The Religious Divide in America

As a preface, this post is more about an opinion on the current state of events in the US, and less on-point to a specific topic. It was, in part, motivated by this piece and related events, but my thoughts on the topic are a bit more general.

The US is going through a period of transition currently, one which will likely span several generations. As this piece accurately notes, "as societies become more modern, they become less religious". This is, I think, generally accurate, as can be observed in the recent history of the world. It is also somewhat intuitive: as people learn more about how the world works, there is less need for superstition to explain how and why things happen, and hence less need for religion.

Unfortunately, this is not something which can or will change overnight. Primarily, this is because so many people have so much of their own self-worth and self-identity inexorably associated with their religion, that it's practically impossible for them to alter their views. In large part, this is a testimony to the efficacy of the indoctrination mechanisms employed by the various organized religions, whereby children are, in effect, brainwashed into the religions long before they can make well-informed and self-directed choices. By the time people reach intellectual maturity, religion tends to be ingrained enough in their mental models that it requires substantial effort and motivation to displace, both of which are usually lacking. As a result, the evolution of religion out of more advanced societies is a multi-generational process; the older people literally need to die off to advance the societal trends.

Fortunately, most religion and religious practices are by-and-large not too harmful to a society; there are always outliers and zealots, of course, but generally most religious tenants are broadly compatible with societal values. Indeed, based on the foundational documents of the country, and the opinions of the people founding it, the early leaders of the US were entirely comfortable with people being religious in general, as long as that religion didn't intrude duties or decisions in the government itself. Presumably, and pragmatically, this was likely to try to mitigate anyone in government imposing their religious beliefs on anyone else in the country, as the founders would have been wary of, based on the history in Europe and such.

Unfortunately, the progress of science and society has outpaced the slow multi-generational ideological transition necessary to expunge religion from the US, and this is now causing some pretty substantial friction within the country. For example, we now understand that gender is scientifically not binary, and we have very strong evidence that the basis for gender attraction is genetic as well, yet both of these facts are in conflict with long-standing religious doctrine.

(Side note: This is not the "fault" of the religions, per se; remember, all religions make up everything they believe based on what's generally accepted at the time, and the majority religions of today have been around for many centuries. One of the necessary side-effects of the intellectual indoctrination mechanisms is that altering precepts of the religion to match current scientific understandings would weaken the indoctrination itself, so such modifications are necessarily minimalized. This, over time, results on the religions clinging to obsolete ideology, an effect which is magnified by speed of scientific advancement and widespread information dissemination. This is why, for example, the issue is more prevalent in the US, as opposed to less educated and/or developed countries.)

This all brings us back to the motivating topic at hand. The current VP of the US is Mike Pence, a Christian religious zealot. His wife is employed as a religious "school", which mixes education and indoctrination, and requires an oath of allegiance to the religious precepts. Among the religious precepts is enshrined (among other things) bigotry and baseless discrimination against non-heterosexual persons; behaviors which societal in general now finds to be unacceptable (and by that, I mean the societal trend has just recently passed the 50% mark, and the majority of society now accepts that this form of bigotry is unacceptable). This, naturally, causes a conflict: Mike Pence is offended that his family's bigotry and discrimination is being looked down upon, while the majority of the country is offended that Mike Pence advocates for bigotry and discrimination.

This is more symptomatic of a general issue/divide in the country, though. To wit, the strongly religious people in the country believe that their religion should be a justification for maintaining personal beliefs and opinions which are at odds with the general societal values at the time. The principles of the country would generally accept this, but "draw the line" at the point where those beliefs would be harmful to others in the country; in essence, you are allowed to be a bigot, as long as your bigotry doesn't impact anyone else. The reality, though, is that this is practically impossible: everyone interacts with other people, and eventually everyone's hate is going to directly or indirectly cause harm to someone else. As it happens, sometimes this effect is also very public, as with Mike Pence at the present time.

There's no easy fix for this issue, unfortunately; it will take generational change before religion is marginalized enough for this kind of situation to become anomalous in the US. In the meantime, the voters would do well to stay away from zealots in elected positions, but understandably this is more difficult in the areas of the country where religion still has a strong presence. I have hope that eventually this issue will go away, but in the meantime, expect to have a lot more conflict around instances like this.