A noble lie?

Ross Douthat, author of just published Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious, on those who would promote belief for the wrong reason:

There is, however, a different kind of relationship to religion that does deserve critique. This is the category of person who likes religious ideas when other people believe in them, who wants religion to exist for its civilization-shaping qualities without personally accepting any of its impositions, who draws pleasure from what the late Richard John Neuhaus called “regretful unbelief,” who only really believes in belief.

This is a special temptation for the intellectual. Think of the sociologist who has a thousand data points proving the advantages of joining and belonging and practicing a faith tradition, and an indifferent attitude to the tradition’s truth. The psychologist who stands ready with a thousand fascinating mythic readings of the Old or New Testament but dances away whenever he’s challenged about whether the events in question actually took place. The self-proclaimed “cultural Christian,” whether of the Elon Musk or the Richard Dawkins school, who loves some aspect of the Western inheritance and fears some dark post-Western future—but not enough to actually embrace the West’s metaphysical foundations. The political philosopher with many religious friends and allies in front of whom he would never explicitly use the term “noble lie,” even though you know he’s thinking it.

This tendency is especially suited to eras like our own, when the pendulum has swung away from militant atheism and toward some recognition that religion might be useful for society after all, though it takes somewhat different forms on the right and on the left.

The right-wing believer-in-belief will often defend the most traditionalist and fundamentalist forms of faith—though he would never be caught dead sharing their literalist or supernaturalist premises—because he likes how those forms shape culture and politics. ....

We (the religious) like being liked, we appreciate being appreciated, and belief-in-belief provides a useful language to translate between the strangeness of some of our convictions and the world of secular priorities and routines. To talk about faith’s benefits rather than its truth claims. To promise therapeutic advantages when talk of heaven seems embarrassing. To remain in the natural and material and psychological because that way you don’t lose anyone by mentioning the Devil. ....

...[M]y new book is a deliberate attempt to leave this kind of halfway argument behind, and to persuade readers to accept religious ideas on their own terms—to transcend the merely sociological and talk directly about why there’s probably a real God with actual demands and expectations, a real supernatural realm that plays some role in human life and history, and yes, a real heaven and a risk of hell. .... (more)

2/17 I've changed the title of this post to more accurately suggest its subject. 

Ross Douthat, "Everyone Should Believe in God," The Free Press, Feb. 16, 2025.