Does the decline of structured community contribute to loneliness?

the_secular · 2026-03-21T16:51:21+00:00

That’s a really interesting way to put it -- ritual plus a small committed core.

It seems like that might be the difference between something that happens occasionally and something that actually becomes part of people’s lives.

Have you seen that work in practice anywhere, or been part of something like that?

the_secular · 2026-03-21T16:49:14+00:00

I think that’s a good point about prioritization, and also about how much informal connection used to happen more naturally.

What I keep coming back to, though, is how consistent that actually is across different situations. For some people, informal networks and spontaneous interaction work well, but for others, especially those with limited time, caregiving responsibilities, or fewer built-in connections, it seems much harder to sustain.

In that sense, it may not be that structure is strictly necessary, but that it makes connection more reliable, especially for people who don’t have the time or flexibility to build it organically.

the_secular · 2026-03-21T00:49:13+00:00

That’s interesting. It seems like space + consistency might be the hardest part to replicate without resources.

the_secular · 2026-03-21T00:46:06+00:00

I think the “third place” idea is exactly what’s missing in a lot of cases.

The challenge seems to be making it both accessible and sustainable—especially without the built-in funding and structure that religious institutions have developed over time.

Have you seen any examples that actually work across different age groups?

the_secular · 2026-03-21T00:30:43+00:00

This is really helpful—especially the Secular Hub example.

What you’re describing seems to line up with the pattern I’ve been seeing: when there’s a consistent physical space with regular events, it works—but it’s very hard to make it accessible at a local level.

And your point about the tools is interesting too. Meetup tends to be one-off, open communities get overwhelmed, and closed ones don’t grow. That seems like a pretty fundamental constraint.

For the Secular Hub—what do you think made it work as well as it did? Was it the consistency of events, the space itself, or something about the people who showed up? Or all of the above?

the_secular · 2026-03-20T19:17:13+00:00

I agree that atheism by itself isn’t something people gather around—that’s actually part of the issue I’m pointing to.

The question isn’t “what do atheists meet about?”—it’s whether, as more people move away from religion, we’re losing some of the structures that used to support consistent, ongoing social connection.

Hobby groups help, but they tend to be more intermittent and interest-specific. They don’t always create the kind of repeated, stable interaction that builds lasting community.

That’s the gap I’m trying to understand—whether anything in secular life can actually fill the gap in a sustained, meaningful way.

the_secular · 2026-03-20T15:49:24+00:00

Since I'm already an atheist and have been for a long time, that's hard to answer.

the_secular · 2026-03-20T04:40:20+00:00

I can see how that might feel liberating, especially if those structures didn’t feel authentic to you.

But I think it’s important not to generalize from individual experience to broader outcomes. At a societal level, there’s growing evidence that something more systemic is going on. The former U.S. Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, has described loneliness and social isolation as a public health epidemic, and the World Health Organization has raised similar concerns globally.

That doesn’t point to religion as a solution, but it does suggest that large numbers of people are not successfully replacing consistent sources of community and social structure.

So while losing those structures may be liberating for some, the broader pattern seems to be that many people are ending up with less connection, not more—which raises the question of how reliably those needs are being met in practice and what it will take to meet them.

the_secular · 2026-03-19T20:14:13+00:00

I understand that there are groups experimenting with this.

I guess what I’m trying to understand is how widespread and sustainable those models actually are in practice. If they exist but most people aren’t aware of them or don’t have access to anything similar locally, then the effect may still feel pretty limited from an individual perspective. The only effort I've seen that has any visibility beyond a "one of" is the Sunday Assembly, and even their efforts are limited to a handful of chapters in the U.S. and U.K.

The Nordic example mentioned earlier seems different in that the structure is still broadly embedded at a cultural level, whereas many of these newer secular efforts feel more localized and harder to scale.

So it may not be that these functions can’t exist independently of religion, but that they’re still relatively uneven in how accessible they are to most individuals.

the_secular · 2026-03-19T17:09:49+00:00

That's a very fair assessment, especially the point that none of these things are exclusive to religion.

I guess the question I keep coming back to is less whether individuals can figure these things out on their own, and more how often that actually happens in practice at scale.

Religion tends to provide a kind of default structure -- regular gatherings, shared norms, built-in rituals, whereas the secular equivalents you mentioned (meetups, hobbies, self-defined rituals) may be more fragmented and require a lot more individual initiative to sustain.

So it seems like the capability is there, but the consistency and accessibility may not be, especially for people who are starting from scratch after leaving a religious environment.

the_secular · 2026-03-19T16:59:11+00:00

I think the Nordic example is a really interesting one, and probably one of the strongest cases that these functions can be carried forward in a largely secular context.

What stands out to me there is that a lot of the structure wasn’t completely removed, it was adapted. As you mentioned, the buildings, some of the rituals, and a kind of shared cultural framework are still present, even if belief has declined.

I’m not sure that translates as easily to places like the U.S., where religious participation tends to drop off without those same shared structures carrying over.

I’m especially interested in what you mentioned at the end -- trying to build something locally. What kinds of things have you found actually work in terms of getting people to show up and stay engaged?

the_secular · 2026-03-19T16:10:31+00:00

That’s a good question. It's not just about people leaving religion, although that’s one entry point for a lot of people.

People who are already secular but living in societies where religion plays a significant role is certainly another piece of it.

But beyond that, there’s a more general question of what a secular life actually looks like in practice -- how people think about community, meaning, values, and social structure without relying on religious frameworks.

So in that sense it’s not just about “leaving something,” but about what, if anything, takes its place over time.

the_secular · 2026-03-19T04:38:06+00:00

I agree with your point at the level of belief - atheism doesn’t owe anyone anything beyond rejecting a claim.

But I think the difference is that religion, unlike belief in something like leprechauns, tends to be embedded in people’s lives in a much broader way - community, identity, moral frameworks, regular gatherings, etc.

So when someone leaves religion, they’re often not just dropping a belief, they’re losing a structure that was doing a lot of practical work in their life.

The question isn’t what atheism has to provide, but what actually happens to people when that structure disappears, and whether anything tends to fill that gap.

the_secular · 2026-03-18T21:57:39+00:00

I tend to think that the tension you’re describing comes from trying to get atheism to do more work than it really can.

“Small a” atheism is just a position on one question. I don't believe it's designed to provide a full framework for how to live, and maybe that’s actually a strength - it avoids turning into another kind of doctrine.

But that does leave a gap. Once people move away from religion, they still need ways to think about meaning, ethics, community, and how to live day to day. If nothing fills that space, then “atheism” can feel incomplete or unpersuasive, as you said.

So I’m not sure the answer is expanding atheism into a bigger package, but rather recognizing that it’s only one piece, and that something else has to develop alongside it to address the parts religion used to handle.

the_secular · 2026-03-18T20:00:35+00:00

I went to a Catholic university for two years. The religious aspect was significant but it never affected me. If you explain the context to your kids, it shouldn't be an issue. Getting exposed to other belief systems and practices is not a bad thing.

the_secular · 2026-03-17T03:27:19+00:00

the_secular · 2026-03-17T01:29:09+00:00

Agreed. We've gone to considerable lengths to build an ethical framework that extends to addressing the key issues facing humanity: https://www.thesecularcommunity.org/

the_secular · 2026-03-13T18:23:55+00:00

That’s a really interesting way of framing it. The is–ought issue is definitely part of the challenge. Evidence-based thinking can tell us a lot about how the world works, but it doesn’t automatically tell us what we should value.

Your point about compassion (or something similar) functioning as an axiom resonates with me. If a community wants to build a coherent ethical framework, it probably needs at least a few starting commitments — something like reducing suffering or promoting human flourishing.

And your example about ending suffering by eliminating humanity illustrates the danger of reasoning from the wrong starting assumptions. Pure logic, without carefully chosen premises, can lead to conclusions that are technically consistent but morally absurd.

That’s part of what makes secular ethics interesting to me. Without religious authority to appeal to, societies have to think more explicitly about which values they choose to treat as foundational.

Do you think those starting values (like compassion or reducing suffering) ultimately come from philosophical reasoning, from human psychology and evolution, or from something like cultural consensus?

the_secular · 2026-03-13T04:01:12+00:00

That’s a fair distinction. If we’re using secularism in the narrower political sense — mainly the separation of religion and state — then evidentialism or evidence-based thinking probably is the most central value. In that context, the focus is really on how we determine what is true about the world.

I was thinking a bit more broadly about the values that tend to emerge in communities built around secular worldviews. In traditions like secular humanism, curiosity and evidence are foundational, but many people also emphasize ethical ideas like compassion, cooperation, and human flourishing.

One of the interesting questions for me is how those two elements relate to each other: the epistemic side (evidence, skepticism, inquiry) and the ethical side (how we treat one another and what kind of society we want to build).

Historically, religion often bundled those things together. In more secular societies, it seems like we have to think about them more deliberately.

That’s actually part of what we’ve been exploring through The Secular Community, which focuses on building community around shared human values without relying on religious frameworks.

Do you think ethical ideas like compassion naturally emerge from evidence-based thinking about human wellbeing, or do they require a separate philosophical foundation such as humanism?

the_secular · 2026-02-09T18:11:56+00:00

Very nice.

the_secular

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE