But, atheism is cool.

Think back to the “cool” people you know in high school.  They were the ones willing to say what no one else was saying, the people who always maintained a certain level of confidence, the people who didn’t care what you thought because it just didn’t matter.  That’s the position a lot of young atheists are in now.  At an ever-lowering age, students are willing to challenge religion in ways we never saw in the past.  The number of Secular Student Alliance affiliate groups in college has skyrocketed in the past few years (nearly 300 as I write this) and the number of high school affiliates is well into the double-digits.  These are students who want to have discussions and debates about religion and who want to challenge the orthodoxy and what most parents teach their children.

My daughter is one of these young people, challenging the adopted Catholicism of her mother. Though she attend UU gatherings, she reads a great deal of atheist literature, participates in (what to me seem pointless) debates with Christianists on Topix. She was telling me last night that one fellow at school had been very nice while he was trying to convert her, and having failed, is now rude to her. She takes that as a life lesson.

All I know is that there is a rumor going around that The Christ was Jewish!

Judaism without God? Yes, say American atheists

For an atheist, Maxim Schrogin talks about God a lot.

Over lunch at a Jewish deli, he ponders the impulse to believe — does it come from within or without? Why does God permit suffering? Finally, he pulls out a flowchart he made showing degrees of belief, which ranges from unquestioning faith to absolute atheism. He stabs the paper with his pen.

“This is where I fall,” he said. “Zero.”

Still, Schrogin, 64, is a dues-paying member of Congregation Beth El, a Reform synagogue here in Berkeley. He is among its most active members, attending Torah study, and, for a time, heading its social action committee. He organizes its community service projects and works with leaders of other congregations to help the poor.

His two children were bar and bat mitzvahed. On Friday nights, he and his wife light Shabbat candles and recite Hebrew prayers. There is one song, sung by the congregation in Hebrew, that can bring him to tears.

Schrogin isn’t alone.

At the High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, many Jews who identify as atheists, secular humanists and other religious “nones” attend synagogue. Most go once a year — like Christians who go to church only at Christmas or Easter. But others, like Schrogin, are active, integral parts of a religious community that, ideologically, they stand apart from.

Serendipity.  Bumped into this a couple of hours after reading your post:

What Happens when a Leftist Philosopher Discovers God? | Religion and Other Curiosities:

"Any sociologist will agree that religion, true or not, is useful for the solidarity and moral consensus of society. The problem is that this utility depends on at least some people actually believing that there is the supernatural reality that religion affirms. The utility ceases when nobody believes this anymore.

Edward Gibbon, in chapter 2 of his famous history of the decline of the Roman Empire, has this to say: “The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful”. When you cross the philosopher with the magistrate, you get Habermas."

 

That is quite a billboard. Jesus as Dirty Harry.

There is no religious test in the constitution so the requirement to confess a faith that you have pointed out is purely a reflection of voter demand. People want to see a show. Not everybody wants to watch the same one.

The element that bothers me more than whether the confessor is sincere or not is the display itself. If one is actually acting upon principles, the actions are the words the speaker hopes to utter. In that sense, sincerity is best experienced as the end of language; a trick of the mind that political processes don't do very well.

So the best arrangement would be a tacit agreement amongst all parties, in a political venue, to refrain from that kind of exhibitionist behavior. It is not so much about locating the boundary between church and state as it is making sure that all such egotistical proclamations belong to the sphere of pure rhetoric, untouched by human hands, doesn't happen because it would just be too embarrassing.

The idea that confessing a certain belief proved anything by itself is odd. That oddness is a separate matter from the variety in articles of faith and the reasons why people carry them forward into succeeding generations.

You ain't a kiddin' the religious test is alive and kickin', Mona. And in these times of elusive employment, loss of hearth and home, crippled education opportunities, and crumbled finances, how do our wise leaders guard us against all that bad stuff? Well, they introduce legislation to protect us from being sneaked up on by Sharia law, because somehow, that is more imperative than stirring up a few jobs, jobs, jobs for us. We're choked by personal debt, sleepin' in our cars, our kids are gonna stay stupid, and we're gonna get the right to work for minimum wage or less, but by gawd, our wise leaders are gonna save us from having to be Moooslems!

Yep, we need us some little bit of Jesus to hep us not freeze to death this winter on account of they turned off the govvermint heat money. Why are they not working on the real needs of the people? Like housing, food, education. Isn't that their job? To serve the people? Why are they not working on guiding us citizens through this awful time?

Promoting their own religiosity should be their very last public declaration, not their first.