General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: I am not religious. Can you please categorize Atheism into a "race"? [View all]MADem
(135,425 posts)If you don't like the atom, there are other options. You don't have to roll with that one. You can do the "humanist" one, or the "infinity" one. Or, you could make a request for a symbol. The VA is processing requests on this order. I'll bet the Sunday Assembly triangle will probably join that pack pretty soon, especially if their numbers keep growing like they have. Or...if you're of the view that you don't need an Emblem of Belief, which is what they're called, you can skip it entirely and have none at all.
As for the IRS, that's a common benchmark--if the IRS gives them the nod, they're good to go.
I'm not "mocking" anyone--save perhaps the self-important scolds here who think they can cow me into believing that what they say in the Atheists forum of Big Ole DU is somehow controlling. They sure as hell aren't the boss of all the atheists, and the fact that this Assembly movement has taken off and is tearing across the globe tells me that the "angry old atheist" paradigm is on its last legs--perhaps it came to DU to die?
I've been watching a lot of these Sunday Assembly videos, and these people are pretty cool. They enjoy life, they're happy, they help people, they have inquisitive minds. If I'm going to buy any dogma (and unlike the many --not all, but many-- angry, hectoring, rejectionist, and condescending atheists who seek to tell me what they believe, and what I am "allowed" to believe about what they believe, these people are not "doctrinaires" at all) I'd rather take the kind of attitude and vibe the Sunday Assembly folks are selling.
They're energetic, many are young, their movement is growing, fueled by the forty percent of millennials who don't buy into a deity-based religion. They look like the future. People who continue to tout their (cough) superiority by citing dead racists like Hitchens, and trying to sell me on a laundry list of "rules" made by angry old white men? They're the past. Times are changing--the kids are taking over. They don't buy that mean-snark nonsense. See, I could ask you why you think that these atheist congregations are NOT religions, but the SA people, they think that kind of shit is sort of beside the point. They take the best parts of the religious experience, and run with it. As one of them said they "throw the baby Jesus out, and keep the bathwater." See? They've got a sense of humor, too.