From: dy@depsych.Gwinnett.COM (Dr. Yes)
Newsgroups: soc.singles
Subject: Re: Courtship Generic Algorithms
Date: 14 Sep 92 13:40:04 GMT
Article-I.D.: depsych.HTF4qB2w164w

kiran@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (Kiran Wagle) writes:

> dy@depsych.Gwinnett.COM (Dr. Yes) writes:
> >Kevin Brown writes:
> 
> >I've tried several churches.  Nobody talks to you except old men...
> 
> >>This seems to depend.  I'm not religious, so such an option is
> >>completely out for me.  Unfortunately, I suspect that the atheist
> >>groups are mostly male.  :-)
> 
> >I'm not religious either, but if it's legitimate to fake
> >confidence why not religious faith as well?
> 
> *laugh*  the good Doctor has a point, Kevin.  If you are willing to
> fake even emotions, why not a bit of religious fervor?
> 
> You can always join a Unitarian church, or, better yet, a Fellowship.
> In my fellowship we have about half christians, the other half an
> eclectic mix of atheiests, pagans, and the occasional felinist.  As a
> friend put it, one has all the social support of a church without
> the religion.  Unitarians take a do-it-yourself approach to religion.)
> -- 
> Kiran Wagle <kiran@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>

Yes, the good old UU Network (uh, that's Unitarian-Universalist,
not Unix to Unix, by the way).  And you can attend a Unitarian
church with zero degree of hypocrisy, since there is no test of
faith.  If it didn't exist it would have to be invented.  Indeed,
over fifty per cent of what social life I've had as an adult has
revolved around the UU Church.

But I've been playing around with the idea of joining a "real"
church.  I lived for a time in South Georgia and I noticed that
Methodists seemed to be happier than other people.  And that
religion is based almost entirely on hypocrisy.  Methodists never
denied themselves any of life's pleasures, but they never did it
in public.  If you wanted to get drunk with a Methodist in South
Georgia you had to go to his house because he wasn't going to do
it in a public bar with the Baptists and the Unitarians.  And
every week the Methodist minister preached the same sermon, the
one about good churchgoing people who didn't _really_believe_ in
Jesus.  That was, of course, nearly his entire adult congregation.

But that hypocrisy had largely positive results. Because they
always considered what the community would say, Methodists rarely
got themselves into trouble.  (For example, you obviously cannot
get a DUI if you get drunk in your own home.)  The trouble is that
that kind of Methodism is almost a birthright religion.  You can't
_join_ a Methodist church unless you make some profession of
faith.  You can slide along in the usual hypocritical way only if
you were _born_ into it.

Relevant to soc.singles?  Yes, because churchs have historically
been the primary breeding communities.  If you're not in a church
you're cut off from over half the eligible MOTAS.

Another consideration.  Most -- all that I've read so far,
actually  -- posters in this Newsgroup are intelligent and decent
people.  Somehow good and decent people who happen to be
intelligent can only see the flaws of religion.  We have -- I have
it too -- the feeling that we need to deconstruct traditional
Christianity in the interests of folks like gay people and single
mothers -- because the church really does have a stupid
intolerance of these types of "deviance" (difference).  I've toyed
with the idea of joining the Methodist church, lying about my
belief in Jesus (I have none), and working from inside to correct
its socially undesirable prejudices.  That would open up for
dating and socializing all those nice Methodist girls -- whose
theology isn't all that different from mine anyhow since most of
them believe that Christianity is a metaphor and Jesus was "just"
a wise teacher.  That's why I made the comment that I did on
Kevin's post.

--
Still Using Waffle 1.64!    | Wafffle, QEdit and Webster's
                            | NewWorld -- one great menage a
                            | trois!
Newsgroups: soc.singles