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Chatting around the game table last night, Terry Pratchett came up in conversation, specifically a line from his book Thud!. In it, a dwarf speaks of dwarfish gods, and contrasts dwarfish customs with those of humans, saying (more or less): “We dwarfs have a god who created us and commanded us to think, but He did not command us to think about Him.” Dave quoted it as best he could from memory, and I doubt I quoted Dave perfectly, but the line is substantially correct. On hearing this sentiment, Jen perked up and announced that whoever wrote that must be Jewish.

Greg, a recently confirmed Unitarian minister, objected immediately, and so did I.

Greg objected that freedom from a commandment to think about a creator God was not a particularly Jewish notion, and he has a point. No doubt one can find one or even a hundred passages of Judaic writings suggesting to a greater or lesser degree that God does not command people—or rather, his chosen people—to think about Him, but surely some hugely significant Judaic writings suggest He does. The Ten Commandments, for example, hold that we should spend one day in seven in religious observance. That’s a lot of time God calls upon us to think about Him. And if the fundamental principle of Judaism is to love God with all one’s heart and one’s neighbor as one’s self, then the fundamental principle of Judaism involves thinking about God. A lot.

But the discussion was tabled at that point, partly out of a desire to get the game underway and partly in the interests of peace and harmony. Greg had an intellectual objection, but I had a stronger, emotional one.

I found Jen’s conclusion upsetting for a more profound reason, in that it equates humanistic virtue with Judaism. She engaged in a classic fallacy, often put forward in this form to highlight the fallacy:

1. All cats die.
2. Socrates died.
3. Therefore, Socrates was a cat.

That is, it is a mistake to equate two things because they have one quality in common.

Similarly, upon hearing Greg’s and my wails of protest, Jen said that a similar sentiment can be found in her religious lessons. In essence, she argued that:

1. Judaism de-emphasizes God the creator as an object of unthinking worship.
2. Pratchett expressed the notion that the dwarfs’ creator God not be an object of worship.
3. Therefore, Pratchett is a Jew.

I have encountered this kind of sentiment before, identifying all virtue with the speaker’s religion. A Christian, surprised to hear I am an atheist, once told me to my face that I could not be an atheist because I’m so friendly and patient. (How little she knows me, eh?) It’s bad enough to deny my beliefs, but the implicit assumption—that only Christians can be nice—is blatantly wrong and deeply offensive. Yet she persisted in the claim even over my protestations, claiming that I’m a Christian even if I don’t know it yet. She found it impossible to believe that a likeable person could not be Christian, so completely impossible that she felt entitled to dictate my religious beliefs to me. I am not alone in this experience.

Because ours is a largely Christian nation, we tend to hear this kind of thing most often from Christians: all virtues are Christian virtues; all decent people are Christians; all good in the world comes from the Christian god. But it doesn’t sound any better coming from a different religious quarter. These claims are offensive. No reasonable person would try to make the same claims about Judaism. I know Jen wouldn’t; she has explicitly expressed a belief that other people have other, equally valid ways. Yet she saw nothing wrong last night with the idea that if someone expresses a humanist thought, there is no explanation for it but that he must be Jewish.

It made me feel like I did talking to the Christian who figured only Christians could be decent people. And it bothers me to hear that kind of thinking from a friend.

Jen is a recent convert, glad to find religion again, after reluctantly giving up Catholicism for its steadfast condemnation of homosexuals and homosexuality. (She pretends that the kind of chauvinism that led devout Jews to thank God daily not to have been born slaves or women is somehow not part of her new religion.) Naturally enough, she is enthusiastic for her new religion, and looks for reasons to reinforce her belief; to reinforce her identity with a new tribe. Over the past several months, she has been eager to talk about the many great achievements of Jews—and there are many—and even to exaggerate the historical record, or to understate achievements of gentiles, or to find favorable comparisons between Jews and gentiles. That’s okay; she needed religion in her life, and this initial rush of enthusiasm will recede to a healthier level soon, though not soon enough for me. But it’s not an excuse for deciding Pratchett must be Jewish, simply on the evidence that one of his fictional characters doesn’t feel compelled to think much about God.

Loving one’s new religion a little too much is okay, for a little while. Loving it to the point of believing that all insightful religious commentary, all wisdom, all good belongs exclusively to that religion is not.