Misbelief

I read Ross Douthat's Believe recently. It's not a long book, about 200 pages, generally devoted to the proposition that there is a generalized obligation for people to believe in some sort of higher power, and for those people who are uncertain which one to believe in, one of the four primary contemporary religions (Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism) are the best bets.

I was only on page 2 when I realized that I likely wasn't in the target demographic for Mr. Douthat's book. I'm not the sort to regard secularism as "an uncomfortable intellectual default." In other words, I wasn't looking for permission to believe. But I also don't believe that it's "just too difficult to be a thoughtful, serious modern person and embrace religious faith." I don't have faith in higher powers, myself, but that's because I don't perceive any real need for them, not because I find them somehow irrational.

Because Believe is a book for people who already want to believe, it doesn't set out to answer the question of "Is this true?" Rather, it's an answer to the question of "Why is this true?" Accordingly, Mr. Douthat starts from the proposition that God is real, and this lends the book the air of begging the question at times. "Nonbelief requires ignoring what out reason has revealed about the world around us," to quote the dust jacket, because Mr. Douthat's faith admits no ambiguity in reason's revelation. This is a bit at odds with the fact that he admits to assuming certain things to be true: I don't come to different conclusions about the world than Mr. Douthat does because I'm cynically engaged in motivated reasoning... I literally have a different starting point than he does, and that differing vantage point means that my view of the landscape is going to differ from his.

I have a number of notes about the book, but I'm sure that many of them come from my tendency to overanalyze things, so I'll cut to the chase. Mr. Douthat seems to want to avoid falling into Pascal's Wager, but the basic gist of his argument is the same: That what the higher Power wants from people is their belief. There's no indication that belief is a means to an end; that once someone chooses to believe, that then, and only then, can they embark on some project, or come into alignment with the story into which they have been placed. This makes it difficult to square the idea that it's not of primary importance to believe in the correct understanding of that Power.

If, as Mr. Douthat says, "It would be a strange God indeed who cared intensely about how we spend our money or what votes we cast or how we feel about ourselves, but somehow didn't give a damn about behaviors that might forge or shatter a marriage, create a life in good circumstances or terrible ones, form a lifelong bond or addictive habit, bind someone to their own offspring or separate their permanently," isn't is also a strange God who is only moderately interested in which faith, and thus which set of instructions one follows? The idea that the various differences in how different religions dictate that people spend their money, cast their votes and live their sex lives are minor details doesn't seem in keeping with the importance of maintaining a conservative outlook on sexuality.

In the end, it was an interesting read, but the limits of the target audience is worth keeping in mind. Believe isn't for people who are fine where they are; it's for those who find themselves standing outside of a religion, hoping to be invited in.