Atheist church has first schism

[Multivac]

One of these groups needs the words People and Judea somewhere in their title for it to make any sense

Splitter!

 

[chillzero]

Although, to be fair, it seems from the outside that you meet on the same day as Christians and with the singing and sermons, that what goes on apes religious services. And I've often seen them described by advocates as for people who aren't religious but who miss the social aspects of belonging to a church - in other words, I've seen them described as church substitutes.

*shrug* for some attendees, that is doubtless true. I don't see why that should be a problem. It still does not make it a church, let alone an atheist one.
I discussed this with one of the other committee members behind our local SA. His opinion is that it is simply the case that for centuries religious churches have used a successful formula to allow people to get together: many people have no work on at that time of the week and day; they want to get together socially; they enjoy a bit of fun, music and something thought provoking. If that has worked so well, why mess too much with it? Or why try to do something so completely different?

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

*shrug* for some attendees, that is doubtless true. I don't see why that should be a problem.

I didn't say it was a problem, I said that it meant that the comparison between the two wasn't unwarranted.

You seem to be the one who has a problem with that.

 

[SusanB-M1]

Although, to be fair, it seems from the outside that you meet on the same day as Christians and with the singing and sermons, that what goes on apes religious services. And I've often seen them described by advocates as for people who aren't religious but who miss the social aspects of belonging to a church - in other words, I've seen them described as church substitutes.

On Monday, 24th, on BBC Radio 4 at 4:30 p.m., there was a programme called 'Beyond Belief' which was all about the atheist church and included an interview with the chap who started it. I missed the beginning but the part I heard was very interesting.

 

[Polaris]

Well, who "designed" them? Or is it space aliens all the way down?

This, in a nutshell, is the flaw in the "panspermia" theory.

 

[chillzero]

I didn't say it was a problem, I said that it meant that the comparison between the two wasn't unwarranted.

You seem to be the one who has a problem with that.

Nah, I simply misinterpreted the tone of your post. I think you may have done the same with mine. I don't think we are really in disagreement.

 

[Mister Agenda]

The group splitting off did belong to the original group: they started as the New York branch of the London-based Sunday Assembly, but broke away and formed the Godless Revival because the Sunday Assembly apparently didn't hate believers enough.

I'll have to be more careful what meetings I attend, since going to a couple apparently means I 'belong' to the group hosting them. They probably burned their membership cards in a trash can and had a tough battle to get taken off the rolls.

I do think you are correct, the splitters clearly cited the parent group not hating believers enough as their reason for leaving, not because it was too church-like and avoided the word 'atheist' as was my first impression.

 

[Mister Agenda]

I hear tens of atheists have been affected by this schism.

 

[Mister Agenda]

Although, to be fair, it seems from the outside that you meet on the same day as Christians and with the singing and sermons, that what goes on apes religious services. And I've often seen them described by advocates as for people who aren't religious but who miss the social aspects of belonging to a church - in other words, I've seen them described as church substitutes.

To be fair, there are only so many days in the week that most people have off.

They ARE church substitutes...there's nothing inherently wrong with churches. Having a community outside of work and your circles of friends and family that you have a lot in common with has value. It helps with networking, lets you team up for charity work, and can be educational.

I volunteer with Somali Bantu refugees. I know a young Bantu woman who recently got a certificate of completion from High School and is unemployed. I attend Unitarian Universalist services, and found out from the RE Director that a local organization originally formed to assist Hispanics in learning job skills and finding employment had recently expanded its mission to include other immigrants and gave me the contact information of a case worker. That's information I couldn't find on the internet, and alone made me feel like my last couple of months of donations paid for themselves. If you think I'm exaggerating on the value of the information, imagine the job prospects of a Muslim African immigrant who wears long dresses and a scarf with no HS diploma and no experience except a summer job at Baskin Robbins. I was pretty discouraged, and with no job or prospect for advanced education, her mother will be looking to arrange a marriage for her soon.

Not disputing or contradicting, elaborating.

 

[A'isha]

I'll have to be more careful what meetings I attend, since going to a couple apparently means I 'belong' to the group hosting them. They probably burned their membership cards in a trash can and had a tough battle to get taken off the rolls.

Why the semi-hostile sarcasm? The founders of the Godless Revival started as volunteers with and later became board members of the official New York branch of Sanderson Jones' Sunday Assembly. They weren't just "going to a couple of meetings", but were active in leadership positions in Sunday Assembly, before breaking away.

 

[Mister Agenda]

Which would probably make them a skeptical group, instead of an atheist group.
Most atheists would leave such a group, citing a clear conflict with their beliefs and values.

The point being that the overlap is too small.

I'm pretty sure the Sunday Assembly doesn't refer to itself as an atheist group...that's part of what the 'split' was about.

I think in America, the overlap between atheists and skeptics is fairly high, and offer this forum as an example supporting this premise.

My group used to be called Godless Columbia and is now called the Freethought Society of the Midlands (FSM). A fair number of people seem to think 'freethought' means thinking whatever you want, so we've picked up more anti-vaccers, homeopaths, and 'aliens built the pyramids' types since the name change.

 

[Mister Agenda]

Why the semi-hostile sarcasm? The founders of the Godless Revival started as volunteers with and later became board members of the official New York branch of Sanderson Jones' Sunday Assembly. They weren't just "going to a couple of meetings", but were active in leadership positions in Sunday Assembly, before breaking away.

Sorry about the 'semi-hostility', I felt provoked by what I perceived as snark and judgementalism in your OP. It reminded me of a Humes Fork OP, only aimed at atheists involved in building community instead of Muslims. However, that doesn't mean the tone of my responses is justified. Me harping on 'the splitters' membership status was unbecoming and more informed by my experience forming groups than by specifics of this case. I wouldn't consider it a 'schism' if a group I just started initially attracted some members and volunteers that went to start their own group after they found out we're not what they thought we were. I'd consider it a bonus that my group led to the formation of an additonal group.

In my own case, my group could be described as an umbrella for a number of 'split' groups. We call them meetings, but a slight change of context and they're each their own group with some overlap in membership: Critical Doers, Drinking Skeptically, Sandhills Rationalists, Science and Religion, UU Humanists, Lexington Skeptics at the Pub...these are all 'monthly meetings' in addition to our business meeting. We schedule them through the Freethought Society's Meetup and Facebook. The structure of my organization is such that we don't consider a new group spinning off from us a 'split', since we provide resources for them: it's just a new meeting to put on the schedule. But I wouldn't mind if a group wanted to totally separate themselves from the FSM. The reason I founded it was because when I was 42 I had knowingly met only two other atheists my whole life. I was hearing that atheists didn't live as long as theists, and when I looked into it I found that wasn't true in European countries with high percentages of atheism. I reasoned that part of the disparity in the USA might be lack of like-minded social contact and started a local group about ten years ago in an effort to reverse that. From one point of view, it's grown into a large organization with around a hundred active members...from another it has fractured into a coalition of loosely associated groups.

However, all atheists have in common is lack of belief in God, so a group can't be based solely on that for long, even in South Carolina, unless you're REALLY isolated, so there's a tendency to subdivide once you reach a certain mass into groups with more in common than just that. From my perspective, the more such groups the better...and I suppose I resent it being viewed as a negative. I think a diversity of communities is a good thing, and I believe I've demonstrated that such diversity doesn't prevent these groups from working together based on what they do have in common.

I hope that helps you understand where I'm coming from.

 

[A'isha]

Sorry about the 'semi-hostility', I felt provoked by what I perceived as snark and judgementalism in your OP. It reminded me of a Humes Fork OP, only aimed at atheists involved in building community instead of Muslims.

Chillzero called me out on that, too. I can't take back my OP, but I have tried to make it clear that I'm not trying to bash atheists involved in building community (and certainly not trying to bash all atheists, particularly since I am one), but was merely venting my exasperation at the way certain groups, specifically the Godless Assembly, are treating this whole thing as Serious Business. This tendency towards tribalist bickering and labels like "new new atheism" are, as I said, why I avoid organized atheism of any kind.

The Sunday Assembly kind of got unfairly caught up in my snark against the whole reason behind the "atheist church schism" and the offputting evangelistic zeal of the Godless Assembly, as I tried to explain in my sort-of-mea-culpa to chillzero.

I hope that helps you understand where I'm coming from.

It does, and I'm sorry for the broad snarky tone in my own OP.

 

[blutoski]

This, in a nutshell, is the flaw in the "panspermia" theory.

Why is it a flaw?

I know the theory is unlikely to be true, but inability to identify a designer is not a flaw.

An analogy would be an autopsy: we don't have to know who shot the victim to nevertheless be able to prove he was shot. IDers think they have proof of design... that is independent of the question of identifying a designer.

 

[blutoski]

I'm pretty sure the Sunday Assembly doesn't refer to itself as an atheist group...that's part of what the 'split' was about.

I think in America, the overlap between atheists and skeptics is fairly high, and offer this forum as an example supporting this premise.

I should reiterate what I meant by non reciprocating overlap, then. Consider that there is an estimate of perhaps 15 million atheists (ETA: IN THE USA). There could be perhaps tens of thousands of skeptics (ETA: IN THE USA). The overlap in *that* direction is one tenth of a percent.

Going in the other direction, the majority of skeptics are probably atheists.

So, what this means is that skeptic implies atheist, but atheist does not imply skeptic. That's all I was saying. Skeptics don't grasp this at first, because of the clear overlap within skepticism. We often find atheist groups confusing because they can be quite hostile to the mechanics of skepticism.

My group used to be called Godless Columbia and is now called the Freethought Society of the Midlands (FSM). A fair number of people seem to think 'freethought' means thinking whatever you want, so we've picked up more anti-vaccers, homeopaths, and 'aliens built the pyramids' types since the name change.

Yeah, skepticism has always had that problem, and part of it is the meme of 'think for yourself' - that approach is not special to skepticism. Everybody thinks they're independent thinkers.

 

[blutoski]

I was certainly never taught critical thinking in school. I'm confused by your English essay example. In what way is being assigned work in English being taught critical thinking skills?

Critical thinking is about weighing an argument. That's the function of an English essay as well. Any student who is writing an essay is practicing applied critical thinking.

Yes, you seem to equate skepticism to some kind of shared belief system. I'd question whether that's true. You may be describing how some, or even most people who self-describe as sceptics act, but that doesn't make that what scepticism actually is.

I wonder if that's a distinction without a difference. I'm actually holding back a lot on what I think skepticism should be: I have mostly been concentrating on what is actually happening out there. My main point was that whatever I or Dr. Novella or anybody wants skepticism to be, there seems to be a huge disparity on the ground.

But that's besides the point. You said that it was surprising that education didn't make people less inclined to hold superstitious or otherwise illogical beliefs. I'm questioning why that should be surprising, given that the education that the vast majority of people will undergo doesn't provide the tools for assessing such beliefs.

That's why I mentioned that teaching critical thinking does not change those beliefs either. Critical thinking is a core distributed skill in most US and Canadian state/provincial curricula. Has been for years. We have had threads at JREF in the Education section discussing the different ways critical thinking is taught today, whether there are better ways, what exactly is the expected results, &c. Skeptics have a lot of myths - I used the word 'beliefs' in an earlier post - and the magical power of teaching critical thinking is one of them.

 

[blutoski]

Well, firstly, I'd say that the question of religiosity in China is fairly complicated and that any figures about atheism from the country cannot be taken to be rock-solidly accurate. The same is also true, in the opposite direction, for countries such as Iran.

But, if we do take the latest Gallup poll as accurate, both for the number of atheists globally and the number of atheists in China, then China accounts for just over half of the world's atheists. This does not support your assertion that "...most atheists are big fans of Traditional Chinese Medicine. They don't like hearing criticism about it."

I think that if you wish to make that claim, that you will have to support it with evidence.

You mean aside from your 'China accounts for just over half of the world's atheists' and my personal anecdote about Canada's atheism situation?

There is such a thing as 'makes sense' - does any part of that sound like it's internally inconsistent or untrue?

 

[blutoski]

I was certainly never taught critical thinking in school.

Just to elaborate a bit... this is what's called a general or distributed skill. An analogy would be 'cooperation' or 'communicating' which are general or distributed skills that are being taught at all times, in all courses, without an assignment or test specifically dedicated to it.

There is a second reason that education is not correlative to paranormal beliefs &c - this is the 'arming' model - education gives people more information, and therefore more ways to support and justify their beliefs in the paranormal. This even includes STEM undergrad degrees, and is the best explanation for why antivax is positively correlated with technology degrees.

So, one of the concerns I had about science education outreach is that at the introductory level, it does not seem to have value as skeptical education. They don't seem to be the same thing. I would list this error as one of the 'skeptical beliefs'. I actually listed them all a few months ago in another thread. Others include the belief that non-skeptics are worse thinkers, less intelligent, not independent thinkers &c. I mentioned the unsupported belief that teaching critical thinking will increase skeptical thinking (i.e.: agreement on skeptical positions), and in this posting I'm addressing the unsupported belief that science education will increase skeptical thinking.

Graduate degrees (MSc, PhD) in natural sciences *do* possibly have a protective effect, but that's not entirely clear, because the direction of causality has not been proven. To put this another way, it's highly probable that people with a prior skeptical predisposition are attracted to, and succeed at, this subject matter. i.e.: that they are born, not made

 

[blutoski]

There is a second reason that education is not correlative to paranormal beliefs &c - this is the 'arming' model - education gives people more information, and therefore more ways to support and justify their beliefs in the paranormal. This even includes STEM undergrad degrees, and is the best explanation for why antivax is positively correlated with technology degrees.

Just a recent coincidence about the undergraduate level low protection and arming models... I was able to confirm last Saturday that Adam Dreamhealer has a first class honours BSc from SFU.

 

[Mister Agenda]

Chillzero called me out on that, too. I can't take back my OP, but I have tried to make it clear that I'm not trying to bash atheists involved in building community (and certainly not trying to bash all atheists, particularly since I am one), but was merely venting my exasperation at the way certain groups, specifically the Godless Assembly, are treating this whole thing as Serious Business. This tendency towards tribalist bickering and labels like "new new atheism" are, as I said, why I avoid organized atheism of any kind.

I was kind of venting too, so I've no stones to throw. I was pre-irritated at the way the media has been touting both the Sunday Assembly as an 'atheist mega-church' when it's neither a church nor mega and treating another group spinning off as schism. It's not Serious Business. But it seems to me those labels are usually imposed on us by the media, with the notable exception of 'Atheism +'. Imagine if every time some theists got some media attention for doing something different people started talking about these 'new theists'.

The Sunday Assembly kind of got unfairly caught up in my snark against the whole reason behind the "atheist church schism" and the offputting evangelistic zeal of the Godless Assembly, as I tried to explain in my sort-of-mea-culpa to chillzero.

I missed that, though I've now read it. It would have mollified me in advance if I'd done my due thread diligence.

It does, and I'm sorry for the broad snarky tone in my own OP.

We're cool, I generally find your posts to be informative, and while I try to avoid snark, when I DO succumb to the temptation I tend to Go Too Far.