Paul Davies in the Op Ed Section, p. A31 in the NYTimes this morning put it this way: Belief without evidence is virtuous while skepticism in Science is a professional necessity. Yet, on p. A16 Peter Steinfels reports that Benjamin Kaplan’s examination of historical records on “Toleration” shows that where people lived in earlier times determined what they would believe.  Also, the time in which one lived would help determine if the belief was religious or based on science.

In other words, faith could be religious in origin or derived from the rise of science. Through the centuries you might be caught, tried and burned in fire if you spoke out against the prevailing belief in the part of town, province or country you lived in.  Belief does that to people.  In protesting against non-believers they protect their belief systems.  That could be true either of committed Catholics, Protestants or Jews involved with “God” or Atheists relying on Science.

The problem, as I see it, is that most activists on the part of their beliefs will not really grant toleration to others who differ – some of whom are within their extended family.  It is clear that the notion of toleration came along with the history of the Western world which saw upheaval in Christianity that divided nations and created decades of war because of belief.  It is easy to divide the world today into two states of belief in one God.  The West, based on the Jewish Testament, moved a bit to the right and claimed that the Son of God was equal to God.  That sounded like polytheism to many but made a basic difference in the way God was looked at.  In Catholicism, statues of Jesus, Mary and the Saints centered the faith on the Church while Protestantism eschewed such representations and tried to find a way to set up churches which were based on “method”, or elected leaders.  But all of these efforts led to separatism although belief underscored each separate religious establishment.  The Jews went through the same internal struggle and came up with different ways of observing or ignoring ancient laws.

In the East – stepping aside from evaluating Buddhism and other “Eastern” beliefs – the same process could be seen to occur within the boundaries of the faith established by Mohammad.  Islam is united in belief in one God but the ways in which Allah is venerated are differentiated in the descent from Mohammad into camps dedicated to one or more of his followers and then to some wildly different sects.  Yet, belief saturates each difference and the Billions who follow the worship of One God cannot endure, like the believers in the West, the belief system of Atheists who hold to Science as their religion.  The Catch 22 in this story of historical revisionism and comparative religion is that belief makes warriors out of simplistic thinkers.