Churchgoers get moral guidance and philosophical discussion, communal introspection, and everyone knows they should go on their best behavior, bringing love to the congregation. Those things are fairly unique to places of worship, but there needn't be actual worship of God for them to exist, and that's something atheists tend to miss out on since not many other social groups/clubs have those qualities.

If you really want to get to know your fellow church goers, you’ll have a hard time passing as an atheist for long. Sooner or later you’ll be asked to lead a prayer, give ‘testimony’ to when you ‘got saved’, be tested on your working knowledge of the Bible in some way. And at a catholic church, there’s generally less close community beyond glad handing, but there’s a lot of ritual and recitation you’re expected to follow along with. On some level true believers will always be pinging you to determine your authenticity.

Maybe it's just me but I tend to lose interest in sports. That presents a dilemma. Either you have to attend something you are not interested in, or you stop hanging out with the people.

Like most things in life: You must be motivated by a need or really enjoy it. As you, sport do neither for me. As you get older working out will be more of a need and you find a good group of workout buddies and maybe a friend or two.

In Britain, Humanism was an early 20th century movement to try to bridge between the social benefits of church to - what was increasingly obvious to most people - the fallacies of legacy Christian doctrines.

It wasn't a total failure, but humanism never reached the mainstream.

Agreed, there is something unique about church. Maybe the spiritual and emotional aspect is too intertwined to separate. It is very easy to confuse emotions (i.e. feeling good about something) with spirituality when the two are very different.

Arguably humanism was an intellectually-driven pursuit. So it never crossed the chasm.

Growing up in Manchester, I found it was football that fulfilled the emotional and tribal needs of many of my peers.

Many people assume Britain and USA are the same. In many respects, that is true. But as to church and religion, they are poles apart. At least that was true in the nineties when I lived in USA.

> There is no 'more church' if your an atheist.

There are the Unitarian Universalists where many -- including atheists -- are not only welcome but also find worship.