“Belief” vs. “belief”
A “belief” (as opposed to a “Belief”) is something that fits into our day-to-day conceptualization of reality, but is incongruent with—or unimportant to—our metaphysical, logical, or theological framework.
Many cultures have “beliefs” that they don’t “Believe.” Consider the common Catholic belief in Saints as real individual spirits who assume roles similar to local or domain-specific deities in older pagan worldviews. This interpretation of saints is not canonical to the Catholic tradition and if you push Catholics on whether or not they really truly “Believe” in this interpretation of the role of Saints, they will often say “no.” However, many Catholics do casually, on a day-to-day basis, “believe” in saints like this and probably have some theory as to how this belief is compatible with their larger theology and metaphysical framework.
Consider also the “belief” in guardian angels (which one poll found 55% of Americans to “believe”).[[109]](#_ftn109) While some Evangelical Protestant cultures really “Believe” in guardian angels (that every human has an angel assigned to them), this is not well attested as a concept in the Bible. Hence, many others “believe” in guardian angels but would pull back down from the position if pushed to defend it in a formal debate.
The penultimate example of a “belief” many Americans have held in their lives can be seen with the tail end of belief in Santa. If you grew up in a household that presented Santa as a real figure, you likely spent a portion of your childhood knowing that Santa’s existence as a physical, magical being was doubtful. But why risk giving up faith entirely so long as the presents kept rolling in each Christmas?
These “beliefs” allow a culture to hold a framing device about the world without having to logically justify it within their wider metaphysical framework of reality. There is nontrivial utility in “beliefs”—enough to justify them despite their logical shortcomings. In fact, we are building many “beliefs” into our intentionally constructed family culture. For example, we intentionally developed a “belief” that we are protected by “Future Police.” Whenever something seems to have gone wrong, we just tell each other it was the Future Police teaching us a lesson or correcting a sequence of events to solidify a future that must come to pass. People laugh because, on its surface, this is little different than a “belief” in guardian angels, which stands in stark contrast to our hyper-logical public reputations.
The Future Police emerged first as a psychological technique that I, Malcolm, used to frame negative events in a positive context. I found that I was strictly better off assuming that anytime I was stressing over a negative event, the undesired turn of events was ultimately for the best and I really ought to be studying the event to glean useful lessons and identify meaningful opportunities. However, over time—as happens with many “beliefs”—my Future Police analysis became more ingrained in our family’s metaphysical worldview (this is the biggest danger of “beliefs”).
It has become harder and harder in our family to disbelieve the Future Police. It feels too improbable to us that mere chance has caused something genuinely good, either for ourselves or others, to ultimately come out of every personal setback or tragedy we’ve suffered. Life strains credulity. Probabilistically, it has come to feel impossible to us that such an unlikely series of “tragedies” would position us so perfectly to have the specific impact on human history we feel we need to have (if you want specific examples, see: “Tragedy as a Source of Opportunity” on page 727 of the Appendix).
Our experience with the Future Police belief exemplifies how an informal belief can become reinforced over time through confirmation bias. If you look into the past, you can create a “just-so story” to collect data points that build initial “evidence.” Then, as you begin to connect your belief with outcomes it seemingly predicted (conveniently ignoring outcomes not predicted by your belief), part of you starts asking if this crazy little idea might have some merit.
Are there really Future Police guiding our lives toward some specific outcome? Probably not, but accepting the truism that there must be a purpose and opportunity behind otherwise trying events has led us to recognize opportunities at difficult junctures and approach hard times with optimism. Even if the belief is silly, it seems self-destructive to drop it—so why not lean in?
Moreover, how we frame Future Police has become more “theologically sophisticated” over time, making our belief in them seem less insane given our other assumptions about how the universe works. In a million years, our descendants might be closer to the way we would conceptualize a God than a human. When a person hears the term “Future Police,” they think of human-looking beings wearing futuristic armor,[[110]](#_ftn110) but in reality, the god-like powers our distant descendants may come to exert on the past may be so advanced that to us, they’ll be indistinguishable from “magic.” Instead of literally time traveling, maybe such an entity is just manipulating the probability of quantum events at a macro scale, leading to different cognitive outcomes in humans.[[111]](#_ftn111)
Maybe “we” (Simone and I) don’t specifically matter, and distant future generations are really just manipulating subtle quantum events that, on the macro scale, ensure our family serves some specific, predestined function for our species. Perhaps the only reason those events “target” us at the macro scale is because we are willing to assume roles that other “candidate” families are unlikely to accept. Maybe the way to “curry favor” with the Future Police is to have a very strict, predictable, and specific moral code, signaling one’s utility as a useful pawn in their larger plans.
If you assume that in 10 million years humanity (or our technological descendants) will become something closer to our conception of a God than a human, and if you believe, as we do, that future events happen concurrently to present events and that a linear flow of time is an illusion created by the way our consciousness works, then the whole framework becomes a lot less crazy.
In the famous “double slit experiment,” we learn that a single proton can bounce off its own probability wave. Maybe our God-like descendants exist as something akin to probability waves and manipulate the present to manifest the futures in which they exist. If probabilistic futures exist in some way, a future that features God-like entities could have enough power to manifest itself by influencing the present.
An argument for such a scenario could go: Is it possible for a god-like entity (one powerful enough to manipulate the fabric of reality) to become real at some point in the future? Is it possible that such an entity could be so powerful it could subtly manipulate events across time? If both of those things are true, then such an entity must exist within some probable future and is in the process of manifesting itself. Of course, the problem with this proof is that it relies on physics working in a way it may not—but what is cool is it is also provable. If it turns out that future events can systematically alter past events to increase their own probability of occurring, then this timeless deity becomes the Inevitable God.
We are, however, not committed to this theory. For example, maybe multiple future probabilistic outcomes are in competition, or maybe forces in specific negative future potentialities are working to prevent their existence.
As stupid as the idea of Future Police may be, a part of us very seriously believes in them. This framework has served us well, and we hope to pass it down to our kids by incorporating the concept of Future Police into family traditions. (Yes, we are well aware that our concept is reminiscent of a weird, benevolent version of Roko’s Basilisk.[[112]](#_ftn112))
Future Police, as a family tradition, are also useful in conveying more complex concepts exemplifying our Secular Calvinist cultural framework (such as predestination, the future that must come to pass, and the Elect) in ways that a child can easily understand. For example, it is easy to explain to a kid why the Future Police have no motivation to protect an individual who lives only for themselves or their immediate community instead of the future of the species and their family. The concept of Future Police can be used to teach kids to constantly consider how their actions impact humanity in both the near and distant future.
Future Police also allow for fun family holiday traditions. For example, at the beginning of each year, our family has a celebration in which we combine common New Year’s traditions (such as making commitments to the future) with Future Police motifs, encouraging our kids to “prove their dedication to the future” to these distant descendants to curry their favor and secure gifts and privileges.
Having recognized the tactical value of “beliefs”—both in augmenting everyday life and in imparting cultural values and religious theology to younger generations—we imagine several Index families will come up with competing secular theological perspectives and look forward to learning about these traditions.