Who we believe ourselves to be sets the initial limitations on our behavioral flexibility. This structural limit is broadly referred to as “identity.” While we can utilize many of them, they all serve the same purpose: providing a relational short-hand for connection. If you spend any time eavesdropping or, if you’re more socially conscientious, reflecting on the dialogue you engage in, a great deal of conversation is spent determining what limits each person ascribes to in order to mitigate the uncertainty of guessing at what the person is going to do next.
Our brains are future-tripping all the time, seeking to guess better what is likely to occur in response to what we’ve done and determine what behavior we can do to bring about a desired outcome in service of our perceived needs. One of those immediate needs is the perception of safety, where a threat is, at least initially, identified as being elevated when the person you’re in contact with is some kind of “other.” As in “other” than you. This makes sense, really, when you consider that much of a perceived threat is concerned with the degree to which a potential outcome is outside your future desires. What better way to limit the possibility of a future being outside a desired form than by first identifying whether the person or group you’re engaging with is aligned with how you see the world and your place in it? Welcome to identity.
For about ten years until late 2001, a primary identity I ascribed to and proudly noted as limiting my behavior was that of “Christian.” To say I was one set me apart from some people in High School while also connecting me with others, and it played a large part in determining that I went to a conservative Bible college. Later, having left Christianity, the identity no longer served as an affirmative role but an oppositional one, in large part as a way to determine what I wasn’t and who I didn’t want to associate with. Eventually, this limitation no longer served a purpose I considered psychologically healthy since defining oneself as primarily what you aren’t really doesn’t help with seeking out what one is and providing a direction in life beyond antipathy.
Indeed, the feeling of spite and antagonism can be used to provide life direction, and it would seem the vast majority of political identity, at least online, is exactly this. Still, it’s not very fruitful for building anything, only for destroying. This is likely all one needs to know to understand the state of American politics these days.
Coming back to the role identity plays, one’s identity label(s) are a way of declaring to another: “I’m with you” or “You’re not with me.” Rather than verbalizing the labels like some kind of advertisement, many of the questions we pose to others assume the presence of one we’re comfortable with while setting the stage for determining whether the other person belongs or doesn’t.
Which brings us to the question: “Do you believe in God?”
Now, the immediate response should be, “Which one?” But this is rarely done, as terms generally have a broad agreed-upon use and, particularly in the United States, it’s likely to point to the Christian version. However, the fact is, we live in a pluralistic, multi-religious society in which there are numerous iterations of a belief in a deity, so asking “Which one?” makes far more sense. However, it only makes sense if the goal is one of generative dialogue, of broadening the understanding one has of another’s worldview. That isn’t the goal here, though. Instead, the initial question is about social solidarity and quickly assessing whether the person is on team “me” or not.
The person inquiring about belief is not likely interested in getting into a long and winding philosophical discussion about metaphysics, the nature of knowledge, and the degree to which personal experience (or even how such is to be considered) is relevant to claims about reality. No, they’re asking whether you belong with them, and by them, of course, they meant those who believe in their particular deity. The quizzical look that passes when I’ve asked for clarification as to which one indicates just how myopic the vision of human experience is. Of course, it is thought, when that three-letter word is used, particularly when capitalized in some verbal emphasis, it can only mean the god they believe in. Any others are but pale human-made facsimiles.
As Phil Zuckerman notes in “Invitation to the Sociology of Religion:”
Ultimately, religious identity and conviction aren’t generally so much a matter of choice or faith or soul-searching as a matter of who and what one’s parents, friends, neighbors, and community practice and profess.
This is why being anti-religious gets us nowhere.
Our Conceptual Boxes to be Filled
Hear me out. The question and response set noted above shows two things: an identity label is a means to determine whether another person belongs with us, and we don’t think outside the assumptions we bring to a conversation. The term “god” has no inherent content; it’s like a Platonic form waiting to be filled in by socially constructed experience. “God” can mean anything from a transcendent principle like love or purpose (“god is love”) to a panoply of deities (Hinduism, pagan traditions, etc.), a monolithic supernatural person (Christianity, Islam, Judaism), and as synonymous with the holistic quality of being in the universe (Ernest Holmes, Jerry Goldsmith, Ralph Waldo Emerson).
Similar to when we hear the terms “chair,” “table,” or “car,” we have an immediate framework for what such means, and our minds supply images, so then it is with every other indexical term, like that of “god.” That our brain supplies an immediate image or idea in no way proves the legitimacy of that image or idea. It just points to the automaticity of our conscious experience. Consider the fact that you don’t choose the initial thoughts/images that come up; there is no selection process for having the next thought; it’s just there. Only when engaging in critical reflection do options occur, but even then you aren’t actively selecting the options, they’re just showing up, constrained by the context of your own life, education, and social space you’re currently residing in.
Consciousness is a gap-filler, an immediate source for addressing uncertainty.
As with “god,” so it is with “religion.” At best, we can consider religion as an identifier for a particular set of social constructs focused on providing a structure for one’s belief in a “god.” Still, there’s no automatic and inevitable set of details to fill that in with. It’s empty all the way down.
Ninian Smart attempted to provide a structure for analyzing various forms of religion, with seven dimensions of inquiry to consider the details of a particular form. Those include:
Ritual
Experiential
Mythological
Doctrinal
Ethical
Institutional
Material
As a means of exploring the varieties of religion, I consider Smart’s structure excellent, not least because it helps us escape the notion of religion being a thing in itself. This is often seen when people talk about how “religion hurt me,” “religion helped me,” or any number of phrases where we give anthropomorphic power to a concept. None of them are helpful, for exactly the same reason that asking “Do you believe in god?” is absurd; it assumes that a concept can only be filled in with one set of details and, therefore, that anyone else in the conversation has accepted that set.
For instance, rituals are not harmful or anti-human or anti-rational in themselves. Every one of us partake in rituals every day, from how we put our clothes on and brush our teeth to how we conduct our lives, going through day after day of work and personal activities. Rituals give a false sense of control that, with repetition, we smilingly look past their foolishness. Getting rid of them would be like removing fundamental aspects of our humanity.
When not acknowledging the very real difference between the particulars and the verbal generalities of “god” and “religion,” it’s little wonder that a common argument against atheists is that atheism or science is a religion (as in a set of practices providing the structure for meaning and purpose). The argument isn’t ridiculous, exactly, though, in itself, it also doesn’t bother to acknowledge that the particulars matter. Much like the word “faith” can mean simply trusting in something of which one is ignorant of the particular mechanics of its operation or a means of epistemic verification, the specifics matter.
We need and seem incapable of thinking outside of it, a structure for directing behavior. This is why being anti-religious leads nowhere. Being against “god” or “religion” is like being against “power.” It’s not the word at issue but a particular set of details buried in the word you disagree with and their utilization in specific practices.
“God” and “religion” are not problems faced by humanity; absolutism in every form, whether religious dogmatism or political demagoguery, is. A person who fills the concept of “god” with love and a desire to accept others will not blow up buildings, but a person who believes their “god” is the only one, and their dictates are never to be questioned, certainly will. A person whose religion is about fellowship through non-judgment and equality is not going to deny fundamental civil rights, but a person whose religion denies skeptical inquiry based on a divine revelation that is accessible only to “the chosen” will certainly not hesitate in removing from society those deemed other and outside their notion of what is “holy” or “pure.”
Meaning and purpose are psychological needs given structure and direction through cognitive and social constructs, which themselves determine the social belongingness of others in a world filled with different perspectives. We are embedded in the world through these mechanisms of social cohesion and connection. We cannot deny these processes, but we can pay attention to and critically consider how the details in them lead to greater or lesser forms of human flourishing.