In the comments of a recent thread, another poster pointed out that religious individuals tend to report higher levels of happiness than nonreligious individuals. I suggested that the social network of churches, rather than the direct effects of theistic belief, might be responsible for this difference, and after doing a bit of searching around to see if the available studies support such an explanation, found a study that indicates that this is indeed the case.
Religious churches may be far from optimal in the services they provide to communities, but they have a great positive impact on the lives of many individuals. And not just as friendly social gatherings and occasional providers of community service; I've known priests who were superb community organizers and motivational speakers, who played an important role for their congregations to which I know of no existing secular analogue.
It seems probable that a secular organization could effectively play the same role in a community, but would anyone be likely to take it seriously? Since people who're already religious may be inclined to reject the value of a secular authority filling the role of a church, and atheistic individuals may not be inclined to attend, either due to reversing the stupidity of religion, or due to asocial and anticooperative values, it's uncertain whether a secular organization that adequately filled the role of a church would get off the ground in the first place in the present social climate.
So, what are your feelings on the prospect of secular church analogues? Do you think that they're appropriate or practical? Do you expect them ever to become common in real life?
My impression is that lots of religiously moderate individuals also didn't like their Hebrew school/Sunday school etc. so that's not unique to atheists. At to literary feeling for the Bible, I don't know how someone who is educated wouldn't have a fair bit of that other than simple emotional reaction because of the damage that religion has done to society. I'd have to wonder if those people have read Samuel or the first few chapters of Kings or Ruth for example. Maybe tell them to read it as they would read Greek mythology and evaluate the literary merit as if it were from a no longer extant religion?
Personally, I turned to the bible after becoming acquainted with several other strains of mythology, and with the intention of treating it in the same manner, but I found myself intensely disappointed by its literary qualities. There were plenty of other writing flaws, but I felt like the core of it was that monotheism simply doesn't make for as good story dynamics.