The inertia of faith

As mentioned in the Preface, there are two kinds of people who want to learn to live without God: those who have always lived without God (but sometimes wonder if they are missing something), and those who were raised to live with God (but have grown doubtful or distant). For those who have grown up without God, inertia is on their side – inertia being the force that tends to keep us moving in the same direction unless we make an effort to change.

For those raised in religious households, however, giving up faith can be hard. It can feel like a betrayal of one’s family and community – and even of oneself, to the extent that religious teachings have become internalized. The long tradition behind most religions gives them a certain weight, a certain appeal – and, some of us may tend to feel, a certain presumption of validity. Let’s call this simple psychological fact the “inertia of faith.”

The first thing we have to do is put a stop to the inertia of faith.

This is not necessarily easy to do, but consider this: neither the habit of belief nor the antiquity of belief makes it valid. The ancient and natural tendency to believe that the earth is stationary and the universe revolves around it is a clear example of an ancient and obvious belief that is, in fact, false.

Here’s another. Not long ago it was commonplace in America – and it is not unheard of today – for families and communities to foster racist attitudes based on beliefs about the supposed superiority of the Caucasian race. White children were raised to be bigots from an early age, and it took an effort of personal insight and will for individuals to overcome the effects of this upbringing. Nowadays, most of us recognize this whole business as evil.

In the case of religion, it is the very ancientness of belief that gives it a presumption of invalidity.

Why? Because the great ancient religions grew up in a period of relative ignorance and relative gullibility. The core beliefs of the major religions all go back anywhere from a thousand to almost three thousand years. Were the people of those days smarter than we are, more knowledgeable, wiser about life and the universe? Did they know something we don’t know?

On the contrary, they lived in relatively benighted times. Although undoubtedly they felt the same emotions as we do, had the same fears, the same drives, and wondered much as we do about the Big Questions – they had few means of arriving at good answers.

It is not surprising that religious beliefs sprouted up in relatively primitive and tempestuous conditions. These are conditions that tend to produce wild tales along with the credulity that makes them believable. That the core religious beliefs of civilization hark back to such ancient and difficult times makes them less credible, therefore, not more credible.

In the end, of course, we must judge truth or falseness on the merits of the situation, not on prejudices about the origins of a belief. The point here is not that religious beliefs should be rejected or even necessarily doubted merely because they are ancient. However, they should certainly not be given any positive standing on that account.

Nothing is true just because your people have always thought it was true, or even because you always thought it was true. The inertia of faith, for those who feel it, has to be resisted and ground to a halt.

This can be difficult, of course, from an emotional point of view, and we will return to this aspect later. But first, we need to examine whether the traditional beliefs actually have merit or not. Only if they don’t do we then need to worry about how to get by without them.

So for a little while, let us focus only on the intellectual aspects. Is religious belief plausibly correct?

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