The ultraorthodox don’t consider non-ultraorthodox to still be Jews. The orthodox don’t consider anyone other than themselves and ultraorthodox to be jews. And so on. But that doesn’t change the practical fact that there’s a Jewish culture, and you’re stuck with it even in the absence of belief.

My practical, working definition of whether or not a person is a Jew is as follows: if there’s a significant portion of people in the world that would throw you in a gas chamber for being a Jew, you’re a Jew.

That’s not as off-the-wall a definition as it may seem at first glance. Judaism defines itself *very heavily* by its suffering. I can’t, off the top of my head, think of a single significant Jewish holiday that’s not about suffering/punishment.

Christians faint like Victorian dandies under the persecution of not being able to force prayer in schools; Jews get to call on things like the Holocaust. It’s the same “I’m being persecuted” hysteria, cranked up by actual validation by reality. So, if you’re a member of the baking-alive crowd, you’re already down for well over half of the Jewish religion.

I posted my “evil” response before I clicked on his link. The notion of a grey alien serving as a court astrologer to Queen Elizabeth I seems less probable than a celestial teapot in an elliptical orbit between Earth and Mars but a bit more probable than all of the supernatural stuff in the Torah (just to keep this a bit on topic).

I am looking for Atheist who can tell me if Evil exists? I have looked at the achirves and I cannot see anything about evil?

Religious institutions that protect child predators are evil. See, that wasn’t so hard.

I have Jewish friends who are strongly on both sides of the issue. One is strongly Jewish Atheist, with a religious jewish wife and a Jewish-Atheist Camp Quest attending daughter.

Another friend is as far on the other pole as you can be and says that you can’t be a Jewish Atheist because being Jewish is a religious identication and how can you be Jewish and not believe in god?

They are both good public speakers and I’ve always thought that they would make for a good debate.

Just to clarify that bit about not understanding being a “Jewish atheist,” as someone said the wouldn’t identify themselves as a “Protestant atheist.”

Judaism is not (just) a religion. It’s an ethnic/racial group. You are Jewish in the same way that you are Italian, Albanian, Nigerian, etc. It is *also* a religion.

You can give up the portion of your Jewishness that is related to belief, but you can not “give up” your Jewish heritage any more than you can ‘choose’ not to have been raised in an Italian culture.

This. I’m a (half-) Jewish atheist. I’ve always been a Jewish atheist (my parents were atheists). I could no more stop being Jewish than I could stop being European-grab-bag or Native American (the components of my other “half”). I care about and engage with my Jewish heritage. I just don’t believe in the religion associated with it. It’s an ethnoreligious group – you can be connected by ethnicity, religion, or both.

It’s not like Jews are the only ethnoreligious group out there. The Copts of Egypt are another example. I have a friend who is Coptic by ethnicity, but doesn’t follow the Coptic Church. He’s still a Copt, though – that is what his ethnicity is, and what his cultural background is, and it’s not like those get erased because he no longer follows the associated religion.

Now John Dee was the chief astrologer in the court of Elisabeth the first but he was a practiser of Enochian Magic and they used to invoke “angels ” during their rituals and in one of those sessions Dee drew up the angel they used to comunicate with , by the name of Lam. Does he not look like a grey “alien”?

Nut. Ball.

Some atheists would probably consider “Evil” as just another word for “very bad behavior”. I tend to view “Evil” as a little different. I view it as “very bad behavior” that is somehow dressed up as something that is somewhat socially acceptable (at least by some fragment of the society) or at least “legal” by some standard. Thus, “Evil” is sneaky, sometimes unconscious. People can be evil. Corporations can be evil. Advocacy groups can be evil. At times, whole governments can be evil. And religions can even be evil. It would be easy to make lists for each of these categories.

http://dawkinswatch.wordpress.com/2009/09/21/does-evil-exist-part-2/