This, to me, seems like one of the central societal challenges today...how do we retain the community and social outreach programs that churches provide without

This, to me, seems like one of the central societal challenges today...how do we retain the community and social outreach programs that churches provide without the fairy tales, imaginary-friend-for-grownups and anti-science zealotry that churches bundle into their current offering? I’ve often felt that life would’ve been easier if I’d been able to swallow the dogma without having to question. People who have that faith seem genuinely fulfilled by it, in an almost placebo-like way. And the decidedly local character of churches is a sort of armor against the internetification of the modern world that so often isolates us. But since I could never accept what I still see as a facile relic of a primitive culture, I feel like I missed out on the many ancillary benefits that members of that community so often enjoy.