Out in the cold.

I've never really been into the whole "leaving the house" scene. That's just not how I roll.

--
"Ponies are atheists, you know, technically."
- Me

Personally, I'm fulfilled by companionship of my fellow professional puppy grinders, as well as the ritual involved in the puppy grinding factory.

There's something satisfying about working with your hands alongside of some of the finest craftsman in the trade.

*yelp!* ***crrraack!*** **grind grind grind*** *plop*

Ahhhh...

Seriously, though, I haven't attended any sort of formal group or organization since I came out. I have a small, but fiercely loyal circle of good friends, and a HUGE family and extended family that satisfy my social needs very well.

If I want something more than that, then I will usually hook up with the local ATV club for some riding around Arizona, or out to the dunes in California.

That's about it though. I don't crave lots of people around me, and in fact, I prefer to spend time alone or with my family and friends. I HATE crowds, and crowded big-box stores. I also become frustrated beyond belief if I get stuck in traffic (we live in a rural area and sometimes the most traffic we have is a farmer on a combine.) :)

Great question, Jim!

I have never felt any need to join a church for social intercourse. But, then again, I live in the most highly populated and most cosmopolitan area in Canada, and churches are not the social center of the community the way they might be in more rural areas, and in the USA.

Well, I was a faculty member at a private liberal arts college located in a tiny village for 20 years and there was surfeit of secular "community" there to the point of psychic asphyxia. Mostly, though, I've been on the township volunteer fire department for 30+ years, as long as I've lived near the village, and it's a suitably secular environment. The rule in the fire station is "No religion, no politics".

I joined an atheist meet-up group in my area that meets once a month, but unfortunately I find it difficult to get to it most months due to the fact that the time with my family is so infrequent. I find it's usually a bad idea for me to try to commit myself to a regularly scheduled meeting or gathering b/c something invariably comes up. My husband and I both are introverts and tend to shy away from large group gatherings, he more so than I. One of the many, many reasons I'm so glad I don't go to church anymore.

Honestly, I don't feel the need to join any such group.
I once attended a meeting of the local Atheists group and even that wasn't very attractive to me.
I found it boring for the most part.

I've never been part of a community and never particularly wanted to be in one. I've often wondered whether atheists, on the average, are less likely to be members of communities that exist for community's sake. It would be relevant to claims that atheists give less money and do less charitable work than religionists. If so, they give and do as individuals rather than as members of a group, so are less easily identified.

To join the local UU church, but have so far resisted. I actually like rituals even though I don't care for the Christian ones. Being an atheist compares well with being a Maytag repairman I guess. The courage of our particular convictions often carries the price of isolation and loneliness if you are inclined to that particular emotion. Despite this I don't think there is any going back.

For me, I participate in two churches. One, the North Texas Church of Freethought, and the other, the First Baptist Church of Colleyville, where I'm a regular atheist guest of their Apologetics Sunday School class.

When I did go to church the social aspect seemed very superficial. I do not miss it at all. Friends, family, neighbors, etc. are more than enough.

kind of a new agey theistic thing. I go once a month to do the snacks and listen to the sermon. That is plenty for me, but it would be nice if I could find a group of like-minded atheists. The sermons are actually often inspirational, if you just mentally edit all the god/soul crap out.

As for me, I divy my time between the local UU congregation, and the Houston Church of Freethought and associated Humanist groups and meetups in my area. The local UU has some really good Adult Discussion Groups with lots of focus on social justice issues, which I appreciate.

The Houston Church of Freethought coffee socials are fun, but I haven't been to a regular service yet.

I also hate crowds, and tend towards introversion. My best time socially was when I was a grad student at Rice University, when I had a small, tight cadre of academic friends to hang out with and debate with into the wee hours of the morning consuming far too many Belhaven Scottish Ales. Learned more profound things doing that than I ever did attending classes or writing my thesis, actually.

I like my work friends, but I definitely keep my mouth zipped when it comes to politics or religion, since most of them are religious to some degree or other (except for one atheist MD on our staff that I trade furtive comments with and emails, and sometimes let him borrow some of my better freethought DVDs and audio cassette recordings.)

I tend to be a loner. I do have an MLS degree and I am looking to become a librarian, and I do have a lot of library friends via email...and I'm keen to get an academic librarian posting so I can reconnect with academic friends again. But I've just accepted that with most people, they just don't share my interests nor can many of them follow my thinking on a lot of things. People look at the kind of books I read and are always asking "is that for a class??" When I say no, I'm reading this for pleasure, ordinary folks get this look of revulsion in their face and back away.

Sports is usually a safe, neutral topic one can always talk about among strangers, so even though I'm not a huge sports fan, I do pay enough attention to it to be able to comment on it at least somewhat intelligently. And I like chit-chatting about guns down at the shooting range. My Single action Uberti cattleman's revolver always catches people's eyes, since most people are shooting automatics, and even the revolver shooters are mostly shooting double-action modern revolvers.

I've also gone to informational meetings on environmental issues, gardening, and other "Green" topics. I may yet go get involved with the Harris County Green Party if I move back within the Houston city limits here sometime soon. That and I could always go volunteer down at KFPT 90.1, our local Pacifica community radio station, or volunteer with Houston IndyMedia. I also like artsy things, and one of my work friends is an amateur photographer and filmmaker, so she's fun to hang out with at art-house movies & the like.

What I love to do best on Sunday mornings is sleep in and go out and have a hearty brunch, then go shoot rifle and pistol for a large chunk of the afternoon if the weather's nice. The Science museum's always nice, but HMNS is so wildly popular and successful it draws HUGE crowds, especially on Sundays...I missed the recent traveling exhibit on Ben Franklin because I just didn't want to fight the crowds to get in.

Art Museums have in my recent past filled the niche that churches do for religious people. I can spend hours upon hours in a good art museum. Usually a pretty solitary activity though, but who cares?

I just regret there are no secular equivalents of Monasteries...per se; If I were a religious person, I'd go hang out in some obscure monastery in Eastern Europe somewhere for a few years...as long as you do your share of the work around the place, they let you stay for cheap--or so I've heard. But alas, no monastic life for me...unless you count academia as a secular monastic order--which it kinda sorta is...

Anyway, good topic.

I'm a loner, so I don't really feel the need to get together in a group. I suppose if I did I'd invest in a game with a huge online component so I could form a party and tackle some dungeons for loot. As it is I get all the group interaction I need from talking to family members and people online.

We tried the local UU church the first year we moved to Annapolis, but dropped after the first year, partly because it wasn't doing anything for us and partly because it felt cliquy. I've found some social connections and circles in theatre, as an actor. That tended to be pretty episodic, being dependent on working on a play. This has been getting better for me, since I've become part of a more professionally oriented crowd and theatre group. I also hope to try the Baltimore Atheist meetup, as soon as I stop rehearsing on the nights they meet.

Frank Moorman, skeptic

Church substitute? No. Church-equivalent? Maybe. I suppose any shared-interest activity would count. For me, it's following rugby. Wonderful, diverse people, generous to a fault, great fun to be with. The craic is invigorating, especially on the European away trips (I'm in the UK, if you hadn't guessed). Go to Ireland, for example, and you won't have to buy your own drinks all weekend. 2,000 of us travelled to San Sebastian last year for a game against Biarritz. On the morning of the game 30,000 Biarritz fans turned up, resplendent in red and white. All of us were treated like long-lost friends - halting conversations in bad French and equally bad English led only to drinking, eating and the friendliest atmosphere you could wish for.

In fact, I find the time I spend doing this simple thing means more to me than those times (years past) when I did attend church. It's somehow more ... real. I suppose it's because following a sports team puts you through the wringer of emotion - joy at winning, despair at losing. All fans go through it, so when we win we can commiserate genuinely with our opposite numbers, when we lose... well, there's always beer. I wonder why the same thing goes so hideously wrong with football (sorry, "soccer")?