Unbeliever!

There is something in traditional religion that is even more heinous than heresy: it is the person who secretly fails to ‘believe’. They may keep up an appearance of conformity in public, but they hold none of the love for the object of their religion that true believers hold. And in their private world, there are no reminders of that love. Heresy at least makes itself visible; unbelief slides into a society like a serpent, leaving a trail of subtle venom. But is it perhaps the zealot who has already been ‘bitten’?

Whatever the society that surrounds us, as we grow up, it will impart to us a framework of ‘good’ and ‘evil’. Good is what makes society strong and healthy; evil is what causes division and friction. But hang on a minute: isn’t accusing someone of ‘unbelief’ a division? Those who do it would say that the unbeliever is already – by their own choice – not a member of the society within which they try to live. Accusation is, to them, not a division but a purging – restoring the purity.

And in case you think I am only talking about ‘spiritual’ religions, you can see the same effect in many other areas of human thought and belief. The true name for this behaviour is not ‘religion’ but ‘idealism’. Those who exhibit this kind of zeal for a ‘given truth’ have staked their very existence on that truth, and any lack of faith attacks that stake. You’ll see it, for example, in the faith of anti-vax campaigners – as much as in those who campaign for forced vaccination, either directly or by constraining the freedom of those who choose to demur. You’ll see it in the left and right wings of politics. You’ll see it in racists and anti-racists, sexists and anti-sexists, pro-choicers and pro-lifers. You’ll see it in groups of women who obsess over babies, or men who obsess over football, as a substitute for clan warfare.

Funnily, you’ll even see this anger in worlds such as software development. It can be found anywhere that humans seek the ‘best’ method for giving meaning to their lives and for protecting the attachments on whose truth they have staked their existence.

Again, I am not talking about the direct reaction to heresy – the kind of reaction to a heretic from outside the group of ‘believers’ – but about the backlash against a heretic who dares to speak out from inside the group. Within the storm of fury that follows a heresy, the bigger anger is not that the heretic has ‘come out’ but that that they were previously hiding their unbelief. And in that fury, there is no thought of what their religious messiahs and prophets have tried to teach them, about tolerance and love. There is only fear about how big the threat might be to their treasured attachments.

The only ‘solution’ to this kind of fear – to the fear of the unbeliever inside the community – is not to stake one’s existence on the truth of any belief. It is the realisation that existence predates any such belief: both for the individual and for society at large. It is natural that we should seek to understand the ‘natural order’ of the world we find ourselves inhabiting. It is natural that we should do so by inventing and testing different theories. And it is natural that we should fear for our continued existence (even after death) and therefore invest emotional energy into theories that promote that continued existence. But this thinking comes after existence. To re-phrase Descartes, “I am, therefore I think.”

If we were honest, even the most zealous of us would admit that our zeal for our beliefs comes mostly from fear that they might be wrong: fear that our faith might be misplaced. Or, in short, fear that we might not have made the ‘right’ bet, regarding our continued existence. And with that in mind, could we not then tolerate more openly those who also bear such uncertainty? Perhaps we could then see that continued testing of our beliefs is only possible if there is open dissent. But one who has staked his existence on a certain truth will not, willingly even test that belief. Existence is too valuable.

So, meanwhile, the fire of zeal burns on, scouring out the unbelief, or perhaps just teaching it to hide itself more cleverly.