Atheism

In a previous post we talked about on what religion the Church of Integrity is based. The church is not only inspired by the religions mentioned in that post but also on Atheism. We gave a short hint about this relation whe we added the Atheist Blogroll. In this post we'll go more in depth into how atheism influenced us.

The atheist movement is on a rise. We believe there are many different reasons why people become atheists. Many are frustrated with how religion seems to bash and pervert science as some religious groups have done with the theory of evolution. In the Church of Integrity we of course base our world view on science so you shouldn't end up with any frustrations like that here. Others are frustrated with fundamentalism which we want to avoid at all costs. Yet others have fundamental issues with many religions because they require unconditional belief. We don't require unconditional belief, in fact we encourage people to question the world around them. Yet others are tired of how some religious groups try to mix up religion and politics. We want to separate the two. One can find many more issues that turn people to atheism, like the existence of a supreme being which we addressed in our posts "Does God Exist?" and "More on God". We can't cover everything here but feel free to suggest more reasons and we'll cover them here on the blog.

Now it might seem to you that we are an atheistic movement. Strictly speaking then we are not because after all we claim to be a religion. We claim that the atheistic movement is strong because of these various shortcomings of current religions as mentioned above. We think that many of the people that join the atheistic movement do so out of frustration and that the group that calls themselves atheists is very diverse. For example the Church of Integrity does not share a common path with the atheists that want to get rid of religion. We hope to be a shelter for those that are frustrated with current religions, feel they are somehow against their better knowledge but still want to be part of a bigger community and have some guidance in how to lead their life. Note we say guidance, ultimately people have to make their own decisions on how to lead their lifves.

It's easy to claim that we are a sell out somehow and we are just trying to get people by picking popular subjects. It is hard for us to defend ourselves against such claims but we point out that we have no economic or otherwise benefit of "stealing" people like that. The founders of the church simply went through many of the frustrations as mentioned above but yet didn't feel they shared a common path with the most aggressive atheists. We wanted to build a religion that is more of a way of life like Buddhism. The gain of taking part in such a religion is the community, having someone you can come to when things are not going good. We all need a shoulder to lean on. Sure, friends and family can definitely help so one could argue that religion is not necessary but we claim that we can do an even better job than friends and family and furthermore then not everyone is so lucky to have friends and family to lean on.