Defenders of religious belief seem to be convinced of the truth of two distinct propositions. One, unrestrained by a belief in unerring eternal punishment at the hands of an unforgetting and unforgiving deity, people would run wild and there would be no constraints on wicked behavior. Two, a human lifetime is but a brief audition for an eternal afterlife that can take one one of two forms: perfect happiness or perfect torment. Gaining access to the perfect happiness queue requires strict adherence to a set of prescribed and proscribed beliefs and behaviors that are minutely detailed in a book personally written by the aforementioned deity. While several such volumes are known to exist, they contain conflicting instructions regarding belief and behavior, so only one of these books can be authentic. The competing versions are, in fact, regarded as exceedingly evil and every effort must be made to destroy these books as well as their adherents lest they mislead the innocent into error and perdition.
Given the nature of these beliefs and given that the majority of people claim to possess religious beliefs, and (most critically) these believers represent a broad selection of conflicting views as to which of the putatively divinely authored books is the one true and authentic guide book to eternal happiness, one is left to ponder why believers are not all actively engaged in killing each other.
As widespread as religiously inspired warfare and killing was in the past and continues to be in the present, it still falls decidedly short of the level one would be led to expect from the nature of religious belief and the near-universal attestation of such beliefs by the public. One might reasonably be tempted to think that a substantial number of people who claim religious belief are, in fact, feigning this belief out of fear of being thought different.
I call this the “Yes, Virginia,” Syndrome. Every holiday season people will haul out the, likely spurious, tale of the eponymous Virginia’s plaintive letter to a newspaper about having been told there is no Santa Claus and the newspaper writer’s ringing assurance that Santa is real. At which point millions of adults reading this for the umpteenth time will shed a tear secure in their personal belief in the reality of Santa. Do any of these adults actually believe in the corporeal existence of Santa Claus? Of course not.
For them, at that moment, pretending they believe in Santa Claus makes them feel good. It may provide them with a brief reassurance that they are just like everyone else. Possibly it rekindles favorable childhood memories. It probably also gives rise to a feeling of smug superiority to the Grinch-like people they imagine still reject the Santa mystique.
So it is, I think, for professions of religious belief and for all the same reasons. If genuine, unquestioning, absolute religious belief were really all that common, no one would be shocked or surprised by the existence of suicide bombers. This is what makes the “true believers” so terrifying. Such a person would literally stop at nothing in their pursuit of salvation. Killing one or killing a million infidels would be a duty.
