Sitting in the balcony watching the community choir rehearse for the christmas concert, I estimated that at least a fourth of them are not believers in the story told in the cantata they are performing. All of them are, however, active members of a community, either a church or a town or a college.

A recent article in the Bangor Daily is about a local atheist discussion group, the Downeast Humanists and Freethinkers, and their participation in the Ellsworth christmas parade. Their float tells the ancient history of using evergreens at solstice season. The group is increasing its visibility in community events.

Our friend Kenneth is being shunned by his Amish community because he has announced that he no longer believes in God. His family is fracturing around this development. In one of our book group discussions I pointed out that several of us in the group are inescapably culturally Catholic although non-believers. I asked if it would be possible for him to be culturally Amish and be at peace in his community while quietly thinking his own thoughts.

I have read several studies that show that people in religious communities tend to be more moral and more charitable and that it is the community involvement, not the belief or dogma, that accounts for the behavior. In The Righteous Mind, for example, Jonathan Haidt says "The only thing that was reliably and powerfully associated with the moral benefits of religion was how enmeshed people were in relationships with their co-religionists. It’s the friendships and group activities, carried out within a moral matrix that emphasizes selflessness. That’s what brings out the best in people."

"Group activities carried out within a moral matix" would describe the work of many non-profits working for environmental protection, social justice, food pantries, and general community betterment. The little I know of neuroscience tells me that religion is a hard-wired capability of the human brain, a group survival choice made for us by evolution. Maybe that capability can manifest itself in ways that we don't recognize as religion or may religion itself is evolving.

From a distance, an observor of human societies would find it very hard to know what people believe, but would find it easy to describe their behavior and activity. What people believe or think they believe seems like a faulty predictor of behavior and is often totally incidental to their actual behavior. Belief may be an organizational structure internal to individuals but it is only insofar as it binds them to a community that it has value.

Culture and community trump belief. Moral behavior trumps dogma. Fundamentalism, including atheist fundamentalism, is a mental staight jacket that prevents any conversation or accomodation. And conversation and accomodation is what we need to be about.