If you find this article informative and worthwhile, please support my work by donating if you can.

logo    Are Americans a Religious People? Emphatically Yes!


Anyone interested in this topic has already seen the regularly published numbers gathered by one kind of survey or anotherAmericans who view themselves as religious:86.8%; who regularly attend a worship service: 57 %; who identify  themselves as Christian in 1947 and 2001: 89%/82%.

But these numbers are meaninglessthe words religious, Christian, and regularly attend are not precisely defined, and what passes for religious, or Christian, or regular attendance can be different for different people. For instance, a well-known person was interviewed by Larry King recently, and he asked her if she was religious. Without hesitation she answered, "Yes," but then said, "I believe in God, I was raised as a Roman Catholic, but I don't go to church. I really mean I'm a spiritual rather than a religious person." Well, is she religious or not? Is she a Christian or not?

So when I say that Americans are religious, I don't mean religious in any conventional sense. What I mean is this:

There are people whose lives are pretty much lived in accordance with belief-structures. These people have never thought seriously about these structures, never questioned their validity, never have sought any evidence for them. None of these are thought to even be necessary. These belief-structures take on the attributes of absolute truths that are unquestionable, and no amount of evidence that contradicts these structures ever changes their minds. People who live this way are religious.

Religious people can be contrasted to another group whose lives are pretty much lived in accordance with articles which they have evidence for. These articles don't have the character of absolute truths, not even as fixed facts, for whenever the evidence changes, and it often does, these people change their attitudes correspondingly. These people are not exactly scientific, but their attitudes are adopted by using a scientific method to some extent. They don't go around looking for evidence of every attitude they hold, but when one they hold is contradicted by the available evidence, they discard it. The religious sometimes call these people relativists, but that's wrong.  Relativists change their views to fit changing  circumstances; but circumstances are not evidence. No one would say that physical science is relativistic, because views about the nature of the physical world have changed as new evidence has emerged. Relativism is exemplified by politicians who change their views with every change in public opinion. Physicists don't do that.

Factual argument can influence the attitudes of the people in this second group. Trying to influence the religious with factual argument, however, just doesn't work.

Of course, nothing is this simple. Every person, to some extent, falls into both of these groups, although one or the other of the two tendencies usually dominates. So if you predominately fall into one of these groups and you come into conflict with someone of the other type, resist the temptation to vilify him/her, because there's some degree of him/her in you too.

But the conflicts that arise between these groups are serious, because their resolutions are often impossible, and legislative or judicial attempts to resolve them often prove to be ineffective.

An example of such a conflict is same sex marriage. This issue cannot be solved, and if a solution is imposed on the public, the opponents of that solution will continue to harbor resentment and make continual attempts to undo it. Issues like these are only resolved by time during which both the evidence and belief-structures slowly change.

The issue of slavery illustrates such a resolution. Lincoln imposed a solution on the issue by emancipating the slaves. But it took a long time for belief-structures to change for that solution to become accepted as the right one. Today, hardly anyone would defend slavery.

But consider abortion. The Supreme Court made it a woman's right in 1973 but its opponents are still trying to overturn it. The relevant evidence and belief structures have not yet changed enough for a satisfactory consensus to emerge.

These three issues I have used as examples are emotionally charged. They are the result of deeply held belief-structures. But all belief-structures do not have the same importance to an individual; some are more easily changed than others. And sometimes belief-structures held by the same individual can conflict with each other. This gives rise to curious practices when they are adopted as national policy.

Anti-communism is an integral part of one of our belief structures; so is the sanctity of private property. Here's an example of how they conflict when they become part of our national policy. Both Cuba and mainland China are Communist countries. Cuba is a puny little country that could never be a real threat to us, but mainland China is an enormous, powerful country that can conceivable be a major threat. Cuba has never fought us in a major war; its armies have never killed Americans. Mainland China, on the other hand, fought us to a standstill in Korea and its armed forces killed and maimed thousands of Americans. Yet we won't do business with Cuba while mainland China has become one of our largest trading partners. How can this be explained? What has Cuba done that is so much worse than the killing and maiming of thousands of Americans? Well, Cuba confiscated the private property of American companies, mainland China didn't.

Yet our leaders are continuously telling us and the world that we are a people that values life. And we do. There is no question about it. But at the present time in history, we happen to value private property more. Many Americans view this as ridiculous; to others, it makes perfectly good sense. Its just that the two belief-structures involved, while valued by both, are valued differently by different people. The place of these belief-structures in their value hierarchies is merely reversed.

Such conflicts affect many of today's social issues that the country has attempted to address, and the result has often been numerous Congressional attempts at solutions, none of which have worked. Some are crime and punishment, illegal immigration, medical care, and drug policy. But more on those some other time. (3/11/2005)