{"id":1034,"date":"2012-04-13T10:33:40","date_gmt":"2012-04-13T00:33:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?p=1034"},"modified":"2012-04-13T10:33:40","modified_gmt":"2012-04-13T00:33:40","slug":"a-church-of-atheism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?p=1034","title":{"rendered":"A Church of Atheism?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Question from Andrew:<\/strong>
\nIs there a ‘church’ where atheists congregate; a community of some sort?
\n
\nAnswer by SmartLX<\/a>:<\/strong>
\nChurch, not really. Communities, yes.
\n
\nAtheism doesn’t have an official church, otherwise Alain de Botton wouldn’t have argued that it needs one in his new book Religion for Atheists<\/em><\/a> (an argument with which many prominent atheists have publicly disagreed). A quick Google only reveals an entity called the First Church of Atheism, which ordains people online and frankly looks like a simple con job.
\n
\nIt could perhaps be argued that Unitarian Universalism<\/a> is a church for atheists<\/em>, if not a true church of atheism<\/em>. It welcomes people of all faiths or no faith, and provides the community and ritual of regular church services without any doctrinal or dogmatic requirements. If that’s what you’re after, knock yourself out.
\n
\nAs for plain old atheist communities<\/em>, those are all over the place and come in many flavours. Some are even called that, like the Atheist Community of Austin<\/a> (which runs the TV show The Atheist Experience<\/em><\/a>). To find one near you, just google “local atheist groups” (without the quotes) or go straight to atheists.meetup.com<\/a>. Not all communities are physical; a little more searching will turn up all sorts of online groups as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Question from Andrew: Is there a ‘church’ where atheists congregate; a community of some sort? Answer by SmartLX: Church, not really. Communities, yes. Atheism doesn’t have an official church, otherwise Alain de Botton wouldn’t have argued that it needs one in his new book Religion for Atheists (an argument with which many prominent atheists have … Continue reading “A Church of Atheism?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[26,357,358],"class_list":["post-1034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-text","tag-atheism","tag-church","tag-community"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pB6tr-gG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1034"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1034\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1036,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1034\/revisions\/1036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}