Is Religion Really About God? - National Logistics Post

This article is adapted from the author’s new book, Pandemic of Lunacy: How to Think Clearly When Everyone Around You Seems Crazy, published by Creed and Culture. In the book, “Religion Does Not Concern the Truth About God” is Lunacy No. 26 of 30.

Religion … is the opium of the people.

— Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right

What’s so bad about some opiates, anyway?

— Stephen T. Asma, Why We Need Religion

One day, an acquaintance praised a certain writer’s view of God as a “really neat theology.” I thought she meant that the writer’s view captured something true about God, or perhaps a reason for believing in Him, and I asked her what it was.

She was taken aback by my question, and also somewhat amused. Whether the writer’s view contained anything true had nothing to do with her attraction to it. What drew her wasn’t that it expressed a striking truth, or even a striking claim about truth, but just that it was striking. Her view seemed to be that although God may seem to be what religion is about, religion is really about something else.

This article is from The American Spectator’s summer 2026 print magazine. Subscribe to The American Spectator to receive the magazine.

This view is widespread. For instance, some think religion only seems to be about God, but is really about comfort. It doesn’t have to be true to be comforting. All it has to do is take us to our “happy place.” You see the problems. No one is comforted by a religion he thinks false. Besides, even if someone does think it true, if it isn’t true then his solace is a fraud. Many who don’t believe in God pray when endangered. Do they do so because suddenly they believe He exists? More likely, danger makes them realize that they hope He does.

Others think religion only seems to be about God, but is really about making people good. My host at a visit to speak at a religious school asked me why neither Catholic nor Protestant Christians considered his religion Christian. I said I thought the reason was that what his religion taught about the nature of God, the nature of man, and the nature of the relationship between them was opposed to what Christianity claims. His taught that the universe is eternal and that God came into existence in time; Christianity, that God is eternal and created the universe. His, that man is what God once was; Christianity, that man is God’s creation. His, that man can be good solely by his own efforts; Christianity, that fallen man’s repair requires the help of God’s grace.

He answered that he and the other members of his religion did believe these things — but that they didn’t think these beliefs very important. All that really matters is whether a person is virtuous. He didn’t realize that “What you believe about God doesn’t matter” is a belief about God. It supposes that if there is a God, He doesn’t care about our attitude toward Him, but cares only about whether we are virtuous. And it supposes that He takes the same view we do of just how splendidly virtuous we are.

Or perhaps religion only seems to be about God, but is really about making people compliant citizens. The U.S. Constitution’s Establishment Clause prohibits setting up an official church, yet we publicly propound mottoes which look religious. “In God We Trust,” say our coins, and the Pledge of Allegiance proclaims that we are a nation “under” God, not equal to Him. Aren’t these about God? In 1984, several Supreme Court justices said “No.” They held that such mottoes don’t violate the Establishment Clause because they have nothing to do with belief. They are purely “ceremonial,” and have “lost through rote repetition any significant religious content.” Yet, they said, such mottoes are useful for solemnizing public occasions, encouraging hope, and “inspiring commitment to meet some national challenge.” I agree that they don’t violate the Establishment Clause, but the claim that they don’t express belief in God is nonsense. For if they don’t, how can they have the power to inspire commitment? Between the lines, these jurists seemed to be saying that the Constitution allows our public officials to express religious beliefs in order to manipulate citizens who believe them, because the officials themselves don’t believe them.

Then again, perhaps religion seems to be about God, but is really about beautiful and moving music and ritual. This was the view of an atheistic colleague who described himself as an “aesthetic Episcopalian,” but I wonder. The Kyrie Eleison chant — “Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy” — is moving if you really are imploring God’s mercy. Otherwise it might as well be “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” which is clever but hardly moving. If the chant doesn’t express belief in God, then from whom are we asking mercy? “We don’t have to believe in God to enjoy the music!” Then why that music? For a few generations, people may enjoy Handel’s Messiah without believing in a Messiah, but the complexity of the music was sustained by beliefs which gave reasons for learning to appreciate it. The next generation may find that the Sex Pistols provide all the melody and rhythm they need.

My most revealing encounter with the view that religion isn’t about God but is really about music, ritual, and feelings took place at a conversation at a conference, with a man I will call Standish Wanhope.

At the first conference dinner, his conversational opening was a little surreal. “Hello. I’m Standish Wanhope. I’m an atheist.” He was like a friendly but aggressive dog, marking the boundaries of his verbal territory every few seconds. I quickly learned that he claimed to base his ethical philosophy on Darwin, that he had taught at a Catholic college, and that he “had fun ruining all the Catholic kids.” I assure you that I’m not making this up.

Picking up on his comment about Darwinism, I asked Standish what he thought of the arguments for intelligent design. He admitted he hadn’t read them, but proceeded to lecture me about why they were wrong, and recommended what he said was a good critique.

At the closing conference dinner, after a few glasses of wine — perhaps more than a few — Standish seemed another person. I had to smile; you couldn’t dislike him, though it wasn’t clear how the two versions of him fit together. Remembering the Roman saying “In wine is truth,” I was inclined to believe more in this version of Standish than in the other.

With characteristic directness, Standish asked those at our end of the table to tell him our various religious affiliations. We told him. Settling himself in his seat, he exclaimed, “I’m very religious.” He explained that he had fond memories of the old-fashioned denomination to which he had belonged as a child. He had fallen away in his teens, he said, because he couldn’t find a reason to believe in God. In a mellow and teacherly voice, declaiming as though he were a stage actor, he said, “I have a deep, rich secular humanism. I’m oh-so-wonderfully satisfied with it.”

Since some of those at the table were churchgoers, he asked a little later, “What do you think of the new religious music? To me it’s just watered-down Simon and Garfunkel. Give me the fine old traditional hymns any day.”

“Where do you hear the new music?” I asked.

“Why, in churches.”

“So you visit churches sometimes.”

“Yes. But isn’t the new music awful?”

“I’d find a steady diet of it difficult. What music do you prefer?”

“You know — great old songs like ‘Rise Up, O Men of God.’”

“Yes, that sticks to your ribs. What do you like about it?”

“It stirs you up. Makes you want to stand and be counted.”

“But for a cause in which you don’t believe.”

“I told you that I was religious.”

“But you don’t believe in the religion.”

“You aren’t understanding me,” he said. “Let me tell you. My elderly aunt is a person of deep faith. What a great lady. I still visit her sometimes. It’s a moving experience. When I’m with her and she speaks about the Lord, I say, ‘I believe.’”

“But you don’t believe.”

“When I’m with her, I do.”

“Then why not when you’re not with her?”

“Because I have no rational basis for belief. It’s feelings. Feelings aren’t knowledge.”

“Like your feelings about old hymns.”

“Yes. I miss them terribly.” He said sometimes he sang with a church choir, and was thinking of joining it, or perhaps he already had.

“You would join a church choir without joining the church?”

“Yes,” he said. “Just to be able to sing them again.”

Just to be able to sing them, I reflected. Just to be able to sing them again. Just to be able to sing them as though they were true.

Standish thought religion isn’t really about God, but only about feelings. But one couldn’t help but believe that whatever he thought, his feelings were really about God.

J. Budziszewski, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, is widely read on the topics of the natural moral law, happiness, family, faith, and the unraveling of our common culture.

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