I find that sport fills this function for me. After being a very cerebral, non sporty child I was lucky enough to find sports I really enjoyed (badminton & tennis) in my late teens.

When I've moved from city to city I've joined a good local badminton club and played in local leagues. With that has come vigorous exercise AND social interaction. Latterly its also brought the opportunity to contribute to local community through coaching my club's juniors. I find this challenging in a very rewarding way.

Even if you are not religious, you may want to reconsider church. It can be good for people and communities in many ways, and often for reasons you don't understand.

Sometimes I feel like American culture is being sterilized. Just like white bread and a multivitamin, we only take what we understand and leave everything else behind. And then when we encounter social problems after eliminating church (or health problems when we eliminate natural foods), we are puzzled.

I see good in churches. And I see bad.

But most importantly from my perspective I see the fundamental basis being at odds with what I understand to be reality.

I'm not saying churches don't fulfill an important function, they do. But the order of things changes and even though change can bring a period of chaos we generally don't go back, we go forward.

What we know as "churches" are not growing, they are dying. For whatever reason(s) and this trend probably isn't going to reverse. So for me the solution is to move on to something with equivalent functionality but with less dysfunctionality.

Interesting point, thank you for answering.

I wonder if the "next thing" is going to come from atheists constructing such an organization from scratch, or from religious people adapting churches to fit our new understandings?

I think I see your point and it's a fair one, militant atheists are usually too busy being just that to be constructive but we aren't talking about cool electric guitars at the pulpit and admitting a few gays.

What I see being different in evolution this time is that it isn't an issue of whether God and Jesus are the same being or different beings or whether the Pope is the mouthpiece of God or the King is or Jesus or Muhammad was the last messenger. It's a whole different understanding, one that doesn't generally accept the existence of supernatural forces. So it's a foundational issue this time. I just see the non acceptance of the supernatural continuing to grow in the world and don't think it will roll back (may be wrong but don't think so, at least in my lifetime). So some important things get lost. Meh, anyway, enough about that. I don't fault anyone for being religious, I just simply can't be.

You might consider the Unitary Church, they are a non-denominational church, which means even people who don't believe in religion can join. The few that I have been to would pretty laid back groups of people who were just trying to understand life.

Maybe religion could transition slowly away from supernatural to "living with forces outside of your control". And away from heaven and hell to some notion that being good is its own reward, and good for your descendants.

Your logic is flawed associating social problems with eliminating church. There should be more socially accepted ways to congregate other than under the auspices of an ancient superstition.

And I won't even comment on your connection to health problems and natural foods (whatever those are). You mean like what prehistoric man ate? And lived to 25 years old?

My point was that sometimes something may have a positive effect even if we don't understand why or where the positive effect comes from. We can't easily reproduce the positive effects of church because we don't know what about it, exactly, is responsible for the benefits.

Similar to how a multivitamin and junk food doesn't replace a balanced diet. That's just an analogy to help illustrate my point, not a point on its own.

I think it's more likely that churches will adapt to our modern understandings than someone will build the perfect atheist social institution from first principles.

The local RPG and board games group fills that gap for me.

You may vary it depending on your tastes about leisure activities, but there's a lot of social groups you can try.