianity is a special little snowflake, but everybody knows that if the Catholic Church with all its priests and funding and scholars and history were to disappear, Christianity would vanish from the Earth in like 10 years and would probably degenerate into something resembling New Age spirituality. It is a conclusion that is so outlandish and overbuilt that it can not possibly be arrived at privately. It can only come about with the help of vast, ubiquitous institutions and years of indoctrination, both subtle and overt in character.

Atheism, on the other hand, is generally something that is arrived at privately. The typical atheist is a "lone wolf," someone who sees himself as being "lost in the woods." As such, atheism does not take naturally to herd behavior in the way that Christianity does, which itself is nothing if not a PRODUCT of herd behavior.

General Sherman, a Union general during the Civil War, found himself losing battle after battle trying to herd his army of individualistic mountain men and hunters and farm boys the same way the Confederate generals herded their trained soldiers. It wasn't until he let them loose and used tactics that were more suited to their temperaments that he began to really win. I say that we should do the same. We should play "guerrilla war." Not because they outnumber us, but because that's just how we roll. If we outnumbered them, holding meetings on Sundays and having hugboxes would be just as unnatural to us as it is now.

What I propose is that we do the same as the Chinese motorcycle parts industry. Western industry revolves around detailed, mathematically precise plans that never end up conforming to the physical world. The Chinese motorcycle parts industry, on the other hand, compiled a list of standards and suggestions that could be used or ignored by individual suppliers at will. In the 90's, it was weak like all other Chinese industries were. Now, it supplies more than 50% of the world's motorcycle parts.

tl;dr Instead of plans and organizations, we should have protocols, rules of thumb that are easy for small groups and individual atheists to adopt.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

So where do you get this idea religion is ever going to wither on the vine?

[zarus tathra]

What do you mean by that? I don't think the Catholic Church or similar institutions will ever disappear without our help. They're just too big and too firmly entrenched for that. I'm just saying that if those institutions just vanished without a trace, Christianity would have no center of gravity. Nobody would be printing Bibles and handing them out for free. Everybody would have their own conflicting interpretations of everything, and there'd be no Mother Church to step and and harmonize the variations.

[Solitary]

We are human and by nature social, and has nothing to do with religion or atheism, but everything to do with evolution. Atheist meet ups are nothing like religious meet ups, and sure as hell aren't atheists trying to be like Christians but human beings sharing information, not proselytizing atheism.  And religion will not disappear with or without our help because it is pragmatic and works for many.:-?  Friedrich Nietzsche went insane because of his beliefs, not because of his disbelief in God. Solitary

[AllPurposeAtheist]

Pretty speculative zarus.. The word IF seems more like wishful or even magical thinking. The church isn't disappearing any time soon so I'm not engaging in mental masturbation of IF the church just magically disappears.

[zarus tathra]

I think you completely missed the point of my post, which is that atheism and Christianity are fundamentally different for reasons other than theology (or the lack thereof) and that we should stop pretending otherwise.

[Plu]

The only reason you know atheists who congregate like that is because you still live in a country dominated by religious folk.

In the Netherlands the whole idea of starting an atheist gathering would be ridiculous. If you want to start a gathering; you pick an actual subject. But that's primarily because we have loads of atheists and clubs for all sorts of stuff, so no reason to create an atheist club.

[zarus tathra]

So what are some guerrilla tactics that work on Xtians? Do we really even want to destroy them?

And I personally think that atheist groups are ridiculous as well.

[Solitary]

The only reason you know atheists who congregate like that is because you still live in a country dominated by religious folk.

In the Netherlands the whole idea of starting an atheist gathering would be ridiculous. If you want to start a gathering; you pick an actual subject. But that's primarily because we have loads of atheists and clubs for all sorts of stuff, so no reason to create an atheist club.

That's not the reason I do. I just want to socialize with like minded people, like being on this forum.  :-? I sort of agree with you in the sense that we do it do get away from the religious nuts that take their religion too serious and proselytize in every social gathering here. We need more coffee shops here like you have, and then we wouldn't need atheist meet up groups because all the uptight self-righteous theist wouldn't go there mongool. :shock:   Just yanking your chain!  Solitary

[stromboli]

Meeting as a group isn't the same as meeting under a set of dogmatic rules that serve to modify our behavior. A town business meeting is not a church gathering. There are differences. I don't have a problem with groups meeting for social reasons or for informational purposes, it is when you start electing officers and appointing leaders is the time I leave.

[aileron]

The only reason you know atheists who congregate like that is because you still live in a country dominated by religious folk.

Not really.  We live in a country where it's still popular to claim that you're a religious person even when you're not.  This is probably a lingering relic of the Cold War as anti-communist ferver fused religion and patriotism vs. the godless commies.  As an example of how it's popular to claim to be more religious than you are, nearly 80% of Americans when polled will claim that they go to church at least once a month, but statisticians have solid evidence that only about 25% of Americans actually do.  Most people in the USA are fairly ambivalent about religion; it's just that a minority of the 25% who do go to church every week are loudmouth idiots.  In a nation of 310 million, even small percentages add up fast.

[Plu]

The only reason you know atheists who congregate like that is because you still live in a country dominated by religious folk.

In the Netherlands the whole idea of starting an atheist gathering would be ridiculous. If you want to start a gathering; you pick an actual subject. But that's primarily because we have loads of atheists and clubs for all sorts of stuff, so no reason to create an atheist club.

That's not the reason I do. I just want to socialize with like minded people, like being on this forum.  :-? I sort of agree with you in the sense that we do it do get away from the religious nuts that take their religion too serious and proselytize in every social gathering here. We need more coffee shops here like you have, and then we wouldn't need atheist meet up groups because all the uptight self-righteous theist wouldn't go there mongool. :shock:   Just yanking your chain!  Solitary

Well the thing is that if you start an atheist club in the Netherlands you wouldn't get like minded people, you'd just get a random slice of society, with a potential extra amount of loudmouths and un-sociable and/or lonely folk :P

You'd be better off finding a science or philosophy gathering.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

Really zarus? Do you really think we're all that different? I don't. Theism is just one very small aspect of who people really are. I socialize with plenty of theists. I don't attend churches, but I can't escape their influence. I'm fine separating my religious or non religious views from the other aspects of life without feeling 'special' as an atheist.

[zarus tathra]

It doesn't take a genius to realize that certain social behaviors correlate well with some theologies/metaphors and not nearly so well with others.

[Solitary]

And how do theist social gatherings differ from atheist ones outside of a church gathering and more or less correlate?  :-?  Solitary