Religious differences as a deal-breaker for a friendship

Can those who believe in God be good friends with those who don’t believe in God?

A fellow named Martin raised this intriguing point about a week ago here.  He suggested that a person who doesn’t believe in God cannot possibly have a real friendship, a deep friendship, with someone who claims to believe in God.  As I understood Martin’s point it’s absurd to claim a belief in God; it’s so incredibly absurd that a nonbeliever cannot ever fully trust a believer. In Martin’s view, in order to be true friends, believers need to quit saying those absurd claims about miracles and invisible Beings.  And those believers need to stop claiming that they know things that they don’t know.   According to Martin, it’s simply not worth it to try to maintain a friendship with people who claim to believe in gods and angels.  The craziness exhibited by believers (regardless of all of their other redeeming social values) is a huge roadblock even the possibility of friendship.

I think I understand Martin’s concern.  I’m a people who has a smaller number of deeper friendships compared to many other people.  I’ve been told that I’m discriminating in my friendships and that’s likely true.  I readily admit that I make myself less available to people with whom I have less in common.  I admit further that I have often written off the possibility of friendship with some people based upon various beliefs they hold, despite the fact that such people are, in many ways, honorable and decent human beings. 

Sometimes, strong beliefs of people are just just too much for me–they overwhelm the relationship.  I’ve felt this way about most fundamentalists and most Neocons, for example.  I’ve called off a few friendships when the friend started adopting Neocon beliefs uncritically.

Are mild religious beliefs totally inert–self-contained in the psyche?  No. I assume that troublesome belief-systems (troublesome to me), though they might lie hidden, latent and relatively unexamined, are likely to permeate that person’s thinking in many subtle (and not-so-subtle) ways.  Thus, I too have had thoughts like those Martin expressed in his comments.  In some cases I have concluded that any friendship I might have with some people with troublesome beliefs (troublesome to me) might be a pretend friendship, not a real one. I have such thoughts accompanied by the thought that there’s many fish in the sea.  Why in the world would I want to work so hard to maintain a friendship with Neocons when I could have a much easier and more satisfying friendship with someone without all that Neocon baggage?

I part ways with Martin in an important respect.  In response to Martin’s comments here, I tried to draw the distinction between fundamentalists and religious moderates.  Although I have very few deep friendships with fundamentalists, I have numerous good friendships with religious moderates.  For most religious moderates, their belief in God is often compartmentalized–it seems to take them over for about one hour per week (on Sunday morning) and then it’s all over, except for occasional ritualistic prayers over meals. They don’t believe that the Bible is mostly literal truth. Most of them don’t regularly read the Bible.   They (as Daniel Dennett argued) believe in belief, rather in the things they utter–they think they’re supposed to believe in the things they say at church.  But they don’t actually consider those things carefully, certainly not as closely as they consider how to invest their money in the stock market or as closely as they ponder the pro’s and con’s of their favorite sports team.  Many of them (and many clergy who lead them) are closet agnostics.  Away from their churches, one-on-one, I constantly hear them admitting that they don’t actually know those things they proclaim in church.  In fact, most of them readily admit (again, away from their respective churches) that they disbelieve many of the things they proclaim in church.

Back to Martin’s concern.  Is it possible for a non-believer to have a deep friendship with people who claim to believe in an invisible sentient being? Not only is it possible in my experience, but many of my closest friends are religious moderates.  

Although I have now admitted deep friendships with some people who believe in God, I will also admit that these friendships sometimes seem bit awkward at those moments when the topic of God comes up.  When that topic arises, it reminds me that there is this irresolvable “thing” about the relationship, and that my friend and I don’t see eye-to-eye in every major way.  If I value the friendship with a religious moderate, however (as I often do) I might find myself being careful to not offend those friends.  I know that my religious moderate friends reciprocate, taking care to not be presumptuous about “God” around me.  Fortunately, there is usually a gentle way of anything that one can also say bluntly or harshly.  Therefore, I don’t find that having a friendship with a religious moderate requires me to compromise the truth.  

I really do think that my religious moderate friends and I treat each other as though the other is a bit insane in a relatively compartmentalized though harmless way.  And the friendship often flourishes despite this dramatic-seeming religious difference.  How is that possible?  Here’s how.  There must be at least 100 major issues on which people can agree or disagree.  If I agree with a religious moderate friend on 97 of them, that’s having a hell of a lot in common.   That’s probably having more in common that I would have with most of my friends who are agnostics or atheists.

Martin’s comments caused me to consider some other belief systems that could affect friendships.  About 15 years ago, I had a friend who was a rather strident feminist.  I ended up spending less time with her because I took her many “pro-woman” expressions to be thinly veiled attacks on men, all men, including me.  I felt that her alleged feminism was, in actuality, a form of bigotry.  We had much in common, though I was concerned that this bigotry reared its head much too often and much too intensely. 

Beliefs fall along a continuum.  Feminism need not be strident and need not be bigoted.  Often, feminism is well-informed, kind-hearted and open-minded.  In those cases, I don’t feel that feminism is any sort of barrier to a healthy friendship. 

Many of my friends are dramatically different than me.  I’ve had friends who were Second Amendment fanatics (I’m not) and others who are free-market zealots (I’m not).  Some people think Democrats can do no wrong (I don’t agree).  Some people just won’t admit that global warming is a reality and they deny any possibility that it is caused by human activity.  But I’ve had friendships with all such people.  Here’s another example:  I know many people whose views on raising and educating children are dramatically different from my own.  I wouldn’t trust them to raise my children.  But I have much respect for them. 

In my opinion, if you’re looking only for perfect friends, you’ll never have any friends.

For me, the deal-breaker regarding friendship is a tendency toward any sort of fundamentalism (religious, political or otherwise).   I’ve often deferred to Jimmy Carter’s definition:

A fundamentalist believes, say, in religious circles, that I am close to God. Everything that I believe is absolutely right. Anyone who disagrees with me, in any case, is inherently wrong and therefore, inferior. And it violates my basic principles if I negotiate with anyone else or listen to their point of view or modify my own positions at all. So that is what has permeated this administration.

Some people are so overtaken by their beliefs that they absolutely shut down their minds to the possibility that they are wrong.  To the extent they do this, I am usually not willing to spend the time to develop a friendship.  I’m not willing to work on friendships where the potential friend has ruled out the possibility that he or she is wrong.  Of the possibility that he or she knows everything important. 

Martin would say that people simply cannot compartmentalize things like belief in God.  I don’t agree with him.  We are incredibly good at compartmentalizing our beliefs and avoiding those beliefs, whenever convenient or whenever those beliefs are toxic.  For instance we are all in the process of getting old and dying.  We all face enormous risks of getting hurt through disease or accident.  We live on a spinning planet that came from a huge explosion billions of years ago, an explosion that just doesn’t seem to have to have any ultimate cause that makes sense to anybody who is intelligent and honest.  We seem to go on with our lives, day by day, despite the fact that we know so little about so much in that we are so incredibly physically vulnerable.  We can cordon off inconvenient beliefs quite well, thank you. 

In the case of religious moderates, then, a bit of tact, a bit of restraint and some compartmentalization keep us from stepping on each other’s toes.  That’s the way it is with all good long-term friendships.  There is no such thing as a deep long-term friendship where people haven’t had major disagreements about something.

I know this post is somewhat rambling but perhaps that’s because I’m finding myself sympathizing with the real-world application of Martin’s position I do write off some people as untrustworthy, generally, because of a particular set of beliefs that comprise even a small portion of their total beliefs.

Yes, Martin, there are some beliefs that are deal-breakers.  For me, though, the beliefs of religious moderates don’t rise to the level of fundamentalism.   My religious moderate friends don’t try consciously try to convert me and I don’t consciously try to convert them.   We readily concede points to each other on the topic of religion.  We have value systems that match up almost perfectly.  Almost.  There is that religion thing . . . and those differences will always be there for many of my friendships.  But I don’t believe that most religious moderates say absurd (sometimes oxymoronic) things because they believe them—I’m putting my chips on the theory that religious belief is, in many cases, an evolutionary adaptation and that those religious believes can be important to some people even though they are not literally true.  It is my experience that good friendships can make religious differences (with religious moderates) trivial.  I can have complete trust in these friends regarding such things as keeping their word and to exhibiting respect for almost all of the important moral values that I respect.

I figure that none of us non-fundamentalists claim to have all of the answers.  There are many gaps in our knowledge–my religious moderate friends agree.  They posit a god of the gaps whereas I simply call those unknowns things I don’t know. 

Is it frustrating that they assert beliefs in things that (to me) have no evidentiary basis? Sure, when I think about those things.  But I often don’t think about such things.  After all, there are at least 100 other major things to think about, right?

I’m not willing to make religious differences a deal-breaker for religious moderates who are otherwise kind-hearted souls.  Life is too short for that and life would be too socially impoverished with that.

1. Gentle “Miranda Warning” cards for religious moderates
2. Sam Harris on problems with religious moderates and agnostics
3. We atheists and agnostics often have a lot in common with you religious moderates
4. On Friendship, Virtue and Blogging
5. Christians put on their Skeptic Hats to deal with the “Tomb of Jesus”