I went to church without being convinced that god existed for years, so I can kind of see where you are coming from with this.
What made me actually decide to become openly atheist was probably that I got involved in competitive gaming, and met a large enough group of friends who were interested in rationality that I no longer felt it was necessary to be in a church to have that kind of tight knit community. I like seeing groups of people and having interesting discussions regularly, but it makes me even happier when the ideas we share are non contradictory and you don’t have a wide range of topics you need to steer clear in case they are instrumental to someone elses identity.
Hopefully, if rationality becomes mainstream, even small cities like mine will have large enough numbers of people interested in rationality for the pressure to belong in a church to subside. A lot of the cynicism that I feel and notice in fellow aspiring rationalists comes from the isolation that it can bring.
Also, I have never been to a lesswrong meetup but I find the idea appealing. if there are actually other LW readers in winnipeg, that would be great.
I like seeing groups of people and having interesting discussions regularly, but it makes me even happier when the ideas we share are non contradictory and you don’t have a wide range of topics you need to steer clear in case they are instrumental to someone elses identity.
Very good way of putting it. I was very frustrated at times having discussions with Christian friends, and I’m lucky enough to have people outside that circle who I can talk to (for example, my brother, who also reads LessWrong.) It would be even nicer if these people outside my Christian circle had any inclination to a) band together in community, or b) make an effort to be positive, nice, generous, etc.
Re: meetup. There’s a page somewhere on how to start a LessWrong meetup. But it’s not hard: create a top-level post, say you want to meet in [city], give a location and time decently in advance, and wait for people to say they’re coming in the comments.
Wasn’t sure if I wanted to add this, but I guess I will. The difference in how we handle charity makes sense to me, because I sense an unwillingness in atheist communities (or at least in me and the people I know) to ask for help in the first place compared to religious communities.
This year, I was unable to go to university because I went to a private school for grades 10 − 12, and my dad got sick and has been unable to work this year. We did not have enough money for me to pay for most of my courses so I took this year off to work, and might take next year off as well. My parents asked for help at church (and this was actually after I stopped attending) and were able to get almost half of the money we still needed. I feel kind of bad about accepting money from people who I just decided to stop meeting with, but since I am going to have my work cut out making enough this summer as it is, I am glad that they helped. When I have problems, I tend to focus on what I could be doing to fix them so much that I kind of forget that it would not be an issue if I could swallow my pride and get help. Maybe religion conditions you to think that all of your problems are insurmountable if you don’t try and get assistance from someone else, I am not sure.
I went to church without being convinced that god existed for years, so I can kind of see where you are coming from with this. What made me actually decide to become openly atheist was probably that I got involved in competitive gaming, and met a large enough group of friends who were interested in rationality that I no longer felt it was necessary to be in a church to have that kind of tight knit community. I like seeing groups of people and having interesting discussions regularly, but it makes me even happier when the ideas we share are non contradictory and you don’t have a wide range of topics you need to steer clear in case they are instrumental to someone elses identity.
Hopefully, if rationality becomes mainstream, even small cities like mine will have large enough numbers of people interested in rationality for the pressure to belong in a church to subside. A lot of the cynicism that I feel and notice in fellow aspiring rationalists comes from the isolation that it can bring.
Also, I have never been to a lesswrong meetup but I find the idea appealing. if there are actually other LW readers in winnipeg, that would be great.
Very good way of putting it. I was very frustrated at times having discussions with Christian friends, and I’m lucky enough to have people outside that circle who I can talk to (for example, my brother, who also reads LessWrong.) It would be even nicer if these people outside my Christian circle had any inclination to a) band together in community, or b) make an effort to be positive, nice, generous, etc.
Re: meetup. There’s a page somewhere on how to start a LessWrong meetup. But it’s not hard: create a top-level post, say you want to meet in [city], give a location and time decently in advance, and wait for people to say they’re coming in the comments.
Wasn’t sure if I wanted to add this, but I guess I will. The difference in how we handle charity makes sense to me, because I sense an unwillingness in atheist communities (or at least in me and the people I know) to ask for help in the first place compared to religious communities.
This year, I was unable to go to university because I went to a private school for grades 10 − 12, and my dad got sick and has been unable to work this year. We did not have enough money for me to pay for most of my courses so I took this year off to work, and might take next year off as well. My parents asked for help at church (and this was actually after I stopped attending) and were able to get almost half of the money we still needed. I feel kind of bad about accepting money from people who I just decided to stop meeting with, but since I am going to have my work cut out making enough this summer as it is, I am glad that they helped. When I have problems, I tend to focus on what I could be doing to fix them so much that I kind of forget that it would not be an issue if I could swallow my pride and get help. Maybe religion conditions you to think that all of your problems are insurmountable if you don’t try and get assistance from someone else, I am not sure.