It is still quick and dirty around here, but there is a bit more text than there was before. Last ideological update: Sometime in 2000?

The idea here is that I am ethnically Jewish, culturally Quaker and religiously atheist.

My mother's family is of Jewish descent, my father's is not. So I am only half Jewish by blood, but the other half is a nice mix of everywhere in western Europe, so the plurality of me is Jewish in this regard.

My father's family is Quaker (Religious Society of Friends, if you prefer). My mother and father met in a Quaker meeting, but I have not yet ironed out how she ended up there. I was taken to meeting weekly up until I was in high school when they started giving me a choice about it. As I discovered slowly that there wasn't much about it that I enjoyed, I went less and less and recently I have only gone for major holidays. Nevertheless, I support the political stance of Quakers (non-violence and other good stuff) and generally consider myself part of their culture.

I find the whole religion thing a tad silly myself, ignoring for the moment Pascal's fairly logical statement about it: "Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is... If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is." (look here for a full explaination.) I can't claim to be completely atheistic in truth, because the idea of a god is so forcefully beaten into our heads. I talk and try to think as an atheist, but I can't say stuff like "I want to go to hell" or "I'd sell my soul for that" without a twinge of fear, go figure. By the scientific method as I understand it, there is no reason to believe that a god does not exist, but likewise there is no reason to believe that he does. Therefore, believing in god is not exactly wrong, but it is akin to believing that there is always a small, invisible, block of concrete floating behind your head that goes intangible whenever it has a chance of being detected. It just isn't worth the effort listing all the things that could be true but are unprovable.

My friend from Oak Park, Dave (aka bourbaki), is another Jewish Quaker Atheist/Agnostic.

I have confirmed the existance of another JQA on the Carleton campus (but he wasn't who I thought he was). He is all Jewish ethnically, went to a Quaker school from 7th to 12 grade and is at least most of the way atheist. He's got nothing to link to, which is slightly odd, since he is a Linux geek.

Since I put this page up, I've been contacted by two other random people who identify as JQA. Yay! Here's a statement on atheism by one of them which jives reasonably well with my own beliefs.

In 2009 (or possibly earlier), I met Gabby at Oddcon, a SF convention in Madison, who is a Jewish Quaker Agnostic.