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Comment by jiggy2011 | Hacker News Reader

jiggy2011

In the UK, we have a different name for atheists. We call it "Church of England".

I assume you're referring to the fact that it's just a "made up" church? [1] Some of the most fanatical church go-ers that I know of are C of E. Of course, that could be my limited experience.

I can see how in the US it can be hard to be an atheist, but as an atheist in the UK it can be a minefield too. Just sat in the pub having a discussion the other day with some people I've known for a while and they were shocked when they discovered I was an atheist and tried to go down the whole, "how can you not believe" yawn and started to get quite angry. I've had that a couple of times now and had to extricate myself with, "look, I can take you through my many years of thought that brought me to this conclusion that will have you seriously doubting your faith, or we can just accept that we both have different opinions."

[1] ...unlike all the other ones of course...

Doesn't mean they are any less made up than the Church of Latter Day Saints. There may be genuine concerns but at the end of the day it was just one guy who wanted a divorce as far as I know.

Yes, and that business about the transubstantiation, which for some reason C of E doesn't believe in but Roman Catholic does.

Even though it's pretty obvious to anyone who's been to a service that the wafer definitely doesn't turn into the actual body of christ - it's still a wafer.

Just out of curiosity, May I ask the age group of the "some people" you referred to?

As a 30yr old in the UK I've not once had that once. In fact I've seen the inverse, people "coming out" as having belief and their friends being shocked, more frequently.

is that meant to be a joke?

Only partly, COE is the state religion in the England so it's taken as a sort of default. I know plenty of people who were married by COE vicars and will fill in COE on a census form but they don't actually believe in god or attend church and think people who do are strange.

Edit: Replaced UK with England!

"COE is the state religion in the UK so it's taken as a sort of default"

Not in the parts of the UK that aren't in England it isn't!

Yes, but also a bit true. See the Sea of Faith movement as an example.

Probably partially. But there are quite a lot of cultural protestants in the UK, who go to church biannually, generally don't disagree with the archbishop of Canterbury's proclamations too vehemently, and overall, don't give much of a shit about the whole shebang.

The Church of England does seem charmingly ambiguous about whether the whole "religion" thing should be taken too seriously or not.

Compared to the Church of Scotland - which when we had it inflicted upon us at school seemed more of the good old fashioned enternal-damnation/hell-fire/torment approach. Although the Church of Scotland is actually fairly cheery compared to some of the more extreme protestant sects that to be found in the remoter parts of Scotland.

NB If you've seen "Breaking the Waves" you get the idea..... :-)

Edit: Found this brilliant article that sort of sums it up: "Wee Frees told to 'cheer up' by own magazine".

For decades the ultra-Conservative Free Church of Scotland has been caricatured as gloomy and depressive, only truly content when it is opposing Sunday ferry services or chaining up play park swings on the Sabbath.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1575505/Wee-Frees-tol...

I strongly suspect so.

C of E is sort of the default religion in England, and I know a fair number of people (I used to be one of them) who would describe themselves as C of E but who don't really believe in God.

These days, it's changing though - 25% of the population as a whole (and around 40% of those under 50) described themselves as having no religion in the last census.

Yeah. The CoE is where you go if you're one of those people who equates 'Christian' with 'decent human being', but don't really believe all nice old stories. They have cake and organise bake sales and cups of tea and they're generally very nice people and don't demand too much, and besides the church is in the middle of the village and it looks lovely so I'll chip in a bit to the roof fund because you wouldn't want it falling down, and we do have a bit of a sing on a sunday morning and it's not too boring, and the vicar was so good at poor uncle Alfie's funeral the other week...

I listened to an interview with our last Archbishop of Canterbury a little while ago, Dr Rowan Williams. You know, the guy that ran the show (even though the Queen is nominally in charge). He admitted he didn't really know there was a god, just that he thought there might be and really really hoped there was.

I don't know if this sort of 'religion' is familiar to americans/others?

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