Wedding?! I thought wedding was a religious gimmick. Why would an atheist get married?!

Yes we need rituals. I personally don't believe we need an organization to have a meaningful ritual to mark important events.

My husband was an atheist and when he died I guess what we had was a wake. There was no announcer of any kind, we ate his favorite foods, we listened to all his favorite music, we visited and we looked at videos and photograph albums showing the highlights of his life. Each part of the wake was managed by a child, a friend or a neighbor. It was all about him and how much we loved him.

I was so glad it was a nice September day because 230 people showed up. Many of them took one of his many ball caps as a way to remember him. Our friends and family were Catholic,Episcopalian ,Methodist, Church of God,Baptist,Lutheran and atheist. He respected all of their choices and they returned that respect.

I've been to three. The first for an uncle. The service was given by a Church of Scotland Minister who was the Chaplain for the Royal Navy in Portsmouth. He did a wonderful ceremony leaving god and religion out of it.
The second was for my wife. Despite the objections of her brother, who is also an atheist who wanted a kirk minister my daughter and insisted on following her wishes that any god nonsense be left out. His fear was for HIS embarrassment in front of his family. In the end it was far better than any god bothering gobbledygook that anyone had had with family funerals in north east Scotland.
The third was for my mother in law, who wanted a humanist funeral, having been so impressed by what I'd sorted for her daughter. This despite her being a kirk o'Scotland Christian.
Many ceremonies that involve religion barely remember what they are for, but instead insert advertising for themselves.

There is a great book by Alain Du Botton called "Religion for Atheists", definite worth reading.

Like it or not, we are (most of us anyways) social critters. Religion has long understood this, it is their power. Offering secular ceremonies provides agnostics with needed social interaction. It is a good thing.

I agree we need to promote humanist ceremonies to demonstrate to society that Humanists, Agnostics, and Atheists are a powerful legitimate organization of intelligent honorable citizens.

We do seem to want rituals.
Marriages, bachelor parties, coming of age, funerals/wakes, holidays,

Rather than be against rituals, perhaps we need to replace what is, keeping some aspects and making others new.
Who would be against easter egg hunts? And has nothing to do with
I love Day of the Dead where I live.

Ritual are just one part of changing religions to serve us better. We could also remove hypocrisy (maybe), paid clergy, pedophilia,.....
We could focus on caring for the earth, simple living, caring for those in need, removing usary... reducing xenophobia and sexual restrictions. Pro-science, removing faith.

I guess each of us might have different idea of how religion could serve us rather than enslave us.
Join this agnostic group if you are interested in replacing religion. Designing better religion

If only???

I do not like ceremonies at all. You know the end result of one but it is not official without the ceremony.

Interesting, the idea of calling the course in ethics completion ritual, a Confirmation, is at least original, if a little cheesy.

When one adjective falls out of favor we find a replacement that doesn’t carry the offending associations.
Meanwhile, a ceremony is a ceremony.

My experiences with "ceremonies" has left me less than enthusiastic for them, any of them.

I agree with the article.
Ceremonies and rituals are really important for our Ape-discontinuous-mind to understand that life has reached a milestone or things are changing.
Rituals means nothing, but at the same time means everything.