Talk:Jewish atheism

message: I would dispute the claim that Even the most Orthodox of Jewish authorities would accept as fully Jewish an atheist with a Jewish mother, according to Jewish law's emphasis on matrilineal descent.  Many ultra-Orthodox Jews wouldn't even consider involved Reform and Conservative Jews Jewish.  I think that perhaps this sentence should be deleted.  --דניאל ~ Danielrocks123 talk   contribs   Count 02:49, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This would be in circumstances where the atheist would know what Judaism is and then rejects it, then he is still Jewish according to everybody but can't be counted for certain things, however nearly all atheists do not truly know about Judaism before they reject it and would be classified halachackly as Tinokim ShNishba whom do not get classified as a min. --PinchasC | £€åV€ m€ å m€§§åg€ 02:20, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Orthodox Judaism views anyone as Jewish who fits under matrlineal Jewish descent (i.e. Jewish mother, maternal grandmother, etc.) It doesn't matter what faith that person follows - they would still be considered Jewish, just wayward. Mad Jack 00:39, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Orthodox acceptance 

message: Don't you have to follow Judaism which includes believening God to be a Jew? Don't give me this "if your mother is a Jew you are". Okay my mom is a Reformist and my father is a Catholic. So what am I? Half Reformist and half Catholic? OKAY! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 65.101.237.13 (talk • contribs).
:"Don't you have to follow Judaism which includes believening God to be a Jew?" No. You can be an ethnic Jew. Mad Jack 00:39, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No, you have to believe in a supernatural being to be a Jew. It's not a ethnisity no matter how much they wan't it to be.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.165.88.106 (talk) 09:13, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Atheist Jew? 

message: Could you people source instead of hacking and slashing? The Spinoza statement sounds very appealing, but all but realistic and, to be perfectly honest, I don't think I've ever met a theoretical physicist who believed in god, and I've met dozens. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Complainer (talk • contribs).
:According to Albert Einstein, he stated he believes in "Spinoza's God", which implies he has a pantheistic view of God. Unfortunately the article does not cite the quote, but nevertheless I'm removing him from the list because there is no clear evidence he was indeed a true atheist. --Ginkgo100talk 20:43, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Einstein again 

message: As far as I know there is an interesting distinction in Polish. Nouns designating members of religious denominations start with lower case letters, whereas those designating nationality or ethnic origin are capitalized: "żyd" means a person of Jewish faith, and "Żyd" means an ethnic Jew. Thus one would write "katolicy i żydzi" (catholics and jews) and "Polacy i Żydzi" (Poles and Jews). It is even possible to say that somebody is a "Żyd katolik" (a catholic Jew -- a convert?), even though such usage is probably uncommon.Tsf 01:44, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Jew" vs. "jew" 

message: How can you assign an ideology to an atheist? Ideology and atheism have nothing to do with one another. Ideology and atheism are completely independent of one another. What does believing in God or not believing in God have to do with such things as Communism, Socialism, Social democracy, Liberalism, Conservatism? Even Zionism need not correlate with belief in God or non-belief in God, though I can understand this article commenting on that one ideology in relationship to atheistic Jews because the reader may be curious about that. The rest strikes me as ludicrously irrelevant. Bus stop 21:07, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ideology of atheist???  

message: FYI: :Category:Jewish atheists has been nominated for deletion. Anyone who wishes to participate in the discussion may do so at
Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_August_25#Category:Jewish_atheists. Cgingold 15:39, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Category:Jewish atheists up for deletion 

message: Noting that there is a distinction between the Jewish race, and Jews as followers of the religion Judaism - my impression is that "atheist Jew" usually means someone who identifies as a member of the Jewish race, but does not follow the religion Judaism (as is covered in this article). Can it also mean an atheist who is a follower of the religion Judaism? The article says "Many Jewish atheists feel comfortable within any of the four major Jewish denominations", but it's not clear what "comfortable" means? Is this "comfortable" as in they actively believe and practise its principles, or simply that they don't object to it? Mdwh 21:24, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No Jew will say he belong to the Jewish race but there are Jews that will say they are ethnicsly Jews.Maybe for you there are no differnce but Jews don't like to use it the term Jewish race.132.72.70.50 11:24, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Religious Atheist Jews? 

message: I'd like to propose a couple of things (if anyone is reading this)...
1) The line "Some Jewish groups have expressed the view that Judaism is a religion, not an ethnicity, stating that non-practicing Jews should be called simply "atheists" not "atheist Jews"."
This is marked as needing a citation. I can't find any reasonable citation for this claim: i.e. all four major Jewish movements (in the US) view being Jewish as more than strictly about belief. Orthodox and Conservative define Jewishness along the lines of matrilineal descent, while Reform and Reconstructionist accept both matri- and patrilineal descent, if accompanied by a Jewish upbringing. While you probably can't convert to any of these movements while espousing atheism, I don't see any of the four branches rejecting the idea that there's a Jewish ethnicity. So I think this sentence should be deleted.
2) It looks like there's been a bunch of prior discussion re: the atheism and Jewishness of Freud, Einstein, etc. I think a section is needed here on prominent/famous Jewish atheists. I propose defining this as people who are ethnically Jewish and who rejected belief in God: Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud and Woody Allen would certainly qualify here. Whether we want to include someone like Einstein or Spinoza, Jews who rejected a personal God while using "God language" is perhaps a matter for debate.
Htrouser (talk) 15:07, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  A Couple of proposed edits/expansions 

message: Carl Sagan is also Jew, and he holds a philosophy similar to that of Einstein's and Spinoza's. 
We should add a section on it.
— Stevey7788 (talk) 04:49, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Carl Sagan 

message: Do we really want to put up a picture of Marx as the symbol of Jewish atheism? This articles discusses Jews who identify ethnically, something that Marx didn't do. Some would even argue that Marx was an anti-Semite (see On the Jewish Question). Macfanatic (talk) 19:55, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Marx 

message: There is a phenomenon known as Christian atheism, but it is arguably more marginal than Jewish atheism in terms of social acceptance within religious communities. The article should maybe try to explain why Jewish atheism is perceived as more common and more acceptable than Christian atheism, Muslim atheism or other forms of atheism. One possible explanation is that Christian doctrine teaches a form of antinomianism, which exalts faith and grace above the obedience to ancient communitarian laws. It is therefore possible for Jews to continue obeying these religious laws even as they lose their belief in the existence of God. ADM (talk) 18:18, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Jewish atheism vs. Christian atheism

message: The comedian and actor David Cross has said that he has Jewish family and yet he is said to be an atheist. I am wondering if he is considered an atheist Jew?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.171.37.139 (talk) 22:14, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  David Cross 

message: With this edit the article is proposed for deletion. A person is a Jew by birth or conversion. Atheism, or belief in God or anything else, does not even enter the deliberations as to whether someone is Jewish or not. Bus stop (talk) 16:27, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Any editor can de-PROD an article, as I just did. If the editor wishes to delete the article, she/he will have to take it to AfD. — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 17:01, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for taking care of that. Thanks too for the information that any editor can do that. Sometimes if the editor is not an admin it can set off an unnecessary reaction. Bus stop (talk) 17:56, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

text: When will this be deleted? It is complete junk, as people can become Jewish by conversion to Judeism and then be called Jews. Then their sone can be called a Jew because of birth and later say he is Atheist... and become a "Jew Atheist" ? There is no DNA or culture to support such blatant baloney. Mabidex (talk) 03:07, 21 February 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed for deletion? 

message: 'Judaism is arguably the paradigm example of the evolution of a culture and tradition that one can embrace without religious faith.'
How is this true? I would say that most cultures and traditions can be embraced without adopting religious faith, and the very fact that there has to be an article explaining the fact that someone can be both Jewish and non-religious proves that it is hardly a perfect example. Surely Jewish ethnic identity and Judaism are much much more wrapped up in each other than other cultures and their respective majority religions (if they have any)?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.101.225.183 (talk) 04:04, 10 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Judaism as a 'paradigm example' of non-faith-requiring culture 

message: How about we expand the “Notable people” section into an article called “List of Jewish atheists” (Wikipedia:Summary style)? We already have a “Jewish atheists” category on Wikipedia—for now, I added a link to it in the said section with a “See also” template—so an article might appear rather superfluous. Nonetheless, it's not an uncommon practice on Wikipedia; for eample, Wikipedia has both an article and a category for notable people from New Hampshire. Moreover, if we separate it into an article of itself, we'll get the benefit of being able to organize the individuals by their occupations or sources of notability rather than merely the letters from which their names begin, as is automatically the case with Wiki categories. Everything Is Numbers (talk) 04:53, 1 August 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds like a good idea. — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 14:42, 2 August 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Great. Seeing that no-one has expressed any objections, I'll get it done these Motzei Shabbat. Everything Is Numbers (talk) 22:22, 4 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  List of Jewish atheists 

message: "Jewish atheism refers to atheism as practiced by people [...]"
This should be rephrased. You cannot "practice atheism". Atheism is not a religion, just like not practicing any kind of sport is not a sport, and not having a hobby is not a hobby, as atheists have had to point out for years. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 18:37, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Style 

message: The Jewish atheist is Jewish by blood but not by religion. Only a nazi wouldn't accept the opposite.
Not a random opposite, but simply concerning people who are culturally and not genetically Hebrew.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:587:4111:AD00:51E0:4954:A9CA:9B8C (talk) 08:14, 28 October 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  False to invert the logic? 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Starting merger discussion. Editor2020 (talk) 20:27, 6 April 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: No merge. The subjects of the articles are quite different. Editor2020 (talk) 20:29, 6 April 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge to [[Cultural Judaism]] 

message: For the user that started ranting all over this page, and whose opinions I have removed, please read the above policy. That explains why your opinions were removed. Thank you, warshy (¥¥) 01:32, 7 May 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[WP:FORUM]] 

message: here in israel at least what ive always used this is called "Yehudim Hilonim" (ח not ה) 87.68.136.59 (talk) 20:36, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: The second paragraph of the lede refers to Jewish Secularism, which is closer to what you are refering to. But this article here is more extreme than that, it is about Jews that don't think god really exists. There probably aren't that many of those left in Israel these days? Regards, warshy (¥¥) 22:34, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Add israeli name for this thing