Faith-based support groups

In my Monday's post on "The miracle," I wrote that I think:

there's less of a possibility of Tom [Sheepandgoat]'s becoming an atheist than of my again becoming a theist. He has his Jehovah's Witness support group, people he sees (I think he indicated) three days a week down at Kingdom Hall, whereas I can't be said to have such a support group—unless a few authors I read can be counted as such.

And Tom supportively commented:

Many atheists find support groups within the blogging community. You could do that...I hope you don’t go that way, and I don’t foresee that you will. So far, you are a blogger who happens to be atheist rather than an atheist blogger. Even as I try to be a blogger who is one of Jehovah’s Witnesses rather than a JW blogger.

Right on, my friend!

No, as I commented back to Tom:

I don't feel the need for such a support group. I have the necessary life support of my wife, my dog, and my many friends (including yourself in your non-religious-affiliated moments).

In thinking about the concept of a support group, I realized that one of the practical uses of a church (or a temple or a mosque or a synagogue or a Kingdom Hall or, for Wiccans, I guess a wattle hut?) is to serve as a support group for its members. Perhaps that's the main reason for many of them. A place to go to have their faith and their faithful practice reinforced and perhaps reinvigorated.

But what about those "atheist...support groups within the blogging community"? What are they doing? They don't have any faith to enforce or invigorate. Maybe they're getting together to celebrate communally what I too celebrate (individually) of our constitutional freedom from religion? Or maybe they're political groups banding together to fight further encroachments on that freedom? After all, we only have it "while we still have it." And if we can take Harris and Hitchens and Dawkins at their words that religion is lethal and needs to be overcome, then I suppose some atheist groups might be plotting ways to achieve that....

And the religious houses of course serve other purposes than that of a support group. Some congregations have political agendas too. Support Bush! Don't pull the plug on Terry Schiavo! Down with gays and lesbians! Keep your women covered! Death to infidels! Some support charitable causes. Money for the starving people of Africa! Money for good Jack Abramoff's projects! Money for Jihad!

And of course they proselytize, which I guess is what the "plotting atheists" referred to above might be doing—in reverse!

By the way, by "life support" I was not referring to extraordinary measures' being taken should I become vegetative. No, my living will states that I'm strictly DNR. (And that might as well stand for Do Not Resurrect.)