Welcome, this is my first bolgging attempt. First a few words about the blog's name: ħ is Planck's constant, a fundamental constant in quantum mechanics. This already hints to my interest in science, and probably to some subjects that will be discussed in this blog (in a popular manner that I hope the general public could follow). Other than science, I will share some thoughts on music, religion, and maybe a bit of philosophy. I am by no means an expert on any of these subjects (don't tell my lab instructor), therefore, any comments you have about what I say here are welcome.
The topic I have been thinking a bit about lately is atheism. I highly recommend viewing the talk by Richard Dawkins at TED.com (many other interesting talks there as well). It occurred to me that the transition from polytheism to monotheism originated from the Middle East. It would be nice if the next step – transition from monotheism to atheism (Richard Dawkins calls it "going one god further") would emerge from Israel. I wondered how many atheists live in Israel, so I checked at Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics... The population by religion table does not say how many atheists live in Israel. I strongly suspect that many atheists of Jewish decadence were written of as Jewish believers. So I searched on and finally I found a document which states that in 2005 out of all the citizens above the age of 20, about 40% claim to be not religious. This is a very encouraging figure. This puts Israel in the top line of atheist countries (compare to other countries). We should be aware of our power and use it to prevent the society's decay to mystic believes in karmas, reikis, auras and all sorts of relics. I'll leave you at that for now... until next time, more interesting information can be found at http://www.hofesh.org.il/ (origin of the comic strip at the top).
4 תגובות:
Hey Amir - great stuff. Mazal Tov !I am currently reading Dawkins' 'The God Delusion" myself. A wonderful book whch makes me annoyed and constantly laughing at the same time. For some reason they put it at the 'popular science' section in the Cambridge book store. Before going to the register to pay, I moved three copies to Theology, where they can do more good...
About our alleged 40% atheists - it's probably 40% defining themselves as 'secular' (hiloni) in the questionare. If you go on and ask them "are you an atheist?" that number will go down to maybe around 2%. I am sure many 'seculars' believe in some god (in Israel that would usually mean Yehova). Even worse are the 'masortim'. Some of those actually believe that they are just too lazy to to do what they should like 'good' religious people which they thus hold highly. So, we will get around 90 something % believing that we really need religion as an integral part of Israel. Go build a country with that!
Bekitzur - we have a long way to go...
Mazal Tov again. May the Shwartz be with you!
Uri G
Hi Amir!
I think that out of these 40% non religious people in Israel only a few would actually know what "atheist" is...
So obviously they won't define themselves as such.
Good luck with your blog.
Ron D.
Amir - congratulations !
That's an important & troubling subject for me as well, yet I'm afraid we're not at such a great position with respect to the world. I agree with the previous poster (Ron) that the survey you mentioned doesn't count atheists, but only those who view themselves as secular. I believe that another survey, published a month ago, gives a more realistic (and troubling) view on that. According to it, 53% believe that the stories in the bible actually took place, 32% view them as 'nice stories' which may or may not have taken place, while only 13% (!) view them as folklore and nothing more.
I'm afraid those figures give us a more realistic view on the percentage of atheists in Israel.
P.S. - looking at the first survey, you can see the clear correlation between secularity and education, as Dawkins points out. This applies, by the way, to both the jewish population and the non-jewish one (mostly muslims and christians).
Good luck - to you, and to us all (...)
Itay.
Most of the people who claim not to be religious are actually "agnostic" -- they haven't made their mind yet about religion or god (sort of). If you press most of those 40% I'm betting less than 1% will declare that they are atheists without reservation. Also look up Sam Harris and especially Christopher Hitchens for some good ol' religion bashing. Between them and Dawkins they cover all the approaches of exposing religion for what it is, and how bad it is for society.
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