One of the members of this forum, Rich Rodriguez is a freemason and he is pretty cool.

You have to declare belief in some higher power to join. 

First let me say that I'm not a Mason, but I do study them. 

Freemasonry originally grew out of the club movement in England (late 17th century) because it offered men a place where they could go and be together *without* any references to a particular religion.  Remember that England had just come out of a religious civil war, and London had undergone a long period of time where armed gangs roamed the streets, looking for groups from the other church to kill and maim. From its inception, Masonry carefully avoided aligning itself with a particular religion specifically for this reason.  They didn't take atheists, but nobody did back then.

Their own constitutions pretty clearly establish that they were basically deist or pantheist, with all the references to God replaced by architectural references:

Most of the founding fathers (except maybe Jefferson) were Masons.  You can still visit the Green Dragon Tavern in Boston where the lodge that included Paul Revere, John Hancock and John Adams met to plan the revolution.  Since the founders were clearly secularists and deists/humanists, it gives you a pretty good example of the sentiments expressed in the Constitutions actually being put into practice. 

In the 19th century, especially under Victoria, Freemasonry was widely used as an alternative to conventional religion.  The Anglican church was widely seen by men as being too "feminsed" and the image of the church being run by the local prominent women (with the vicar as their doormat) was very widespread in the literature.  So the lodge gave men an outlet for their spiritual inclinations without forcing them to go to church. 

In the U.S., the general anti-Catholic sentiment that surrounded Italian/Irish immigration meant that Catholics were mostly excluded from the Masons (which is where we got the Knights of Columbus).  The Morgan Affair (1826) and the resulting rise of the Anti-Masonic party is usually seen as the downfall of American Freemasonry.

But carried all over the world by Irish/British army regiments, Freemasonry was very ecumenical for the most part.  There were lodges in all the British colonies, most of which accepted at least some of the local non-Christians.  Kipling writes about Hindu and Moslem members in his lodge in India.

Most of what is written about the Freemasons is totally false.  It's a favorite topic for conspiracy theorists, but it's really an innocent organization.  Be particularly skeptical of anything written by Stephen Knight. 

Dan Brown too. I don't just mean about the Masons there: anything Dan Brown says about anything, assume that it is erroneous in some way.

From what I can tell, the Freemasons are like the Hell's Angels Motorcycle Club. They are everywhere, they stick together, they are somewhat misogynistic, they are generally unknown and somewhat feared by society, they don't mind that one jot, and they are generally comprised of middle-aged relatively-well-off men. They don't have any "agenda" per se, other than to maintain the organisation. Some chapters can be unpleasant, very unpleasant if crossed, but in general they just want to be left alone to do their networking.

No - but also not evil or a conspiracy: just very hokey. Kinda like dressing up in leather and tattoos and having symbols (flaming skulls) and secret meetings and rituals and stuff.

Well it's not a religion, so faith isn't "necessary" or particularly encouraged.  I mean, you can't go to Hell or something for not believing (unlike some religions).  So most 21st century Masons recognize that the ritual objects, costumes, and concepts are all symbolic.  They're very self-consciously aware of the fact that there's no real "magic" or hidden force behind any of it, and the teachings even express things like "the 24 inch gauge is a symbol of the 24 hours in the day" and things like that.

So in one way it is like dress-up and playacting, but it's not childish or delusional.  If you've ever participated in a formal ritual (or been a religious ecstatic) then you know the power that cooperative, ritualized behavior can have on your emotions and the sense of bonding and satisfaction that it creates (the Master Mason initiation ceremony is reported to be especially moving).

Remember what your last graduation ceremony was like, with all the funny costumes and ritual objects and speeches?  Nobody really believes they are medieval scholars, but they wear the robes out of a sense of tradition, and it's psychologically important in creating the sense of a ritual space.  It's more like that, I'm told.

I think it's a great example of how it's possible to get the spiritual/psychological benefits of a religion without the bad stuff.  People consciously designing engaging ritual activity without all the superstition, intolerance or guilt associated with Judeo-Christian religion seems to me both harmless and potentially beneficial.

 In the heyday of secret societies in mid-late 19th Century America, secret societies lived or died by the value of their rituals.  There was constant competition for lodge members, and a lot of clubs tried to copyright or otherwise protect their rituals from piracy (hence the secrecy).  Some of the stuff was really over the top by contemporary standards: there was one group called the Sublime Brotherhood of Ben-Hur (or something like that) that had as their high point the annual re-creation of the chariot race scene.

Most of these hundreds of old groups are defunct now--there are more and better sources of evening entertainment for young men.  But I hear that fight clubs are having a comeback. 

There are a lot of theories about why secret societies lost popularity.  Personally I think the most likely one is that the cult of domesticity killed them.

Men's clubs and societies flourished in the 19th century under the cultural tradition of separate spheres--men in the workplace and women at home--although even then there was a lot of tension between men who wanted to eat dinner at the club or stay out all night at the lodge and their wives who wanted them at home.  As the nuclear family concept became more entrenched in middle class culture (20th century), it became less possible and desirable to spend several nights a week away from the house.

But probably it was a combination of influences, including competition from movies and eventually television as entertainment, and the decentralization of social structures (the small-town culture giving way to urban culture) that made clubs a less attractive option for men. 

Men's clubs need a solid core of older men in order to succeed, so young men/bachelor clubs are not really persistent enough to be around for long.  Of course clubs also need a constant influx of younger men in order to thrive and continue, which is the problem that the Masons are having now.  Most lodges, I hear, are desperate for new, young members.

I still say a majority of Freemasons believe in the theist ideas that are presented, or at least spiritual ideas in the form of attaining higher knowledge.  Some may see symbols as having spiritual significance rather than just being symbols, for example using the Bible as a symbol would give it a holy significance, while treating it as just a symbol would make it just a book with words. 

Rosicrucianism is an example of a secret society that does have spiritual/supernatural beliefs about its symbols in the form of spiritual alchemy, even going so far as to promote these ideas in self help programs. 

http://www.conspiracyarchive.com/Commentary/Oprah_The_Secret.htm 

It's hard to measure just how much someone believes in their symbols as forms of actual supernatural power, or if they see them as nothing more than man made symbols meant to represent human ideas or concepts. 

Let's start one.