While thinking about the fact that belief can be conditioned, I came the the conclusion that the proper way to look at Religious Belief as a point of view is that it is a theory, a theory of the afterlife and how it affects moral behavior. This came from a realization that religious belief is not a predictor of moral behavior.

This came to me by making a connection between Religion and String Theory. You might ask, how are a theory in Physics have any connection to religious belief? Well, one of the big debates in the scientific community is whether or not String Theory is a real theory. So far there have been no experimental tests designed that will give a hint as to the correctness/reality of string theory. This may be because the tiny vibrating strings that are the fundamental components of all the matter and energy in the universe are smaller than the Planck length (a distance, determined by Quantum Mechanics, below which position and energy become indistinguishable and these values can not be observed with any accuracy). This makes “getting our hands on an individual string” are impossible. We have no way to reach down into quantum dimensions and “see” what is going on, so no test can be constructed by us limited macro beings. Is this the fault of the theory? Maybe, but not necessarily. Untestable theories may simply tell us that we are trying to understand something that cannot be understood within our limited available perspectives. Knowing the truth about a given subject requires more than one point of view.

Another way to look at this problem is to think about another question that seems to be on everyone’s mind: Are we living in a simulation? Well I’ve written simulation software. The software runs the position of all the particles through time according to the rules of the simulation. The algorithms of the software determine the numerical values for the positions of these particles for each step in time. For our Universe as a simulation Physics can determine what these rules of interaction are but if it is a simulation, like my plasma simulators it can run on several operating systems that use any number of different hardware platforms. Because the algorithm and not the hardware determine the actions of all particles in the system, there is no way for the particles in the system to be used to determine what the operating system or hardware designs are like. So, if our universe is a simulation, there is no way of telling whether it is controlled by itty bitty vibrating strings or algorithms calculated using the infinite negative energy suggested by quantum theory, unless there is some imbedded code in the simulation that gives access to the underlying hardware, there is no way to determine which is the case, or even if some other theory is a good one.

For me, all of this informs me that Religious belief is belief in an Untested theory. Is there a test? One can hope so, but even if there is not any way to test it Religious belief is still a useful point of view. The problem for the true believer is that most religious belief systems say that they are the only truth and damnation to those who do not believe. Notice that there is no damnation for those who believe but do not practice their life according to the predefined rules for religious behavior. Thus Religious belief is not a predictor of moral behavior. This makes it hard for practitioners of these beliefs to see any other point of view. But we know that singular points of view are not always informative of truth. The more ways you have to look at a situation the more complete becomes your understanding. This process can approach complete understanding, but will never actually reach it.

Viewing religion as an un-testable theory, suggests that at least one test may be useful: Seeing what a life lived by the rules is like, even in a world where not everyone lives by those same rules. How to live non-violently in a violent world is certainly not easy, but I believe that is the challenge given to us by this world we live in. How do you reduce violence in your neighbors? I think that we have good evidence that meeting that violence with escalated counter violence has so far not been the answer.