Just Toggle One Bit

(This Other America, Part 3)

"I don't mind that that's their choice, I just don't want it shoved down my throat."

• either a Conservative Christian talking about genderqueer folk, or a Liberal annoyed by the ubiquitous Christian t-shirts, tattoos, music and absolutely everything in Southern Rural America

"You're welcome to your opinion, and I'm welcome to mine."

• either a Liberal talking about religious beliefs, or an anti-vaxxer talking about centuries of evidence of the efficacy of vaccines.

If you're like Most Americans, you probably grew up with certain very basic assumptions about knowledge, culture, education, and values. You probably think it's generally a good thing to have read a large number and a wide variety of books, or to have travelled to many places, or to have friends from many different cultures and backgrounds, or to be tolerant and respectful of other people's different beliefs.

To paraphrase Mr. Lamar's big hit of last year, which somehow weirdly became the slogan of Field Day at my daughter's new, almost all-white elementary school..."Y'all Ain't Like Us."

There are facts in this world, and there are opinions, and rational grownups don't get in shouting matches over either one, but they definitely don't waste a lot of time disputing the latter. You don't like chocolate or anchovies? Fine; more for me. You prefer having sex with blondes, or short people, or your own gender? Absolutely none of my business. You practice Judaism? Cool; I don't.

But as a thought experiment, let's toggle one tiny bit in your mental and cultural code, and see what changes cascade as a result...

What if you considered your religious beliefs to be FACTS, as concrete and definite and established as the boiling temperature of water, and definitely NOT opinions?

It's not such an outrageous perspective to take, and I'm sure you've met people who are absolutely as confident in their "faith" as anyone is about, say, Earth being round (something very few of us have experienced first-hand) or the existence of Alpha Centauri (even fewer). And what we've all been taught about the layers of the planet beneath our feet, the inner and outer cores beneath the magma? Absolutely nobody has gone to check on that, and I don't expect they will. Meanwhile, plenty of Christians can honestly report what they consider to be tangible, first-hand evidence of an interventionist God, and they generally live in communities where Christianity is regarded as not just a universal truth, but perhaps THE! ONLY! fact that really matters.

If we toggle that one bit, if we imagine categorizing religion as a matter of fact, not opinion...suddenly weekly Bible Study in public schools is a no-brainer, isn't it? If you accept as a FACT that nonbelievers will suffer eternal torture in the afterlife, isn't it morally imperative to try to spare them that by any means necessary? Given the stakes (infinite), how could any degree of what could be seen as fanaticism really be considered excessive?

How valuable would a contemporary liberal arts education be with this bit toggled? Do scientists consider it valuable to consider as many alternatives as they can find to our current model or atomic structure, or evolution, or Newton's Laws of Physics? No; they familiarize themselves with the Scientific Method and the history of the accumulation of evidence on any given topic, and they use the "theory" that rests on that mountain of evidence as a valuable fact that can help guide other fields of inquiry, but they don't spend a lot of time considering the arguments put forth by Creationists and Flat-Earthers.

When you and nearly everyone you know agree on something, something so vast and important that it aspires to not only guide you through this life but escort you into the afterlife, why on Earth would you want to waste your time entertaining the babbling heathens of the world? And if the shepherd of your particular flock endorses a certain political perspective or condemns certain behaviors, especially if they concern complicated issues you're really not that familiar with, you're certainly better off accepting that wisdom than questioning it...right?

Toggle one bit in your code, and suddenly...you're compatible with a completely different segment of the population, and incompatible with the rest. You're voting as your preacher told you to. You have no patience with science that conflicts with your higher authority.

And, here in This Other America, you greet strangers with "have a blessed day," not for a moment considering that to some it will unpack as "I am certain that if you share my theology you deserve and shall receive infinite rewards, and if you don't you deserve and shall receive infinite suffering." It's just, y'know, the nice thing to say. You walk up to complete strangers in the locker room at the gym and hand them tiny plastic Jesus toys. You sing hymns in the locker room showers, and any small talk is properly punctuated with some mention of Jesus.

And of course you don't opt your child out of weekly Bible Study class in the public schools. Nobody does that.