The emotionality of belief

A couple of years ago, a motorcycling friend and I were out for a ride one sunny Sunday. We'd ridden down to Gippsland in Victoria's east, and had been cruising the curves of the Grand Ridge Road that snakes along the top of the Strzelecki Ranges south of the Princes Highway. By one o'clock we were at Mirboo North and ready for lunch. There is a lovely little pub at Mirboo North that serves boutique beer and the best lamb shanks in Victoria.

This friend is one of those terrific conversationalists who has an incisive mind, a quick wit and wide interests. As we savoured our lamb shanks, I shared with him my recent reading of Christopher Hitchens's book God is Not Great.

Now I'm sure most readers will have had the experience of making assumptionsabout the way things are going to turn out in a conversation – about the way other people think. This was one of those times.

In summarising Hitchens's arguments about how "religion poisons everything", I quoted one of his famously pithy and rather amusing characterisations of religious believers: "Anyone who believes in God is just being intellectually dishonest". Well, to say my friend's reaction was vituperative would be an understatement.

I can't remember what he actually said because the strength of emotion in his voice was so overwhelming that I was completely taken by surprise. He spat out a passionate defence of those who believe, angrily attacked me for my pitiable inability to understand the role of religion in human life, and coldly concluded that my rationalist views were irrelevant and beneath contempt.

While somewhat gobsmacked, I did attempt a feeble rejoinder. I apologised: "Look, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend you … I didn't know you were Catholic … I thought you'd enjoy Hitchens's humour …". I tried to calm him by saying that I understood how some people find strength and solace in the church, that I recognised that some religious people do engage in good works, that I didn't care what people believed in the privacy of their own minds. He wasn't having any of it. Further conversation proved futile and in the end, he got up and walked out. We didn't speak for three months.

This experience triggered my curiosity about the Emotionality of Belief.

Why is it that some who say they believe in God are so emotional about it? Why is it so hard to even discuss someone's faith in the supernatural?

Remember the old adage -- three things you never discuss at a dinner party: religion, sex and politics. Any one of these topics is likely to elicit heated debate, strong emotions and, horror of horrors, disagreement! We seem to have got over the prohibition against discussing sex and politics - but just why won't people talk about their faith? It's as if you've questioned their personal integrity, or impugned their family connections. As one person said, "Talking about God is like talking about one's parents …"

So what's going on here? I think it can be understood at two levels: the level of the individual and the level of the group.

At an individual level, what a person believes - in a religious or a philosophical sense - is very much tied up with how they see themselves and their place in the world. A believer associates their belief in God with being a good person, having good values, living a good life. They're likely to view those who don't believe in God as having bad values and living a bad life, or at the very least being misguided. Challenging their belief is like questioning their value as a person, and we all tend to get defensive if our sense of self is questioned.

We're also questioning the value of the group they identify with.

Research shows that most humans favour those who are close to them over those who are distant. We identify with and defend members of our own family over members of someone else's family; we're more likely to feel comfortable with people who speak our language and share our culture than with members of another culture, speaking a different language. At a theoretical level we like to subscribe to the view that all human beings are equal in dignity and rights, but at a day to day practical level we tend to favour our family and our tribe.

Membership of a tribe or a group provides familiarity and a sense of solidarity. When yourtribe is attacked, there is a natural instinct to defend. That defence is usually emotional.

So is there any chance of a rationalist engaging with a believer without the interference of emotionality?

Recent research suggests this is unlikely. In Emotions and Beliefs: How Feelings Influence Thoughts, the authors conclude that 'when it comes to issues of emotional importance, convincing someone to change his or her existing beliefs appears to be a virtually hopeless undertaking'.

But perhaps we can at least encourage discussion. Believers and non-believers have much in common, even though they differ on matters of importance.

Evidence collected by social scientists in the 1970s looking into the development of moral reasoning in children confirmed the existence ofcommon moral principles of justice and fairness around the world. More recent research has shown these principles are essentially of two kinds: interpersonal morals and social conventions. Actions within the 'interpersonal moral domain' are those that affect the welfare or wellbeing of another person - an example would be a child hitting another child without provocation. By contrast, actions in the domain of social convention have no intrinsic interpersonal consequences but are simply dependent on their social context. For example, there is nothing intrinsically good or bad in a university student calling their lecturer 'Professor Singer' rather than 'Pete', but social convention in some societies makes the more formal address preferable.

Believers and non-believers share many interpersonal moral principles. They arise out of the human capacity to feel pleasure and pain, and to recognise and empathise with the pleasure and pain of others. Where we differ is in the social conventions we subscribe to and support.

Religions arise when the teachings of charismatic individuals are later codified by their followers. Common moral principles are brought to life through their teachings, through the parables and stories. Unfortunately these timeless and universal principles are mixed up with the social conventions of the day – prescriptions and proscriptions that have no intrinsic interpersonal consequences but are just "the way they did things then". Not touching a menstruating woman for example, or condemning homosexuality.

I think at least some of the emotionality could be taken out of discussions about belief if this distinction were made clear. Freethinkers should respect common moral principles, even if articulated in religious guise. Believers should reconsider religious principles that are simply social conventions in disguise – and be prepared to explain why they are still relevant.

If a believer interprets a question about their belief as an attack on common moral principles, it's no wonder they rise to the defence strongly and emotionally - a non-believer would probably do the same.

This is why I personally prefer to identify as a rationalist rather than as an atheist. Like it or not, atheism has become associated with a sort of amoral nihilism that is neither true nor fair but which nevertheless sets up an unhelpful antagonism with the religious. The freethought community would do better to be clear about what we share with believers (the common moral principles) and where we differ (specific social conventions).

Most Australians are 'culturally' Christian rather than religiously Christian, just as most Israelis are 'culturally Jewish' rather than religiously Jewish. Freethinkers may feel exasperated that groups like the Progressive Christians don't finally let go of all belief in some higher authority and just focus on good values and good deeds. But I think that will come. In the meantime, we should all be wary of inadvertently driving these cultural Christians into the arms of their more fundamentalist brethren.

William James, the great American philosopher of religion, made a useful distinction between healthy-minded and sick-souled religiousness.

Let's not harm the healthy minded in our attempt to cure the sick-souled.