That leaves an opportunity for organizations who bring people together without propagating silly beliefs. Sunday Assembly is one example of this model.

I'm not sure how I feel about this line of argument, but food for thought:

Is the authoritarianism and coercion a necessary part of church? Clearly left to their own devices, people aren't self-organizing into social groups very well. And perhaps the silly beliefs are an important marker or side effect of social coercion, and can't easily be abandoned. Even if they're not causal, they are a great indicator that you are truly allied with the group.

>Is the authoritarianism and coercion a necessary part of church

Speaking about religion in genera:

Authoritarianism, no. I don't see how that's related. You can have a cohesive group without being a dick to everyone who doesn't conform to the exact letter of every little thing.

Coercion is required on some level but unless you really don't conform to any of the social norms of the group you should be fine. A religion can always structure itself to have a bare minimum amount of conformity and accept anyone above that. Being able to conform to group social norms or at leas minimize when you can't is part of being human.

> Authoritarianism, no. I don't see how that's related. You can have a cohesive group without being a dick to everyone who doesn't conform to the exact letter of every little thing.

I might have used a poor word. I certainly didn't mean for authoritarianism to mean "being a dick to everyone." I suppose I meant hierarchical structure, pressure, and control.

As a corollary, imagine the sort of social cohesion you see in the military. With regard to the values the military cares about, there's a high degree of coercion and authoritarianism. So, counterpoints about how you can be whatever religion, creed, political party etc aren't really valid in my mind. You can Muslim or Christian, but you can't ignore a salute, or a command, etc. The values the military wishes to coerce are nonnegotiable.

There can be no doubt that the military is good at systematically building cohesion in troops. I'm just wondering how well social cohesion can work without any of these aspects. In other words, does strict individualism harm social cohesion.

Love your neighbor

We also used leaded gas a few decades ago. What’s your point? Just because people go to church less doesn’t mean that’s why people are lonely, it just means that people are lonely and they’ve also stopped going to church as much. There’s no causal link there.

Plus, it’s 100% possible to have community without church.

Edit: cool, downvotes for disagreement.

Clearly church was a common source of community for people, and the OP makes the point that maybe we haven't found a good replacement for it yet. I wouldn't just dismiss that out of hand, it's a reasonable hypothesis on the surface.

Sunday Assembly is getting popular and very much not religious: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/businessclub/11175092/Br...

Wish it were more active in the BALTIMORE / DC area.

But how do you get from that to “we’re lonely because we’re not going to church”?

Church services require people to be in the same place at the same time, for the same purpose.

Few other activities gather the same people regularly. I can immediately think of narrow social networks (like obscure subreddits), and online games, though.

Although those activities lack the factor of physical presence. For a lot of people in modern society the only time they are around others is at work or in public places neither of which have a primary focus on community and fellowship like a church congregation. We desperately need to add more community gatherings that don't exclude people based on skill or ability.

>require people to be in the same place at the same time, for the same purpose.

Otherwise known as the most effective way to build friendships.

World of Warcraft raids are the only one

Isn't the potential connection obvious? If you remove the main source of community and making friendships outside school/college and your workplace, that could definitely lead to loneliness.

Can't speak for everyone, but I downvoted it for snarky disagreement that showed only a superficial engagement with the topic.

The edit really pushed it over the top as well.

As a child who was abused by religion I find this offensive. It may as well be technology, the effects of the economy, and or social change from stress with competition being higher than ever.

Sorry to hear that. Unfourtunately the idea that this could happen wasn’t widely publicised and hence the correct cautions were never put in place (for example, now to serve as a minister you need to be on a register, hold an ID card and undergo regular police checks). Of course that doesn’t solve the issue in its entirety, but hopefully it helps you appreciate that people are thinking about the issue.

Actually it doesn't help. I don't appreciate how the victims aren't compensated and what should only be considered a business is allowed to continue operating. Nobody goes to jail or anything. Wish I was born into a society that didn't have religion. Also the downvotes make me think I'm right to assume religious people are just narcissists that care so much about their views to ignore others that were severely wronged.

Agree that they are very much a business based on how most act, despite some having good intentions.

I'm sorry the truth is offensive to you, but, almost by design, going to church is a social experience.

You're not wrong, but, there's so much things wrong with religious institution - think indoctrination, contradicting views (love thy neighbour unless they're gay, or had an abortion, or they vote Democrats, or they're black, but give extra love to young boys which is totally fine unlike extramarital relationships and condoms)

Picking on the sore points of Catholicism as a criticism of all religion is really dismissive.

1: that's something that's wrong with one very specific implementation of a subsect of a religious institution

2: I never made a value judgement about religious institutions being good or bad. I merely said they were social in nature.

Every institution with humans has its misdeeds

I didn’t experience the social aspect and was just tortured. I’m not going to consider anything where people are gathered as a social experience unless there is real events that made it social for everyone.