The Difference Between Beliefs and Ideas

Kevin Smith, in his movie "Dogma", pushed the idea of holding beliefs instead of ideas:

Rufus: He still digs humanity, but it bothers Him to see the shit that gets carried out in His name: wars, bigotry, televangelism. But especially the factioning of all the religions. He said humanity took a good idea and, like always, built a belief structure on it.

Bethany: Having beliefs isn't good?

Rufus: I think it's better to have ideas. You can change an idea, changing a belief is trickier. Life should be malleable and progressive; working from idea to idea permits that. Beliefs anchor you to certain points and limit growth; new ideas can't generate. Life becomes stagnant.

I loved the movie as a Christian (and still do as an atheist), but I brushed off that bit as something equivalent to the recent "Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus" kerfuffle - it's the words of someone who belongs to a religion, but wants to make themselves feel better because they're not a part of what they see as the bad parts of religion.

What is a Belief?

It wasn't until I deconverted to atheism and became someone standing on the outside of Christianity, looking in, that I finally realized what Kevin Smith was talking about. A belief is an idea at its core, but it's a special type of idea that a person holds onto, no matter how much the evidence or logical thought may contradict it. There are at least two ways to recognize that you have a belief.

1. You Make Excuses For It

The easiest example is that old Christian addage that we all know and love:

God is good.

It's simple enough, isn't it? Superficially pleasant, innocuous, short, and easy to remember. How, though, is this anything other than an idea, and how does it illustrate the difference between a belief and an idea? Consider the following examples of God's actions:

• He wipes out Sodom and Gomorrah for "grave sin"
• He floods the Earth because his creation became sinful
• He scattered the people at the tower of Babel for pride
• He approved the killing of three thousand idolaters at the foot of Mount Sinai
• He gave the Israelites approval to kill anyone who was in the land given to them

Bring this up to a Christian, and a majority of the time, they will say:

• "God has a plan that we cannot understand."
• "God is the creator. He gives and He takes away."
• "God judged them, and God, being supremely good, is the only one fit to judge them."
• "God exists on such a different and higher level of existence that we cannot hope to understand or be able to judge Him."

All of these statements are seeded with the idea that God is good. So desperate are the believers to hold onto this idea that they will (and, at one time, I would) make these excuses to justify the actions of their god that they readily condemn humanity and other religions for. They don't consider, for example, that the only first-hand account of God being supremely good is God himself and that he might have lied (not even accounting for the likelihood of his non-existence). Believers are wholly unwilling to give up the belief that their God is good, no matter how much the evidence may point to the contrary.

2. You Become Emotional at Criticism of the Belief

Have you ever raised a criticism of something and been met with an emotional response? Has anyone ever raised a criticism of your idea and you take it personally? If so, you might be a redneck have a belief. I've been trying to figure out the best way to draw out an example of this for a couple of nights. Today, the fates conspired to give me a shining example of exactly what I'm talking about.

Take this Facebook thread (don't worry, there's a summary after it if you don't want to read the whole thing):

For those who actually want to read it all, I'll let you draw your own conclusions about the thread. In summary, Green and I disagree about whether or not an omniscient individual implies a deterministic universe and whether or not the fact that that omniscient individual (God, in this case) is at fault for the much-discussed problem of evil. Things got a little excited at the end, but, otherwise, it seemed like a fairly mundane disagreement.

Then this happened today:

"Why don't you just learn to swallow your pride and say you're sorry. You might actually get a girlfriend if you can master that skill."

Oh, my.

This is what happens when you have a belief. You lash out in an emotional response against the person who criticizes your belief, possibly having taken the criticisms personally (even though they were criticisms of the belief, not you). Being so emotionally invested in your belief makes it extremely difficult to step back, analyze your stance, your arguments for your stance, and whether or not those hold up against the other person's counter-arguments; this can manifest itself as an ad hominem attack.

So, What is an Idea?


An idea is something you think that you're able to successfully divorce yourself from emotionally and analyze it for accuracy. When someone says, "This doesn't make sense; can you explain it to me?", can you explain it? If someone raises a counter-point, are you able to process their point and either modify your stance or counter it with a point supporting your position (and this doesn't require it to be an immediate comeback - sometimes, someone raises a really good point that requires contemplation)? These are the ideals that you should strive for:

• Don't emotionally invest yourself in the idea
• Keep an open mind to differing and competing ideas
• Above all, make sure you understand and can defend your own stances.

If you find yourself falling back to "divine mysteries" and other sorts of unsubstantiated excuses or lashing out at the person who's making the counter-argument, stop yourself - you've taken an idea and turned it into a belief, and it may be time to move onto something better.

Bush, More Likely Than Not, Did Not Say He Talked to God

I see allegations that Bush said that God told him "to end the tyranny in Iraq". Most recently, it popped up in /r/atheism (warning: NSFW link) to support a rather dumb argument of "Bush was a theist, therefore I will never vote for a theist".

Putting aside the stupidity of this argument (which, as the top-most-voted comment points out, amounts to "I'll never ever vote"), consider the likelihood of this quote actually being said by Bush: the only source that can be found for it is a single Palestinian official. Let's be honest - the Palestinian government, whether or not you agree with Israel's actions, would likely have an axe to grind with the U.S. government.

The fact that the U.S. government did not try to deny it, while relevant to the argument for the quote's accuracy, is immaterial when faced with the fact that there is not a single additional shred of corroborating evidence - no other (more) reliable witnesses, no transcripts, no recordings - nada.

So, folks, let's put this one to bed, like we should do with that oft-repeated Thomas Jefferson quote. It wouldn't surprise me if Bush thought that he was doing God's work (though, as Penn Jillette tells it, Bill Clinton was the most religious of all U.S. presidents), but let's not let ourselves fail as skeptics simply because doing so makes it more convenient for the argument at hand - a short-term gain for a long-term loss of credibility.