Family Home Evening
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The LDS church has a network of wards where people in the same local area get together and do things. Church activities are nothing new, like the Presbytarian pool, barbecue and guitar playing get together, but the LDS church strongly emphasises church activity among local friends as if it were the 50's or the 1800's. On Fridays there are dances and barbecues, weekends have "ward prayer" with snacks, and every monday is "Family Home Evening" where people of similar ages get together and do something that doesn't involve television- usually board games, you know the ones that normally sit at home and aren't used. Teenagers and college students play Monopoly, Scattergories, jigsaw puzzles, or whatever you might have done when you were little and didn't get your first video game system yet. It's like stepping back in a quaint little time machine or seeing what your grandparents did as kids when they couldn't afford fancy black and white TV sets or a new radio.
It's a great way to keep people together, under the pretext of "fun" and "we're in the same church," therefore "fun" = "church." Now, take away the need for these get togethers, such as in any normal city, and people will hang out to watch tv, play video games, or just waste time and get wasted. So the assumption is that doing none of those things, but instead sticking to board games and puzzles, is instead a more "positive" or "productive" activity. And having wasted enough time watching movies or playing games or getting drunk at friends places, there does seem to be a productive and unproductive way to waste time. But breaking out the monopoly set for no reason now seems silly. Kids play monopoly.
So my question is, can non-religious people have just as much likelihood to get together and do these kinds of technologyless activities? It seems like with less community, less of an established regularity or schedule, and less of a "at least I'm in the happy church group" mentality, people will just go about their business not playing board games. I don't know if the "Atheist dinner and barbecue" or the "Atheist sit around and play board games group" would work. I'm just saying, people have less of a reason to do that on their own unless they're part of the "happy feel good" church organization that tells them this is a good, positive experience.
But without church, why would five or six ordinary random people get together weekly and play board games?
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D&D is another subject altogether: how can more people play pen and paper RPGs without being seen as a fringe nerd group? A lot of the more interesting campaigns by small publishers only have players in the couple of hundreds or thousands. I'm wondering if average people would rather play the sims RPG, or football RPG, or highschool RPG, rather than fantasy or sci-fi or cyberpunk.
You've never played Dungeons & Dragons I take it?
The paper read yesterday, the earth exploded, nobody noticed the passing of this hapless planet.
Atheist's don't just sit around and do nothing. Infact we are like anyone else, We interact with society. Some of us probably are on Softball teams, Some of us do community activities. I can assure you of one thing, If we did organize an Atheist Bar B Que and posted it in a news paper or something like that. We would have hundreds of fundie protestors around trying to convert us. So maybe we do things we just don't want to be bothered.
Co-Founder of the Atheist/Freethought website Pathofreason.com
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Is that true? If an atheist were to hold an Atheist Barbaque would there really be hundreds of "fundie protestors"? Now I live in Canada, quite a non-religious country so I wouldn't really know what goes on in the U.S. but would a barbaque really get protested? Not only that, but would the protesters have the support of hundreds?
I live in Texas! Christians assult girls outside of Abortion clinics. If an Atheist bar b Que was say broadcasted on the radio and posted in the Newspaper as "Atheist Bar B Que" All Atheist's welcome! I can bet you anything that one of the million local churches would have something to say about that. They would probably come down to protest or at least try to hand out bible tracts. Seriously man.
Co-Founder of the Atheist/Freethought website Pathofreason.com
www.pathofreason.com
Check it out
Well that's a tad bit scary...
Yeah, screw having fun while socializing. Only silly religious people would ever do that. I'd rather be sitting all alone in my bedroom playing video games.
I like Scattergories!
My friends and I do a ton of non-technology stuff together. We go hiking, camping or just hang out. We all live in the same town so during the week we'll often get together for a little wine and crackers and board games. Apples to Apples is always fun.
Personally, I would love it if my town threw sock hops or something. Sounds fun.
If god takes life he's an indian giver
Every now and then my friends and I break out the Trivial Pursuit. Most of the time we hang out and play pool or darts at one of the local pubs. You might want to check out meetup.com to find if there are any Atheist groups meeting up in your area. We get about 15 people on average every month and have a great time here in Wichita.
Next month I'll be going to Ithaca's Atheist meetup. In Austin the local Atheist group does different activities every week from D&D, pool to recently they went out on a "bat cruise" to watch the hordes of bats in the area. Of course nothing beats playing DDR while drunk.
I like to sit alone in the dark, staring into the Kierkegaardian void. All the while, I eat Betty Crocker fudge icing and let sweat trickly down my back to dampen my thoroughly worn undergarments.
After that, I log on to the internet and look for pictures of kittens with birth defects and count the eyelashes in my collection.
Please note that none of that involves interactions with humans or with having fun. Those LDS people are straight-up batshit crazy to want to get together when being alone is so wonderful and fulfilling.
"Tis better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven." -Lucifer
I bet my toenail collection is much better than your crappy eyelash collection.
If god takes life he's an indian giver