A Life Without Religion: Lack of Community

The day I became an atheist was terrifying. I had really taken to heart some nonsense that had been preached by a well-meaning fellow named Rick Warren. He'd told me that without faith, I wouldn't have either meaning in life or a reason to be moral. It only took about two weeks of not being religious for these fears to abate so much that the articulation of them soon became an obvious absurdity.

But that's to say that the transition to secular humanism was without it's costs. One of the things I've come to miss most since leaving religion is the sense of community one of has when part of a religious organization. 

A healthy religious community functions a lot like an extended family. It's a place for mutual encourage, the pooling of resources and a place to find deep friendships. To is so true that many of my most valued friendships are those I found through my religious associations, even those most of these friends are no longer religious. 

When I first realized my need for this kind of community, I started looking for secular humanist communities in which to participate. I found the Universalist Unitarians to be too traditionally religious for my liking and generally found other groups to be sectarian about their atheism in a way that reminded me too much of the religious cult I'd grown up in. I didn't leave one form of toxic community in order to join another - even if I my ideas were more aligned with the new community.

Only, maybe they never were. I think that one of the main problems with both communities was the idea that we're justified by our beliefs concerning the nature of the universe. I couldn't have articulated this all those years ago, but I think that being justified by one beliefs is the exact opposite of virtue. Most people can make themselves believe just about anything if they believe that belief will be advantageous to them somehow.

This has left me in an unfortunate place. I want the sort of community one tends to find as a member of a religious organization, without the extra baggage associated with religion.