Just this morning I was given a bit of a new take on religion that doesn't change my mind about its dangers or its wrongness on the god question, but makes me wonder about throwing around the word "irrational" too carelessly.

It's a bit of a winding path, but bear with me.

Okay, so it basically goes like this: humans are genetically predisposed to be social creatures. We are happier when we're a member of a community of some size (even if it's a community of two or three) than when we're not, and so we are constantly trying to find our way into a community and then to solidify our group with language and symbolic behavior.

For example, with language, when we're speaking of groups, we tend to use language that suggests the group is all of a single body or else they are all physically bound together like links in a chain. This is not literally true, but our metaphorical language speaks as if it is. We say that we are joined together, that there are bonds between us, that we are brothers, that we have certain ties.

Observe:

Notice that when speaking of trouble within the group, we speak of the group dissolving or breaking or falling apart, as if it was one big organism or structure instead of an actual group made of individuals.

When it comes to behavior, we have symbols there as well. For example, relatives, friends, and lovers can casually enjoy food off of each other's plates, whereas strangers or strictly professional acquaintances don't enjoy that luxury with one another. They can't do so because they are not perceived as being of the same metaphorical body. (This is most likely one of our animal instincts, since the same behavior has been observed in experiments with animals.) In-group food sharing establishes feelings of closeness, whereas sharing food with an outsider is considered more or less unsanitary. It's not at all surprising that many groups develop solidarity with large feasts or by eating regularly as a community. (What would happen to families spread over long distances if it weren't for all those holidays and the food that accompanies them?!)

Cultures and groups also do this by having certain customs in the ways they dress, wear their hair, and---of course---in certain mutiliations of the body (circumcisions and piercings). This is not just true with cultures or tribes. Consider high school cliques. (The preps and goths may never get along.)

Many cultures also exploit a variety of mechanisms that are known to establish feelings of closeness, such as making individuals go through trials of pain, emotional stress, drug-induced trances, or hunger together.

Given the fact that feelings of solidarity can be established through language, symbolic behavior, and difficult trials, it seems easy to understand how many people feel not only afraid to leave their religion, but extremely guilty about doing so. It feels like being a traitor.

Consider prenuptial agreements. Not all couples make them because, even though it would be a perfectly logical thing to do, they don't feel comfortable doing so, because it forces them to think the very thoughts that they know could endanger the relationship they clearly desire to keep. It might be said that such a reaction is emotional and therefore not logical, but is such a reaction truly irrational?

And we can even take this a step further. Not only have the years of participating in group-solidifying language, symbolic behavior, and perhaps even trials made the person in question feel guilty about abandoning the group, but all the years of treating God as an actual member of that group could perhaps make the person in question feel guilty about turning their back on God, even if they are now convinced that he most likely doesn't exist.

Like cherishing an heirloom left behind by a long dead relative, the person feels like a terrible individual to simply say "all of this is nonsense" and live as if they never felt anything.

Perhaps god belief is illogical, but considering the stinging emotions and cognitive dissonance experienced by a person who tries to tear himself away from an abstract idea to which he's spent years cementing himself, is it maybe too harsh to tell him that he's being irrational? Is behaving as if an heirloom is a remaining piece of a nonexistent person irrational behavior? Are the couple who waive the prenup being entirely irrational? Not very wise, maybe; but irrational?

Even as a formerly religious person who experienced the deconversion awkwardness and ambivalence firsthand, I was never really conscious of all the solidifying strategies religion seems to have in place.

Of course I felt like leaving the religion was betrayal. I had been methodically trained to feel that way!

I guess what I'm saying is, since the emotional and cognitive dissonance has been so ingrained through these solidifying tactics, is it not perhaps careless to throw the word "irrational" around too freely? I understand that some are simply being obtuse, and I wouldn't hesitate to use the word on that kind of person, but maybe a person who simply experiences an intense dissonance---emotional and cognitive---that he can't overcome shouldn't be subjected to the ridicule tactics.

I think I may be more careful in assessing what type of theist I'm dealing with from now on.