| An atheist? Hardly. I belong to a synagogue, and it's hard to get more traditional than Judaism, which has been around for thousands of years. The only reason why you think there's irony in what I said about Judaism is your ignorance of Judaism. Judaism has always stressed ritual observance, not articles of faith. It's perfectly possible to be a practicing Jew while having serious questions about the nature of God. And what I said about my religion and proselytizing above is absolutely correct. (Seriously, try to become a Jew. We probably won't take you - unless, of course, you're already ethnically Jewish.) For that matter, since you used the word ideology, there's no ideological consensus in Judaism. There is a organized community and there are rituals. It's a thinking person's religion. We argue a lot. We're not much for dogma. Naturally parents raise their children how they prefer, but that's parental influence, not organized religion's influence. They're quite distinct. Our religion has traditionally had minimal to no influence in the broader society. For centuries there were very real incentives to convert away from my religion once you were free of parental influence. We've been the subject of discrimination, pogroms, and genocide. And yet here we are, having somehow 'permeated' successfully, and we're doing just fine. How does that tie into your theories about influence and the propagation of religion - since, for many centuries, our organized religion had zero influence? Perhaps there might be something more to it, hmmm? Of course I'm being condescending to you. I get tired of listening to people who have no knowledge or experience of my religion spout off about it. You can't really talk about religion online without having some ignoramus come along and do the 'religion is dumb hurr hurr hurr' routine. Anyhow, there's your counter-example. |