Today’s subject is belief. People want to believe; I think that is clear. There are so many questions that aren’t susceptible to factual answers, that they either must be answered by “I believe that ……” or left unanswered. Unanswered questions seem to bother a lot of people, so they fall back on belief. And the belief that they fall back on becomes so much a part of their thought process, and therefore their identity, that the belief itself becomes, to them, fact.

People want, to take a small example, to believe that there is a God. Some people need to believe in God in order to anchor their lives. What, they ask, would be the purpose of life without a God? Others, just take belief in God as something that is obvious. Still others don’t think about the God question at all, or even decide that there is, or probably is, no God at all……that is, until they are in serious trouble, when they say (to themselves, no doubt), “Oh, God, please help me”, or until they survive a serious situation and they say “God, thank you”.

Of course (I am sure that this is a case of “of course”), none of these “beliefs” are relevant to the question of whether there is or is not a God. And even this statement begs the question of – if there is a God – what does that even mean?

Western civilization (and now civilization even broader than that) is based upon the God first worshiped by the Israelites of 3000 years ago. This God is so ingrained in our thinking that, for most, the concept of worshiping, or even recognizing the existence of, gods other than this God is unthinkable, primitive, pagan. But, again, this ingrained belief has no relevance to the underlying question.

The elements of the Western God (if I may refer to him that way) is that he is basically anthropomorphic (or, to be more accurate, we humans are deimorphic – a word that does not exist), that he “thinks” in ways that we can understand even if his conclusions sometimes seem inexplicable, that he “cares” about us more than about any other creature or place, that he can (in varying ways) intervene in our daily activities, and that he has a plan for us both when we are alive and after we die. Try looking at this from the perspective of someone (or some thing) not raised in this Western tradition, and it might look a little ridiculous, yes? But here we are – stuck with our belief.

Are you religiously Jewish? You may believe that this God chose the Jewish people out of all the others for certain teachings and that he expects the Jewish people to worship him by living in certain ways (that these ways are very different from the ways of Jews 2000 to 3000 years ago becomes irrelevant), and that he gave the Jews the right to certain real estate on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea (like the American republic – if they can keep it). If you are not Jewish, the concept of a God as a real estate agent seems a little odd, right?

Are you religiously Christian? You may believe that this same God decided 2000 years ago to expand his “people” beyond the Jews, that people generally were born into sin and needed to be redeemed before they could expect a beatific afterlife, and that this redemption came with God’s chosen mate giving birth to a son who was crucified to wash away the sins of mankind, or at least of that portion of mankind who believed this general story. But if you are not Christian, it is pretty hard to give this tale any real credibility.

Are you religiously Muslim? Well, then you believe that this God told what he really stood for only to Mohammed, an illiterate Arab, whose followers spread this word of God and made it known that by following these precepts, but by no others, could people, and therefore the world, be saved.

All three of these story lines – the Jewish, the Christian and the Muslim – are clearly fantastic. Yet those who truly believe tend to think that they understand the true God, and no one else does. They believe that followers of the other two religious systems are in error and that, once they die, they will discover just how wrong they were.

Yet, and I repeat, all this means is that people have a need to believe, and that they tend to believe so strongly that they ignore the possibility that their belief is just that – just a belief. They believe that they have discovered truth or fact, not only for them but for everyone, and that it is their job to convert everyone to their cause. For non-Muslims all this brings about is fear.

OK, perhaps all of this is obvious. To me, anything about the creation of the world (where was it created, when was it created, why was it created, was it in fact ever really created?) is well above my pay grade. And that doesn’t bother me. Or, at least I don’t think it does.

So why do I bring this up? Only because this concept of “belief = truth” permeates more than one’s conception of God. I think that it is not an accident that most followers of Donald Trump or other right wing avatars tend to one or another form of religious fundamentalism. Or that most followers of Donald Trump or other right wing avatars tend to believe that their nation is the best, that it is exceptional and destined to lead the world. These are people who need beliefs to anchor their lives – the belief in a certain God (and acceptance of the presumed program of that God, the belief in the superiority of a certain nation (which just happens to be their nation) and the belief in a certain politician (and acceptance of that politician’s program) are primarily the same phenomenon.

And of course, this is not strictly an American phenomenon – you find it replicated world wide, in the past, the present and undoubtedly in the future. It’s the human condition, turning beliefs into facts, and relying on those facts to control one’s own life and the lives of others.

And so it goes.