I have finished reading Greta Christina's book, Why Are You Atheists So Angry?. Don't be shocked, everyone; I quite liked it, and I think it is a very important book. Ms. Christina pulls together a great deal of information and a great many arguments that I have never before seen collected in one place, and I regard it as an excellent resource for atheists (activists or not), and a must-read for ANY theist.
I find that I have changed my thinking rather a lot of late; not entirely because of this book, but because of a pretty simple insight. No, I haven't suddenly discarded my Jewish perspective -- but I find that I can no longer blame atheists in general, or Ms. Christina in particular, for more or less discounting and ignoring modern Jews when criticizing religion. Of course I don't agree with her in every detail; but my objections to her arguments are predictable, and, quite literally, trivial -- in a sense, as you will see.
Now, two arguments in particular, key arguments in Chapter Four (like I said; predictable), caught my attention. The first is that all religions, no matter how liberal or progressive, are based on and revolve around supernaturalism and are opposed to and discourage reliance on reason and evidence.
That is, as I think I have shown in the past, simply factually false where Judaism is concerned -- BUT, as I said, my objection is trivial, first because we are a relatively tiny (i.e. trivial) minority of theists -- about 0.2% of the world's population, and about 2% in the US, big whoop -- and, more importantly, the unimportance and practical absence of supernatural belief in our religion is not well known, as has also been proven right here. That latter is, I have come to believe, more the fault of us Jews than of anyone else; we don't talk about our religion much except among ourselves, through long-ingrained habits of survival.
The second argument is a corollary of the first: that moderate and progressive religion give "credibility" to the repressive and ugly forms of religion precisely because they are based on supernaturalism and opposed to reason, etc. Now, I would concede that those arguments DO apply to all but the most radical varieties of even progressive and liberal forms of Christianity. And, even though I have argued here over and over and OVER again that modern Judaism is not based on nor centered on belief in the supernatural, and that reason and evidence take precedence over religious dogma and supernatural belief in every case, as a matter of formal religious teaching in Judaism, and that this has been true for centuries -- again, we are such a tiny minority of theists, and those facts are so little known, that for practical purposes when discussing religion it makes no difference.
I DO hope that some here will appreciate that that is a fairly large concession for me; after all, I am a Jew, and that means that my own perspective on the meaning of "religion" is rather different here. After all, what does anyone expect? That I would suddenly admit that my understanding of Judaism is really dogmatic supernaturalist literalism and that I have been lying all along -- and then just as suddenly become a pure atheist because I realize that that understanding is profoundly wrong? Well, sorry; I realized THAT a few decades ago. It's an integral part of my religious perspective NOW. If you can't get your head around that, it's not MY problem -- but I'll keep trying to get it across anyway.
(To spell C-A-T for everyone: All this does not, of course, apply to Orthodox Judaism.)
I have said, for a long time now, that my objections to fundamentalist, literalist religion are the same as those of any atheist; but now I can no longer complain that the fact that modern Judaism doesn't fit those stereotypes makes much difference in the general argument against "religion," as exemplified by Ms. Christina's book -- because (1) there are so few of us, and (2) so few people know this about us. And that, in spite of objections and the obvious uphill struggle, is why I still frequent fora like this one.
I have been told by Jewish friends and family that if I were not a convert, I would not do this. The first thing that a Jew learns, I am told, is to keep one's head down and don't draw attention to one's Judaism. Good advice, I'm sure; but I hope that it's more applicable to times past than to today. Even if it's not, I am of the "ignorance breeds hostility" school of thought, and I think it's better for people to know more, and not less. I'm not going anywhere.
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