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Comment by wussboy | Hacker News Reader

I think part of the problem is that there is no clear tradition of “cultural Christian” like there is for “atheist Jew”. I don’t believe in God. I love the high church and choral traditions. I attend a church where the minister feels the same. Am I a Christian? No. And yes.

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"Cultural Christian" is just what western culture is. "atheist Jews" can exist only because they exist in the cultural Christian west.

> "atheist Jews" can exist only because they exist in the cultural Christian west

There are atheist Jews in Israel. Is Israel part of the "cultural Christian west"?

The parent poster is more arguing that the atheist Jew label only really exists because most of the atheists in the US are Christian atheists to a certain extent (in that they celebrate Christian holidays and many aspects of Christian culture).

So you need to explicitly define atheist Jews as the exception.

Approximately 10% of the Israeli population identifies as "atheist Jews" (more than that are non-religious, but only a minority of non-religious people embrace the 'atheist' label)

I don't see how the identity of atheist Jews in Israel depends on non-Jewish people celebrating Christian holidays in the US (whether those people identify as atheists or not)

No, this is not correct. There are people who go to church and use Jesus as a central moral figure, partake in many or all of the rituals, who nevertheless do not believe in god. Often you find this runs in families, because the intellectual tradition is that it’s fine to go to church and like Jesus, but reject any or all of the supernatural parts or moral teachings.

Then you have people that may have grown up surrounded by some of the trappings of Christianity, but because of their atheism, do not attend church and take part in only the most universal rituals (Christmas, basically, and even then, the Christian bits are mainly removed). Christian thought is not the moral or philosophical touchstone.

I've been an atheist my entire life, raised by two atheists. But I celebrate christmas and easter, attend my friends weddings in churches even though they are atheists too, so I think I'm a cultural Christian.

This isn’t necessarily true outside the US. The running joke about Greeks is that they are 98% Greek Orthodox (official stats from a while ago) and 40% atheist. You might be atheist and communist (a fairly common combo in Greece) but will still probably roast a lamb on Easter with your family.

I agree. I first learned that Christian Atheist was possible in an Anglican Church in England.

Turkey is the same way. The government says 99.8% of the population are Muslim by default but it’s probably closer to 60%.

Until a few years ago religion was listed on government identification cards. When you’re born your parenrs must state a religion for your birth certificate or it is automatically listed as Muslim.

You had to go through a burdensome official process as an adult to change this, and once you did this you legally admitted to Apostasy, which opens you up to discrimination (and future consequences if the government were to fall to islamists or neo-ottomans).

Furthermore, it was very common to be discriminated against by HR departments / hiring managers if Islam was not present on your Kimlik (government ID).

This only went away with recent passport and national id standards changing in their futile attempts to join the EU.

(Consider that Turkey is by far the most liberal and secular Muslim nation.)

In Australia most historically “Christian” holidays are for the majority of people just time off to spend with family.

How or why they started or what the religious think of them now is irrelevant.

The traditional Christian holidays are largely former Roman holidays, so they're mostly just good times to have parties.

Rename lupercalia to Valentine's Day, Saturnalia to Christmas, etc. To make Christianity a seamless switch for the Roman populace

Having married into a Greek family, I can certainly attest to this, but I'll shed a bit more light to the sentiment behind that statement. To the Greeks, the Greek church is part of their cultural identity, rather than a purely religious entity. There is a community that stems from the church, traditions that are intertwined in it, and just a general presence in their daily lives in a way that I don't think I've really observed in the US. Oddly enough, it doesn't really outwardly express itself as dogma or doctrine, in the way that I've noticed with a lot of Evangelicals or Catholics in the states. The church is more of an ever present fixture in Greek life than a strong belief in Orthodox teachings.

No. And yes.

I think there are more of you floating in the pews with you than you may expect. As I've grown older it's been hard to belong to a dogmatic religion. But I miss those same things you describe. I too attend on occasion for those exact reasons.

It was startling to me, however, to realize that I'm not alone. A large % of people there in the church find value even if they don't actually believe. And that's a strange comfort that let's me continue to appreciate the tradition without claiming the title.

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