Regardless of belief system, all people share the need for community. Everyone seeks a sense of belonging.

VIDEO: Hear what students have to say about atheistic and religious belief..

The same way people seek comfort, solace and growth through the church, nonbelievers create support systems to embrace their respective spiritual identity – whether or not it is absent.

Maggie Kawasaki-Murray is the Newman Center’s Campus Minister. She provides support and resources for students, just like the center. Of its amenities, students access a private chapel, work room with computers, wireless Internet, free printing and fridges full of food.

“We want to provide everything we can for students to feel fostered in community,” Kawasaki-Murray said. “At the same time, we are giving the tools to develop, explore and practice our faith.”

For atheists on campus, there is the Atheist Student Organization.

The organization offers everything from social support to supporting the fight for a true separation of church and state.

And before I continue, it should be known that I am the product of an all-girls Catholic high school, and have been an atheist since I was 14 years old.

As such, I think it is a duty and obligation to study matters of consequence before forming strong opinions.

Religion is so fundamental to some; it is understandably evocative when dissent on the existent of God is expresses.

The atheist argument is often taken with offense, but the differences between the nonbelievers and the religious are far less significant than what we have in common.

Both ideological groups enhance and provide a community for its party.

The Sacramento Newman Catholic Community is an all-inclusive, all-accepting sanctuary for people who are religious, people who feel lost and students who just need a place to do homework and hang out and make friends with whom they bond on a social and spiritual level.

Senior Carissa Baltazar has been going to the center for two years, where she got to reconnect with her faith and trust in God and people.

Religion and community are not separate for her at Newman.

“We’re not confronted by religion. It’s blended with the social aspects: with one comes the other,” Baltazar said.

The atheist lacks the internal faith in a spiritual presence that so often comforts and compels people in the most trying times. In theory, this could make an atheist very lonely. Typically, it is not a belief typically associated with community or comfort.

However, this belief is as uniting as any found in a chapel or a church.

For some, an all-knowing but absent God does not satisfy standards of belief. Free will is just not an adequate account for homophobia and all other injustices that prevail everyday.

Jesus’ teachings are what I think matter, though. An agent for leading a good life, he did not teach indulgence, he taught people indiscriminate respect. I really believe people should admire the heart of his principles – whether they are atheist or not.

Atheists do not believe in God but that does not mean we lack a deep belief system or camaraderie between ourselves.

Some follow the word of God.

For me, justice is my deity and my drive.

And these ideals are not mutually exclusive. The Newman Center, too, provides great services to the outside community as much as to its attendees.

Volunteering at Loaves and Fishes, providing Thanksgiving meals to needy families and adopting families for Christmas are just a few of the fundamental things the religious community does to improve society.

It can be easy to overlook any commonality between the people who believe in God and those who do not.

But the most intrinsic quality of the church and the atheist community is just that: community. There is a built-in support system when people with shared beliefs are unified.

While separated by ideology, our most basic needs do not differ. The sources of our comforts do not overpower our duty to give and accept support.

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