Strange email

[simont]

I had an odd email this weekend. Someone mailed me about a couple of minor points on my website, and then added at the end of the message that he found it curious that I hadn't written anything about religion. He said, in particular, that he thought knowing something about what I believed in that area might, in his words, ‘shed some light on an important aspect of [my] personality’.

Well, I was willing enough to answer his question in private email. It's true that I've never bothered to mention on my main website that I'm an atheist, but that's not out of any strong feeling that it's Nobody Else's Business; partly it's because I'd expect any such mention to attract too much email flamage to be worth the trouble, but mostly I've just never felt that I had anything particularly interesting or original to say on the subject. (And if I did, it would more likely be a vague musing to mention in passing in this diary, rather than something to publish on my permanent website as a Serious Essay intended to attract ongoing widespread interest.)

But it struck me as particularly strange that someone might feel their understanding of me as a person was noticeably incomplete without knowing my religion. I mean, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find there are people whose religion is responsible for significant aspects of their personality (e.g. if their personality changed noticeably when they converted). And I certainly know there are people who at least believe their religion is the most important thing about them: I occasionally come across LJ bios saying faintly nauseating things like ‘The most important fact about me is that I love God’, or ‘I'm a Fooist, and once you know that, you know everything you need to about me’. (My general feeling tends to be that if they say everything else about them is even less interesting than their religion, I'm willing to take their word for it.)

But it's always seemed to me that such people are a small minority: for the most part I wouldn't have said there was any particularly noticeable divide of personality between the various theists and atheists I know. So when I meet somebody new, I've never felt a particular need to know about their religion, beyond finding out whether or not they're the sort of person who makes an overwhelmingly big deal of it. Sometimes I've managed to know people for years before finding out that they've been a devout Fooist all along and I'd never known – and once I've blinked a couple of times, it generally alters my attitude to them not one jot.

Am I unusual in this? Does anyone else round here feel that their understanding of someone's personality is necessarily (or even usually) incomplete without some knowledge of their attitude to religion?

Comments

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Was this somebody you know, or a random stranger?

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

I think I agree with you. I don't generally care what religion or belief someone follows as long as they're a good and interesting person. Obviously I don't think religion is a taboo subject not to be talked about at the dinner table (I wouldn't work where I do if so!), but as long as someone's not claiming to be better than me simply because they have 'faith' in the existence and/or benevolent guidance of a particular god or gods, I have no gripes.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I agree I would hope it's not the overwhelmingly only aspect of you, but on the other hand, it's one of the things I would naturally expect to know about someone I thought I knew well. It probably tells you about their general beliefs, and is the sort of thing that would come up.

To me, the very strange thing is why he did expect to know anything about your personality. Your website is, surely, to talk about interesting things. If you read it, you may learn something about who you are as a software designer and a little about who you are as a mathematician. Why should anyone need to know anything about you personally, unless you happen to feel you want to talk about it?

[uisgebeatha.livejournal.com]

Personally, I've always thought wanting to know someone's religion or political leanings smacks of rudeness, and is the sort of conversation which if started by a stranger, I walk away from. But I realise that's a minority view...;)

[the-alchemist.livejournal.com]

Am I unusual in this? Does anyone else round here feel that their understanding of someone's personality is necessarily (or even usually) incomplete without some knowledge of their attitude to religion?

I think I feel something like that. I will have a go at explaining why, but it might not make much sense.

If you look for evidence for the existence of God there isn't really any, and I think that how you deal with that fact forms a major part of your personality. Accordingly, I divide people into three groups:

1) People who disagree with that (in my opinion, these people are mistaken, so I tend to see them as not being very good at thinking, or not having bothered to have thought about it very much).
2) People who accept this as a fact and do not see any reason to go beyond it, so call themselves atheists (or agnostics if they want to emphasize the fact that if any evidence did turn up they'd be open to hearing about it)
3) People who think one's approach to God needs to be radically different from one's approach to finding out about phenomena that exist in the universe, so think it's true but at least partially irrelevant that there's no convincing evidence for God's existance.

I divide 3 into 3a (people to whom this comes naturally, who are a bit like 1s) and 3b (people for whom this is a struggle, who are a bit like 2s).

[Edit: when I think about it, perhaps there's also a 1a and a 1b: 1as think there's evidence they can communicate to other people which makes it significantly more likely than not that God exists; 1bs think their personal experience of God makes it more likely than not that he exists, but acknowledge there's no reason why anyone else should believe on this basis.]

I'm a 3b, so feel an affinity towards other 3bs. I like and admire 3as and sort of want to learn from them and be like them, but also worry that they're woolly thinkers and no different from 1s, who I rather look down on sometimes, though I'm comfortable about talking about religion with them and indeed find it relaxing and refreshing and delightful [particularly if they're 1bs]. Most of my close friends are 2s, and I like them, and feel an affinity towards them, but sometimes feel uncomfortable discussing religion with them.

More relevantly to your post, I think that which line you take has an effect on the way you see the entire world, which is why I think it's an important part of 'personality'. Though more strictly, perhaps I'm really talking about peoples' attitude towards reason (which will lead to particular religious beliefs) as the thing that's important to personality, but asking questions about religion is quite a good shortcut to finding out what that attitude is, since not everyone thinks within the same terms of reference.

[Disclaimer: I currently think this is the way I see things, but I did just make the tripartite division up off the top of my head, and might find I don't think like that tomorrow.]

[ptc24.livejournal.com]

Does anyone else round here feel that their understanding of someone's personality is necessarily (or even usually) incomplete without some knowledge of their attitude to religion?

ObPedant: Yes. In that my knowledge of anyone's personality, even my own, is invariably incomplete, inconsistent and full of mistakes. Therefore it is trivially true that if I don't know someone's religion, I don't fully understand them.

That said, knowing someone's religion adds surprisingly little to my understanding of them. The way they approach their religion, maybe, but the datum that goes on the census form is surprisingly uninformative.

[hilarityallen.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't nesc. make a big fuss about knowing it. However, if you know that someone is a strict Jew or a strict Muslim, then you already know a useful set of things about them, namely, that having a dinner party and serving them meat is problematic, and that you needn't offer your Muslim guest your Chateau Yquem wine. For most intelligent people, there will be areas where their opinions differ from the hard line laid down by their faith, so you don't actually know all about them, just because you know they are a Fooist. (For those that say Fooism is the most interesting thing about them, then you probably do know all their opinions on certain subjects, because they are probably strict Fooists and haven't bothered to make their own opinions.)

[liv]

Having been subjected to a lot of them in my time, I'm pretty sure that's a standard evangelistic opening gambit, not a sincere request. It's the missionary equivalent of asking someone, so, do you come here often? You don't care whether they come here often, you just want to get them talking so you can present your brilliantly persuasive argument why they should sleep with you.

I think that religion is an interesting thing about people who are intensely religious, and indeed can be an interesting thing about committed atheists. But any consuming passion is interesting; there are plenty of people who don't have religious or anti-religious beliefs at the core of their identity, so I wouldn't assume it was something I always need to know.

[darcydodo]

I think more that when I find out that religion plays a major role in someone's life, then it potentially alters my understanding of their personality. Probably because most of my friends are either a-religious or anti-religious — but that's my standard assumption, therefore, when I meet anyone at all, even though I don't actually think about it. So finding out that someone's devoutly X doesn't necessarily change my attitude towards them, but it does reveal a facet of them that I've been missing.

So I'm not sure that this is actually any different from your own reaction. :)