Religious Belief - Not a Choice??

Browsing through my RSS feeds, I came across Warren Throckmorton's latest blog, called Is religious belief a choice?

In the ongoing discussion of sexual identity therapy, some have asserted that sexual orientation is not a choice but religion is (“The bottom line is your sexual orientation cannot change and your religion can,” [Wayne] Besen said.”). That struck me as a failure to understand the function and centrality of religious belief for those who are committed to it. Is religious belief a choice?

This is a provocative question. For instance, the Christian "family" groups are fighting vigorously against the addition of sexual orientation and gender identity to federal hate-crime laws, arguing that gay and transgender people shouldn't get "special treatment," while at the same time they themselves get special treatment, special protection for their religious beliefs. We know that sexual orientation and gender identity are inborn, yet there does not seem to be any rational way of looking at human behavior that concludes that religion is -- if it were, adopted children would grow up to adopt the beliefs of their biological parents, not their adoptive ones. The Lamarckian conclusion seems absurd.

Throckmorton quotes another blogger, who has questioned whether faith is a choice, and says:

I know there are inconsistencies in my beliefs but I have tried on many other worldviews and have found them full of cognitive inconsistencies as well. It does not seem like my beliefs are chosen as if from a menu. To me, it seems like our brains are wired to believe but not wired well enough to find a system without holes.

Ah, so yes, it does appear to be universal that people seek an explanation for meaning, and end up believing in a higher power; this happens everywhere in the world, in some form or another. It may be explained as a way to escape the ungrounded tautology of meaning, but regardless, it is a universal human expression.

Now I think of those guys that shouted down the Hindu priest in Congress the other day. If Throckmorton's interpretation is right, then those Christians should have realized that the Hindu seeks spiritual fulfillment just like the Christian does, and the Muslim does, and the devout pagan. Were they born to be Christians? Was the Hindu born to be Hindu? There are norms, social pressures, that compel us to choose one way or the other, but if you think people have free will then you can't see that as a contradiction to choice: we can always violate our group's norms, if we will it.

Yet there is very strong resistance among fundamentalists of all faiths to the idea that there is a single supreme deity worshiped in diverse ways by diverse groups. They insist that their god is the one and only, and He-She-It has a special interest in them, specifically.

Let's say maybe people have two antithetical inherent tendencies. First, there is a need to complete the arc of meaning by identifying the source of beauty, intelligence, goodness, and love. Many people smarter than me have concluded that a god has created the world and imbued it with special qualities, and that's why we are able to perceive and appreciate the inner glow of ourselves and the radiant universe around us, that's the source of love and our knowledge of right and wrong. Second, people have an inherent need to feel superior to other people, a tendency to elevate their ingroup above other outgroups.

The first of these tendencies leads us to faith. We suffer a spiritual thirst, and we need to drink -- I am willing to agree that this is not a choice but part of the human condition. But if it was just that, then there would be no problem understanding that the particular details of other people's explanations of spiritual dimensions might differ from ours. The second tendency leads us to pettiness, and leads people to violate the obvious command of true faith, the command of love. The blending of these two tendencies leads people to the conclusion that their god is special and favors their own ingroup, and leads them to conclude that outgroup members are ugly and depraved and hated in heaven.

I'll agree with Throckmorton halfway. It may be that people have a need to believe. But people also have a need to aggrandize their own mythology and themselves, in comparison to others' mythologies and selves. The result is so counter-spiritual that it is laughable, except that it is so tragic: war between people on the basis of religion, hatred in the name of God.

As for Throckmorton's concern about Besen's statement, that sexual orientation is inborn but religion isn't, the desire to believe may be inborn, but no one is born with Christian or Muslim or Hindu or pagan faith. At the same time, beyond the inborn need to love and be loved, there is an innate tendency to seek out a certain kind of mate; some are born to love a man and some born to love a woman, the evidence is beyond reproach, the only challenge to the conclusion comes from serious wishful thinking. The comparison between religion and sexual orientation is a false dichotomy, the two are not comparable.