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No Community for Atheists

B

Blue

Well-Known Member
Being on the autistic spectrum makes finding like minded people hard enough. Then there's being an atheist in a world of religion. We don't have churches or synagogues or whatever. I fully support people's freedom of religion, expression etc but on a deep level I don't want to hang around with religious people. To quote REM, "I've been walking alone now for a long, long time. I don't want to hang out now with the friends who just aren't mine. I don't want to be with you anymore." I want cold hard logic supported by the scientific process.

Having chronic depression and cPTSD you hear well meaning, but grating, religious messages all the time. "Find a higher power," "accept Jesus" and so on. Despite what an unsettlingly large part of the population says they base their life around, I can't pick and choose reality. Not believing in an afterlife is one of the things that keeps me from killing myself.
 
UCC is a place that welcome atheists. Have you been there?
 
I tried an atheist Meetup for awhile but things ended up not going so well. It was a social group and so of course it didn't work out well. What was I thinking? Did end up with a few people I like, but the group part didn't work well for them either. Atheist just doesn't = logic. And pure logic isn't logical according to a neurologist I heard speak once but still, a bit more logic would have been nice.
 
I'm not an atheist (not judging you for being one either) but I can totally relate to how annoying all the "find your higher power" business is.

I'm a rare success story in the treatment of drug addiction, and throughout my formal treatment that whole "find your higher power" bit was crammed down my throat the whole time, and I absolutely refused to comply. I have my own relationship with God already, thank you very much, I don't need your interpretation of God in order to quit drugs.

It's the perennial problem with Christian dogma, it just drives people away. It's why I dislike organized religion.
 
I'm an atheist too. For me, following a religion is a lifestyle choice that I choose not to follow. I have no problem with people following religions (or any other lifestyle choice, come to that), as long as they keep it to themselves and don't try to indoctrinate me and respect my right not to follow a faith.
 
I am sorry. I meant UU. United Universalists. They accept everyone.
 
OkRad said:
I am sorry. I meant UU. United Universalists. They accept everyone.
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Do you mean Unitarian Universalist? I live with a UUer whose friends are mostly UUers. There are pagans, atheist, agnostics, "heretical" Christians, ect...that attend his church.
 
Blue said:
Can you expand on this?

I feel so alone in the world.
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Apparently if you have the emotional areas of the brain knocked out you actually make less rational decisions. Right now I really can't remember the talk very well. Anyways the point I was trying to make was that even though I know that pure logic is rather unreasonable I thought the atheist I had trouble with could have used more logic and less whatever it was guiding their decisions. There was too much drama, ego, ect... and it destroyed the group. I ended up with very hurt feelings and scared of trying more Meetups though I still want to try another. Haven't had time. Instead of looking for atheist groups I think I will just look for very eclectic groups that may have Christians but not any trying to sell me on it. I actually am ok with "I'll pray for you" and simple things like that because I know they are just being nice in the way they know how and I wish I had an equivalent. I am not ok being told I am going to hell. That just isn't very friendly.
 
I'm not an atheist but I have happened to accidentally run into atheist internet forums in the past. I don't remember that names but you should do a Google search for some, maybe that would be helpful.
 
My mom worked for a United Universalist church. They had a good message about acceptance but the church was riddled with dysfunction and internal politics.

Thanks for replying everyone.
 
Blue said:
Being on the autistic spectrum makes finding like minded people hard enough. Then there's being an atheist in a world of religion. We don't have churches or synagogues or whatever. I fully support people's freedom of religion, expression etc but on a deep level I don't want to hang around with religious people. To quote REM, "I've been walking alone now for a long, long time. I don't want to hang out now with the friends who just aren't mine. I don't want to be with you anymore." I want cold hard logic supported by the scientific process.

Having chronic depression and cPTSD you hear well meaning, but grating, religious messages all the time. "Find a higher power," "accept Jesus" and so on. Despite what an unsettlingly large part of the population says they base their life around, I can't pick and choose reality. Not believing in an afterlife is one of the things that keeps me from killing myself.
Click to expand...

Where about in the world do you live? If I can assume somewhere in the "Western World," I believe atheists to be the majority, save for maybe the South-Eastern USA. I can't imagine having a hard time finding atheists.
 
They are not a majority even in the younger people, which is somewhere in 30% as "Nones." Which still isn't atheist.
 
WereBear said:
There's lively communities of most religious/non religious callings on Patheos.
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Yes, I've been there myself a few times. You can find atheists almost everywhere you go on the internet. They've practically made it their own little fiefdom.
 
Well you can be a Buddhist and still be an atheist, they simply teach you the techniques including meditation so you can discover the truth yourself.

I don't believe in one God either, although there's a good chance there's beings that people might perceive as God or Gods simply because they don't understand them, also why would there be one God when everything else that we know is so complex? I normally only believe what I've seen evidence of, but I certainly believe there's a lot more that we don't know than we do and I touched on this as a paranormal investigator for a while where I most definitely witnessed and caught evidence that couldn't be explained by traditional science on a number of occasions, this was before all the recent hype and influx of extremely unprofessional paranormal groups, dreadful paid "ghost hunt" events and awful fake or grossly exaggerated TV programmes. Genuine paranormal investigating is nothing like "Ghost Adventures" (very fake) or "Most Haunted" (mostly fake), in real life you have to be very patient and lucky to experience anything paranormal, I've spent many nights where nothing what-so-ever has happened, but of course things happen every minute on "Ghost Adventures", something that you'd be lucky to happen in a year of investigating or something that would never happen. Some of the best evidence I've caught is EVP, this really does exist, but again unlike on the TV you have to be very lucky and you could do 20 EVP experiments and get absolutely nothing. If you are very lucky it can even be quite clear sometimes, for instance I had an unmistakable women's voice answering questions once on dictaphone and on another occasion I heard a voice shout "(deleted) off" lol, also we all heard excessive knocking around just before the evidence was recorded on both occasions. Don't be fooled by so called "ghost boxes" however which scan the airways and will of course pickup a mishmash of voices. I mentioned all this because some religious people see investigating the paranormal, especially alleged "ghosts" and "spirits" as against God, I was told by a Christian that I should stop because it's evil, she said that there's only one spirit and that's the "holy spirit". Unfortunately people are naturally frightened of things they don't understand and they call it evil, but many scientific breakthroughs have been thought of as evil throughout history.
 
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Gritches said:
I'm not an athiest (not judging you for being one either) but I can totally relate to how annoying all the "find your higher power" business is.

I'm a rare success story in the treatment of drug addiction, and throughout my formal treatment that whole "find your higher power" bit was crammed down my throat the whole time, and I absolutely refused to comply. I have my own relationship with God already, thank you very much, I don't need your interpretation of God in order to quit drugs.

It's the perennial problem with Christian dogma, it just drives people away. It's why I dislike organized religion.
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What do you mean”rare success story?” Many, including myself, are success stories from a past of addictive substance abuse. I too hated the “higher power” bit, and am not a fan of 12-step programs. But they do work for millions of people world wide.
 
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