Hi youbet,
"Social infrastructure" seems to be a big part of many religions. Having a support group is not a bad thing!
I would not be surprised to find that many people who respond to polls with "you bet, I'm right with <insert diety> and I'm a believer!" are actually what are called "apatheists". You know, the ones who respond "oh sure, I believe" but you seldom/never see them in church/mosque/temple/synagogue/Kingdom Hall and religion never really seems to have an impact on their life. It is like the people who are atheist but are "culturally Jewish". You grow up with a particular religion permeating your life, but even if you go through all the comforting rituals you don't necessarily believe. Cue Zero Mostel singing "tradition . . . TRADITION!"
Being human seems to be, to a large extent, all about being "tribal". Most everyone wants to belong, and belonging often ends up being a matter of "us good, them bad". Look at sports, political parties, religions, etc etc etc ad infinitum. It reminds me of the old Firesign Theatre joke: "Mudhead, what are you going to do after we graduate?" "Well, I thought I'd go out and find a bunch of guys and dress up like them and follow them around!"
There are atheist/non-believer groups that are trying to offer an alternative to the social infrastructure of religions, such as the North Texas Church of Freethought (
http://www.churchoffreethought.org/).
But as I've often seen mentioned, organizing atheists or other freethinker/non-believers/burn them now! folks can be very similar to herding cats. As I pointed out earlier, atheists really don't have anything in common except not believing in dieties. Shucks, if you want to pick out a particular diety (say the Christian god, though it is pretty hard to distinguish it from the Moslem god, since they both claim to be "the god of Abraham") atheists have lots in common with all the other religions that also don't believe in that diety.
You'd think that being able to say "hey, we don't believe in all those other gods too!" would make us universally loved, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
There often seems to be this unstated sentiment of "sorry Jack, even though the enemy of my enemy is my friend, I feel a lot more in common with my enemy who believes in a different supernatural being (and will suffer for eternity for that) than I do with you who doesn't believe in any dieities".
But belief or lack thereof seems to me to be the deciding factor. I'd not be surprised if there isn't a larger than zero number of people in the heirarchy of any religion you want to name who don't actually believe in that particular religion. A person may go through the motions (and that may be necessary to keep their job/family/head) but if they don't really believe in that religion it seems difficult to classify them as a "believer".
Is it easy to be an open non-believer in the USA? I could refer you to a lot of people who'd probably reply "are you kidding me?".
The vast majority of the elected officials and populace seem to not only believe, but revel in pointing out how much they believe, along with wanting to make everyone else believe too. The House just passed a bill that would make people who bring (and win) an Establishment Clause First Amendment case against the Federal government unable to recover their attorney fees. (HR 2679, passed largely upon party lines
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll480.xml ) Luckily it looks like the Senate is unlikely to take up that bill, so it is largely a bit of election year politicking.
But when you are a non-believer and you see a significant majority of the elected representatives in the Federal government basically pass a law that acts in the same way as a SLAPP suit does against people who want to try and enforce the Constitutional neutrality for or against religion, how do you think you end up feeling?
It is interesting that there seems to be a higher percentage of atheists or similar non-believers in many European countries than in the USA. Even though some of those countries have official State religions, they also have the memory of the experience of decades of religious warfare that decimated whole countries. Oddly enough, many of those countries with a much larger percentage of 'non-religious' among the population seem to have a much higher quality of life - longer lifespan, higher educational levels, higher reported levels of satisfaction etc.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_dira.htm
A Christian research group (Barna) reports that in the USA divorce rates among Christians was significantly higher than other faith groups, as well as for atheists and agnostics.
George Barna, president and founder of Barna Research Group, commented:
"While it may be alarming to discover that born again Christians are more likely than others to experience a divorce, that pattern has been in place for quite some time. Even more disturbing, perhaps, is that when those individuals experience a divorce many of them feel their community of faith provides rejection rather than support and healing. But the research also raises questions regarding the effectiveness of how churches minister to families. The ultimate responsibility for a marriage belongs to the husband and wife, but the high incidence of divorce within the Christian community challenges the idea that churches provide truly practical and life-changing support for marriages."
Is it any wonder that non-believers aren't hot to jump on the religious belief bandwagon? All we seem to hear is "if you'll just believe, things will be so much better for you". Umm, doesn't necessarily look that way.
Personally, I don't give a rat's behind what someone else believes if they don't try to impose their beliefs on me. But "believers" often seem to be (may I use the term?) "Hell-bent" on imposing their beliefs on other people. How many states still have "blue laws"? How religiously neutral is that?
I may have wandered a bit astray here, but that's not uncommon when I get "the bit in my teeth".
For full disclosure I'll mention that I'm an Administrator at the largest freethought/non-believer/atheist forum on the Internet (
http://www.iidb.org/vbb/index.php) as well as a member of the Board of Directors of the 501(c)3 organization that sponsors that forum. I get to see a lot of "testamonials" from people deconverting from a religion.
But we've got theists on our Moderator staff, and don't exclude believers as users. As long as people are civil, they can espouse a pretty wide range of belief/non-belief - makes no difference to us. There's a certain number of theists who find us a lot more "christian" (so to speak) than some of the fora that are devoted to a specific diety. But I think that gets back to the difference between ethics and morality. We try to ethically treat people as people. If they get nasty, they get sanctioned. But if someone wants to believe in X, Y or Z - go for it. Just be prepared to offer a cogent defense for any propositions you put forth, as those propositions will have to stand or fall on their own merits.
cheers,
Michael