FTFY (I think…)
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Sure, but it could as easily be a support group. Non-believers are viewed with distrust in many parts of the country. Having a way to meet and speak freely with like-minded people seems like a reasonable thing to do.
That’s quite a broad brush. Not everyone starts with religion (I didn’t). Now, the sign on the bus is clearly aimed at people who are transitioning, and that seems appropriate for the reasons stated in my previous response (support group).
It is definitely important not to replace one kind of zealotry for another. That said, I’ll put the scientific METHOD up against scripture any day. Individual scientists can do dumb things (make mistakes, falsify results) but the bulk of scientists working within the scientific method have done far more to advance human knowledge than religion.
Except that the whole “Quakers are Christians” thing might not be the right answer for someone who is questioning gods in general. Unless you’re suggesting that being a Quaker is like wearing a nicotine patch to quit smoking.
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She drilled it with the power of her voice! Wake up, sheeple!
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[quote=“bobtato, post:9, topic:74585”]I feel like the people who are drawn to this would probably be better off joining a Quaker meeting[/quote]The Quakers sounded really cool the first time I heard about them. But I never did get around to investigating personally; if there’s a local organization, they sure don’t advertise.
Perhaps, but personally I’ve seen it from adherents of each of the world’s five largest religions.
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When I went to college back in the Old Days, we put small photocopied fliers up in the student union building on the bulletin board. What kind of a budget do they have that they have funds for a mass transit ad campaign?
The bus system is fully owned and operated by the city of Madison, it’s probably less expensive than you’re thinking.
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Never trust anyone who calls dinner “supper.”
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That would be pretty much the entire population of Wisconsin, bub. What’s your problem with Wisconsinites?
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As a christian I approve of this. Life is all about Choice, and when the Choice is to be negative screaming that you are a moron, or people that at least seem friendly (regardless on if the church is or not is besides the point.) It is no real choice.
Thank you.
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I wonder what their success rate is? Many of the ex-christians I know move to something that is still rooted in spirituality, but they want to shed a lot of the dogmatic/patriarchal experience. Atheism doesn’t really comfort those who still need to believe there is something out there, and science is a little cold and too open ended for spiritual quests. People that once believed don’t find it easy to let go of all of it.
I really loved that support group previously posted here on BoingBoing. That made a lot of sense because I have seen the confusion and long lasting pains caused when a ex-believer finds themselves on the outside.
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Then there’s this United Church of Canada congregation, with an openly atheist minister. For these people, church, hymns, even bible readings provide some meaning, despite their non-belief in a deity. http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/02/21/meet-the-united-church-minister-who-came-out-as-an-atheist.html
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Obligatory:
All you did was capitalize the A.
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According to this article 7 years ago, a similar number of bus ads for a similar length of time cost just over $2K. http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/41131567.html It’s got to be more now. That’s a lot of money for a college club. The clubs I was in during college had budgets of like $200 for the year. This can’t be a very big club. There’s some money coming from somewhere.
That depends a lot on the person. My mother converted to serious atheism after marrying her second husband, a fellow who rather forcefully rejected his parents’ Christian Science. She had a pretty good notion already that God is a myth, but her parents would not be keen on her saying that.
Our family all ended up atheists after attending church every week in the sixties and early seventies, but my sister is somewhat ‘spiritual’. I never took the God thing seriously, even as a tiny child.
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I imagine there are plenty of introverts here. I am pretty introverted, and I like being part of a community (both online and local). It doesn’t mean that I want to be talking to people the whole time - generally I’m happier being in the background, helping set stuff up etc. It’s groups that expect you to socialise or act extroverted and happy all the time that are the problem for me.
My group wasn’t quite as open, but I could see that I would probably have some kind of position in the church in the future and/or have kids, so I wasn’t willing to go any further without reading a number of opposing arguments from more mainstream viewpoints. I had similar responses to the questions that I couldn’t answer.
The Muslim society in my university was so evangelical that there wasn’t any point converting. After a while I knew the points to avoid, and we could have long conversations where we agreed on most issues. Sure, our books were different, but we followed them in the same way.
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Citation Needed.
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Says at the bottom of their web site that they have a $64,000 budget, all from student group grants from the U generated from student fees.
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I really like the Sunday Assembly idea. Being an atheist in Alabama is somewhat lonely, so I briefly was a member of the local “free thought association.” They were horrible. All they did was sit around griping about religion, especially about how it had almost ruined their lives until they saw the light. It was weird. Like some sort of religion AA but also like a new religion. They got really angry with me when I said that I thought the point was to not be religious, that if I wanted to sit around talking about religion, I’d still be in a church.
So the idea of a “hey let’s be cool” gathering is great. I’d also love some sort of adult collective that provides some of the services all the Protestants here provide each other: childcare, early childhood education, career/social networking, collective ownership of vans and sporting equipment and spaces to meet.
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