Judaism Jewish atheism usually refers to the
atheism of people who are
ethnically and (at least to some extent)
culturally Jewish. Contrary to popular belief, the term "Jewish atheism" is not a contradiction because
Jewish identity encompasses not only
religious components, but also
ethnic and cultural ones. Not all ethnic Jews practice or believe in
religious Judaism. In general, formulations of
Jewish principles of faith require a belief in God (represented by Judaism's paramount prayer, the
Shema). In many modern
Jewish religious movements, rabbis have generally considered the behavior of a Jew to be the determining factor in whether or not one is considered an adherent of Judaism. Within these movements it is often recognized that it is possible for a Jew to strictly practice Judaism as a faith, while at the same time being an agnostic or atheist.
Reconstructionist Judaism does not require any belief in a deity, and certain popular
Reform prayer books, such as
Gates of Prayer, offer some services without mention of God. Jewish atheists who practice
Humanistic Judaism embrace Jewish culture and history, rather than belief in a supernatural god, as the sources of their Jewish identity. A 2003 online poll in the
United States found that only 48% of self-identified Jews believe in God. Nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Reform Judaism in the US, which had become the dominant form of Judaism there by the 1880s, was profoundly shaped by its engagement with high profile sceptics and atheists such as
Robert Ingersoll and
Felix Adler. These included the writings of rabbis such as
Isaac Mayer Wise,
Kaufmann Kohler,
Emil G. Hirsch,
Joseph Krauskopf,
Aaron Hahn, and
J. Leonard Levy, with the result that a distinctly
panentheistic character of US Reform Jewish theology was observable, which many would have viewed as atheistic or espousing atheistic tendencies. Rabbi
Abraham Isaac Kook, first Chief Rabbi of the Jewish community in Palestine, held that atheists were not actually denying God: rather, they were denying one of man's many images of God. Since any man-made image of God can be considered an
idol, Kook held that, in practice, one could consider atheists as helping true religion burn away false images of God, thus in the end serving the purpose of true monotheism.
Christianity High rates of atheism have been found among self-identified
Christians in the United States. Out of all Americans who do not believe in God, 5% identified as Catholic while 9% identified as Protestant and other Christian according to the 2007 Pew Religious Landscape survey. Out of all Americans who identify as unaffiliated including atheists and agnostics, 41% were raised Protestant and 28% were raised Catholic according to the 2014 Pew Religious Landscape survey. There is no single
Christian approach toward atheism. The approach taken varies between
Christian denominations, and Christian ministers may intelligently distinguish an individual's claims of atheism from other nominal states of personal perspective, such as plain disbelief, an adherence to science, a misunderstanding of the nature of religious belief, or a disdain for organized religion in general. The
Catechism of the Catholic Church makes this explicit. While it identifies atheism as a violation of the
First Commandment, calling it "a sin against the virtue of religion", it is careful to acknowledge that atheism may be motivated by
virtuous or
moral considerations, and admonishes the followers of Roman Catholicism to focus on their own role in encouraging atheism by their religious or moral shortcomings: In May 2013, Pope Francis said that atheists may be able to enter Heaven, because the redemptive embrace of Jesus applies to everyone who does good, regardless of their beliefs. The Catechism of the Catholic Church also says Heaven is available to everyone, if they are not Christian and "through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and the Church." A famous idiosyncratic atheist belief is that of
Thomas J. J. Altizer. His book
The Gospel of Christian Atheism (1967) proclaims the highly unusual view that God has literally died, or self-annihilated. According to Altizer, this is nevertheless "a Christian confession of faith". Making clear the difference between his position and that of both
Nietzsche's notion of the
death of God and the stance of theological non-realists, Altizer says, "To confess the death of God is to speak of an actual and real event, not perhaps an event occurring in a single moment of time or history, but notwithstanding this reservation an event that has actually happened both in a cosmic and in a historical sense." A 2001 survey by "Faith Communities Today" found that 18% of
Unitarian Universalists (UU) consider themselves to be atheists, with 54% considering themselves humanist. According to this study 16% of UUs consider themselves Buddhist, 13% Christian, and 13%
Pagan.
Islam In
Islam, atheists are categorized as
kafir (
كافر), a term that is also used to describe
polytheists (
shirk), and that translates roughly as "denier" or "concealer".
Kafir carries connotations of blasphemy and disconnection from the Islamic community. In Arabic, "atheism" is generally translated
ilhad (
إلحاد), although this also means "heresy". A person who denies the existence of a creator is called
dahriya. The
Quran is silent on
the punishment for apostasy, though not the subject itself. The Quran speaks repeatedly of people going back to unbelief after believing, and gives advice on dealing with "hypocrites": Sura 9:73,74 Muslims are not at liberty to change their religion or become atheists. Atheists in Islamic countries and communities frequently conceal their non-belief. Religiosity in the Arab world is seen to be essential for morality and atheism is widely associated with immorality. Religious attitudes have grown more conservative since the 1980s, compared to the preceding decades when secular socialism was politically dominant. Nonetheless, atheism is tolerated if it is not conspicuous and a worldwide support network for ex-Muslims has existed since 2007. Some commentators believe that the number of undeclared atheists in the Arab world is substantial. According to 2012 WIN/Gallup poll of Saudi citizens, 5 percent of Saudis identify as "convinced atheists", the same percentage as in the U.S. The increasingly large
ex-Muslim communities in the
Western world that adhere to no religion have been well documented. Darren E. Sherkat questioned in
Foreign Affairs whether some of the Muslim growth projections are accurate as they do not take into account the increasing number of non-religious Muslims. Quantitative research is lacking, but he believes the European trend mirrors the American: data from the General Social Survey in the United States show that 32 percent of those raised Muslim no longer embrace Islam in adulthood, and 18 percent hold no religious identification. Studies show that about half of the 4.2 million persons from Muslim background in Germany no longer embrace Islam in adulthood. ==Indian religions==