I went to my first service at the Buddhist Temple near my house a week ago. It was strange to me since it was a totally new experience. You meditate in the middle, but on either end is chanting and singing, and, of course, at the 'altar' is Buddha, not Jesus.
Although the words were odd to me, the group silence, then intoning of verses and later singing was just like being in an Episcopalian church service in my youth (only the content was different). When I got home later, I was still humming the tune but had inadvertently replaced the words with the more familiar ones that I remembered from my childhood worship (because the sound of the chants was so similar, with a monotone-y flatness of tune).
Maybe we humans enjoy coming together as a group no matter what the substance of the event is? I recalled the words of my father when he heard I was attending a Unitarian church in Boston. "You know what Unitarians are, don't you? They are atheists who just haven't gotten out of the habit of going to church."
I thought he had a point there, although I would never have admitted it.
6 comments:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=XJv8HcK0awY
reminded me of something I saw recently and posted it to my 'A' social group...nobody quite enjoyed it like I did....being a UU. Maybe you will appreciate it. There are 3 parts I think. My 'A' friends thought it was too 'churchy'.
p.s. 'A' = atheist :)
That social commentator that recently died (whose name totally escapes me at the moment but will come to be the minute I hit publish) said 'Agnostics are just cowardly atheists.' What does that make UU?
Did the name of the commentator come to you? I can see the point that agnostics are cowardly atheists because the 'A' word is such anathema in the US.
Anonymous, thanks for the link. I only went to the UU church when I lived in Boston for 18 months -- I loved the sermons that were about writers and thinkers rather than about Jesus though.
In England, only the hardcore actually attend church. It's not used as a social-networking tool like it is in the southern part of the US. I kept wanting to go to church when I first moved here just to meet people, but my husband said, the only people you will meet will be 80-year-old very religious people and he was right.
Just watching the YouTube video from Anonymous on 'Why Atheists Go to Church.'
Thanks so much. I'm really enjoying this.
Anonymous, where is your 'A' social group? I'd love to check it out if it is online.
It was an interesting video, and of course nicer than most of the religious factions that insist that they are going to heaven, whilst everyone else is going to hell, whilst everyone else is also saying the same thing about their religion.
But I don't see any reason that my child needs to go to any church, even one inclusive enough to not allow signs outside that say "god hates fags". I think they unnecessarily conflate ideas of spirituality and community. Maybe people do want more sense of community but since when does church have some monopoly on community? And anyone can think about how they feel about the idea of god etc. without it being done in a particular setting. I do expect that when my child is old enough he will think about these things, and hopefully he will be unfettered from the sales pitches and advertising of churches, and come to his own conclusion, whether reasoned, or emotional. But nonetheless, maybe this church does appeal to some, but I have no interest.
In the end it's a little godly for my taste too - and he does fall for that strawman fallacy at the end that so many theists seem not to be able to resist, which is saying that atheism is essentially another fundamentalist belief, just like the christians themselves, which of course relies on the mischaracterisation of the atheist position in order to make the point.
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