Binary religious thinking

[Angrboda]

This is something I've mentioned sporadically, but I think it's worth its own topic.

I've noticed a tendency for some religious theists to have a very binary, black and white approach to various aspects of life and the universe. I'm not accusing every theist of this, and not every person who is guilty of one of them is guilty of all. But there are several extremely common oversimplifications that get made, which I encourage people to think about. I think this happens partly because religion benefits from encouraging people to think this way, and that things appear simpler to deal with when neatly put into two distinct categories. Often, I hear the argument from discomfort; if it isn't this simple and binary, I don't like the consequences of that. That's not a defence, it's an admission that your emotions are running the show in that instance. Things are rarely black and white, we live almost constantly in the grey area, whether people want to admit it or not.

The two process model states that we use distinctly different ways of processing opinions that agree with our pre-existing beliefs than we do with opinions that differ with our beliefs. Thus, if I'm reading an opinion that is in accord with my beliefs, I will use a 'quick' evaluation of the material, usually substituting a simplified version of the point of view I'm reading. If I'm reading something that goes contrary to my beliefs, I may slow down and apply reason and critical thinking to the material in an effort to debunk the positive opinion. In this way, our own opinions will tend to become represented by simplistic models of the subject matter, whereas our criticisms of our opponents will become elaborate and in-depth.

Thus it makes perfect sense that when a theist is representing their own opinion, you may find a simpler, binary representation of it, than if they are presenting their view of the atheist opinion. Since both sides engage in this split-level thinking, it can easily lead to extreme polarization in arguments. Thus we have positions such as, "either my god is true or none are," instead of a more balanced view, or we have "there is no evidence for God," instead of the fairer "there is weak evidence for God."