Belief and Religion

Belief and Religion

It is possible to be religious and not believe in God, or gods: you just need to have religious practices but not theistic ontology. Atheistic religion is not a contradiction in terms. But can you be a theist and not be religious? That seems a more difficult undertaking: surely if you believe in God, you must be religious. Have you ever met someone who says he believes in God but isn’t religious? Might someone be a theist anti-religionist? Actually, I think this is possible, if never actual. A person might be convinced by a putative proof of the existence of God that there is a God—he can see no flaw in the proof—but find no attraction in religious practices, or even deplore such practices. He might even believe in the existence of the Christian God and still have no religious inclinations or feelings: no church, no prayers, no worship, no desire to please, no real interest. He might say, “Sure, there is a God, but frankly I’m just not that interested”. He might regard the existence of God as like the existence of other galaxies: they exist all right, but so what? He has other interests, is a busy man, prefers art and music. Religion leaves him cold. He never even thinks about God unless someone else brings the subject up.

If this is psychologically possible, why doesn’t it happen? It is true that people can believe in God and not be very religious in terms of religious practice, but is no one ever a believer but completely non-religious? I think the reason is this: people encounter talk of God only in a practicing religious context. They form their belief in God’s existence because of the religious practices in which it is embedded. They don’t first encounter talk of God in a seminar room discussing the ontological argument, or some other argument for God’s existence. The existential belief is practice-based. The two things are regarded as inextricable. And it is true that without the institutional backing a belief in God seems pointless and empty. Why believe in God if you don’t care for the corresponding institution, especially its moral component? Logically, the belief in God’s existence is separable from the religion associated with it; but socially the two are bound together. And it is difficult to be brought to a belief in God’s existence unless this belief is embedded in a religious practice, because the alleged proofs of God’s existence are questionable at best. Still, it is instructive to learn that God and religion are separable spheres, neither entailing the other. You can be religious and anti-theist, and you can be anti-religious and theist. The Abrahamic religions are steeped in theism, but other religions dispense with that hypothesis. I know of no sect that is both theistic and anti-religious, though it exists as a position in logical space. The closest we get are religions in which there is a belief in God but not much in the way of ceremony and pageant, or heaven and hell. A super-Protestant would be someone who believes in God but thinks it is impious to claim to know what God wants or what he is like. Perhaps he made the universe, but other than that we have no idea what he requires of us and has no role in determining morality. This would be a very thin religion and people would not flock to it.[1]

[1] People do sometimes believe in supernatural entities—angels, ghosts, spirits—but scarcely give them a second thought and don’t build their lives around them. Their actual religion might make no reference to these entities, being thoroughly naturalistic. They might worship a particular mountain, say, but accept that there are spirits lurking elsewhere (their dead ancestors). The human mind is nothing if not flexible.