You Can’t Judge Someone Based on Their Beliefs

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about religion lately. I suddenly and unexpectedly became an atheist a few weeks ago, and everything I thought I knew about the world, I didn’t anymore. That’s fine, of course — the process of reinvention has been fascinating — but it has evoked some interesting reactions in the people around me.

For instance, Christians around me have started acting as if I think they’re stupid.

Whenever it comes up that my beliefs have changed, they’re eager to present sophisticated arguments in defense of their belief system. I’m usually familiar with these arguments, because I was a Christian for a long time, a deist for even longer, and a reader all the while, so I tell them as much. I don’t do this to be snotty. I merely mean “Oh, you don’t have to waste time explaining the entire watchmaker’s metaphor to me, we both get it.”

When I do this, though, they double down on explaining. They try to explain even more. So I say “Okay, well, here are my problems with it.” Then they explain even more.¹

Eventually, we get to a point where either I have presented some information they don’t know how to deal with or they have presented some information I don’t know how to deal with. I think to myself well, that was an enjoyable debate, I liked that, and then they hit me with this:

“Do you think I’m just some dumb go-along Christian who just thinks what they are told?”

Uh, no?

I did attempt to tell you about some stuff I didn’t think you knew about. You were doing the same. That’s kind of the point of these conversations. That doesn’t mean I think you’re an idiot. If anything, it means I think you’re smart enough to be worth talking to.

More pertinent than that, though, is that if I held such a negative view of believers of any faith, I would not only be holding a condescending view of you, I would be holding a condescending view of myself.

When I say “I was a believer for a long time,” I don’t mean “I was an idiot for a long time, just like you are now!” I mean “For a long time, I studied these issues with a great deal of seriousness and educated myself in what all the learned men had to say on the matter, and for all those years of study, I thought the existence of God fit the evidence best. After reviewing some new evidence more recently, though, I’ve revised my opinion.”² To think something so demeaning of someone just because they’re a Christian is to think something so demeaning of myself for the vast majority of my life.

And guess what? I’m sorry, I just don’t think I was that much of an idiot. I was a believer for a long time and I think I had some pretty decent reasons for being one.

So, unless you give me a particular reason to think you’re a go-along idiot, I’m going to assume you’re not.

But you know what? I remember being that Christian. I remember wondering if my atheist friends thought I was an idiot. (Some of them certainly did). I remember feeling like an idiot in their presence, even if I knew I knew more about the problem of evil than they did. And I remember getting shaken by that insecurity and overcompensating by debating and debating and debating, even if it wasn’t really necessary.

I think everyone who has particularly strong religious beliefs (or lack thereof, such as it were) has some insecurities and/or judgments rattling around in their heads. Here are a couple of common ones (trigger warning, I guess):

• Atheists are just angry at God and don’t want to accept His authority
• Christians just can’t cope with the reality of their mortality
• Atheists are idiots because they don’t realize morality must come from a moral law-giver
• Christians are idiots because they think morality must come from a moral law-giver
• New Age-y spiritual people are stupid because they think they can just believe whatever they want and that makes it true
• Hindus (and other polytheists) are idiots who believe in polytheism³
• Wiccans are delusional people who think they have magic

…and so on and so forth.

These are all such utter bullshit.

People aren’t caricatures. We all come to our beliefs through a proprietary blend of evidence, reasoning, emotions, timing, happenstance, whether we had a sour stomach that day, and a million other things. To reduce religious beliefs to a one-dimensional stereotype is to give a huge insult to basically anyone who has a different belief than you.

It’s also to give a huge insult to yourself. If you think everyone else comes to their belief system in such a one-dimensional and thoughtless way, what must you think of yourself?

We all know that when it comes to others, I think. There are very few people who go around sincerely saying things like “All believers are just fools who believe in a myth.”

There are a lot of people, however, who think everyone else on the other side goes around saying those things just because a few prominent people did in some books that sold well a few years ago. I know because I was one of them. When I was a Christian, I read some unkind stuff Dawkins had to say about believers, and for years afterward, I thought every atheist I met secretly harbored these same unkind beliefs.

The first lesson here is obvious: Don’t judge someone based on their beliefs

That doesn’t mean we can’t judge people’s beliefs. Beliefs, unlike people, are not inherently worth anything, and they can be right or very, very wrong. (Racism is a belief). But we shouldn’t jump to a conclusion about someone based on their religious belief.

Here’s what I mean. Don’t judge an atheist because they’re an atheist. They could be an atheist because…

• They prayed for a million dollars when they were 15 and didn’t get it, or
• As the result of years of serious study and reflection.

One system of belief is deserving of respect. The other is not.

There are some belief systems that are so bad you can use them to draw immediate character judgments about someone. Religious beliefs are generally not one of them.⁴ You should judge religious beliefs based on the quality of the thinking that led to their outcome, not the outcome itself.

But I don’t think most of us are drawing conclusions about people based purely on their religious beliefs, so we’re in the clear.

The second lesson is a little less obvious: Don’t assume someone is judging you based on your beliefs

Every time I met an atheist and overreacted to the possibility of them thinking I was an idiot by debating intensely, I kind of proved their point. If they already thought Christians were idiots, my erratic behavior was only further proof — and if they didn’t already, my erratic behavior might have changed their mind.

It reminds me of when lovers are arguing and one person says “Now, don’t be angry.” Just hearing that phrase can make someone angry. Excuse me? I wasn’t angry! You assumed I’m angry! That makes me angry.

If you assume the person you’re speaking to thinks you’re an idiot, they may think to themselves Gee, this person seems defensive. They keep repeating themselves. They don’t seem very educated.

When it comes to conversations about religion, operate on the assumption everyone is paying you the same level of respect you’re paying them. Keep it kind and friendly. Don’t conclude someone doesn’t respect your beliefs until they’ve openly said something insulting — and when they do, call them out. That’s much more likely to garner respect than being defensive right off the bat.

A lot of people like to avoid conversations about religion altogether to avoid these kinds of problems. For many years, that’s what I did. But I think talking about religion is a good thing.

History has shown that religious tolerance is critically important and religious beliefs should absolutely be protected under human rights legislation, just like race and gender and all the rest.

But there is one-way religion is different from race and gender and all the rest, and it's that religious beliefs can actually be right or wrong. It’s impossible to be the wrong race, but it is very possible to be wrong about whether God exists or not. When we’re all dead, some of us may potentially be right, and most of us will definitely be very, very wrong.

Talking about religion (respectfully, tolerantly, with full dignity afforded to everyone involved) helps us figure out these thorny issues. It’s an exercise in using our capacity for rationality to discover what is and isn’t true about the questions most fundamental to our existence: Why were we born? What are we here to do? What happens when we die? Does it mean anything? I can’t think of anything more worth talking about.

For this reason alone, it’s hard for me to feel too much disrespect for people of any religious faith.⁵ People with religious beliefs are people who are brave enough to have stepped up to try and tackle these most difficult questions for themselves. That is worth respecting no matter the outcome. The only thing worth disrespecting, if anything, is a lousy fucking attempt.

So dust off your Bible, your Torah, your Koran, your tarot cards, and your copy of God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens. Let’s talk.

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1: This has taught me to just be patient and let people explain things to me, even if I already know. Then they get to feel smart, and if I by some miracle do have a cogent and witty reply, I get to look extra-smart. By contrast, when I interrupt, I just look like an asshole.

2: Yes, I’ve admitted that my thinking in those last two or three years was motivated more by emotional comfort than a cold hard assessment of the facts, but that doesn’t cancel out the better part of a decade of dedicated church attendance, bible study, and theological and apologetic study.

3: Hindus are not truly polytheists, of course, but many people don’t realize that.

4: But sometimes they are. White supremacy in Nazi Germany was motivated by a religious belief in the mythical supreme Aryan people of centuries past, who died out when their pure bloodline was diluted. The mission of Nazi Germany was to restore their pure blood. We all know what happened after. Not all religions deserve tolerance.

5: This statement does, of course, come with the usual caveat: I don’t respect white supremacists, terrorists, or anyone whose religious beliefs involve not respecting the human rights of others.