By making such a sharp distinction between belief and religion, I am of course obliged to explain why and how I do so. Readers of The Religious Case Against Belief who are also familiar with my book, Finite and Infinite Games, will suspect that I am putting religion under the category of an infinite game. Their suspicion is correct, with several qualifications.

First, a comment about the two kinds of play. The basic distinction is that some games are played to be won (finite) and some to continue the play (infinite).

Briefly, finite games are meant to come to a definitive end with all players in agreement as to who has won the contest. This requires a consensual decision on the part of all participants—before the game begins—as to the rules of the particular game in question. Important: this must be a free decision; thus the principle, who plays, plays freely. That is, anyone forced to play is not truly playing, only acting out the game as though they were.

Infinite games, on the other hand, are entered into just as freely, but the agreement at the beginning is that the rules of play must be altered in course to guarantee that no participants lose. Thus it is that finite players play by the rules, and infinite players play with the rules.

It should be obvious, of course, that I am using game as a metaphor. The issue here is not how we play in a trivial, or “playful,” sense only, but how we engage in life itself with its myriad variations and challenges.

Finite games can be found all about us. They take an endless variety of forms—international, ethnic, economic, political, societal, sexual. They are for the most part visible and obvious. At any given moment each of us will be players in more than one, and perhaps in many, competitive situations.

But how visible is an infinite game? Readers have often asked for an example. I do not offer one in the book, saying only that a perfect infinite game does not exist. Can we say that some games come closer to infinite play than others? We can, but only if we use continuity as the distinguishing characteristic. A perfect infinite game, were one to exist, would of course have no ending, no final move, no complete score, no winners or losers. Short of this, our interest should be in how some traditions come nearer to this elusive goal than others.

When we search history for examples, nothing comes remotely close to the continuity of the great religions. Judaism and Hinduism can be traced back 4000 years, Buddhism 2400, Christianity 2000, Islam 1400. This is not to say that each of them has not undergone major changes along the way, but the determinative fact is that they have maintained a singular identity over the centuries. Hinduism and Buddhism coexisted in India for a millennium; Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have lived in each other’s presence in Europe and Central Asia from the 8th century to the present. There is some influence from one to the other, but never have they mixed to any transforming degree. Therefore, they must possess enormous resources for sustaining the vitality of their unique identities against repeated challenges, many of them extreme (the Crusades, for example, or the Holocaust.)

If religion is to be understood as an infinite, though still imperfect, game, how are we to understand belief in contrast? In the previous note I argued that belief, to be vital, needs the opposing beliefs of others. An essential element of belief is therefore the need to eliminate nonbelief. Normally one comes to a belief system by conviction or conversion—both entailing a victory over falsehood, whether that of another or one’s own. Believing, then, can be thought of as a strategy for winning. It is important to note that the great religions have not survived because of their power over competitors—not as though they haven’t occasionally tried. It must therefore be that power is not a feature of religion at its core. What we find instead is a remarkable capacity in any given religion to accept the enduring identity of other religions even as they affirm their own. For this reason they can, and do, profit from each other’s great artistic and intellectual treasures.

One of the great disadvantages of belief systems is that they have typically short lives. They either lose out to another, or they lose their appeal to their own participants. Two of the most powerful and destructive belief systems in human history are Nazism and Marxism (especially in its Soviet and Maoist varieties). Soviet marxism lasted a scarce seven decades, Nazism but twelve years.

When religions begin to see the source of their vitality as a (finite) struggle with one or more alternative belief systems, they are quickly diminished. By initiating the Crusades against the Saracens, Christianity all but destroyed itself, irrespective of its victories and defeats on the battlefield. What typically occurs in such competitive expressions of power is that each side begins to take shape as a political entity and to lose its deeper religious resonance. The hostile encounter of Islamic and Western nations over the recent decades has led both Muslims and Christians to confuse religion with the political order—whether that be empire (Rome), tyranny (Nazi Germany), or republic (US). Many Muslims dream of a unified caliphate, or a kind of Islamic monarchy. Many Americans, on the other hand, have come to think of their country as a Christian nation. Each way of thinking and acting places both religions in acute peril. Part of the genius of the great religions is that they can thrive in every sort of state and culture, free of identifying with anything beyond themselves. When belief is confused with citizenship, havoc is sure to follow. Both take on an absolutism that no religion would claim for itself.

(Comments? Email me: james@jamescarse.com)