reality is in the details

The saying goes that the devil is in the details. But I would add that reality is in the details. This is borne out by day to day existence. By contrast, thoughts can leave out details—in fact this is an essential strategy for sketching out the basic outlines of a complex whole without getting lost partway through. Details cannot be left out forever, though. When thoughts are confronted by the reality of the universe outside one's skull, the overlooked details often take revenge. Hasty plans are ruined. Naive hopes are dashed. Again and again, the details of reality are the tests that eliminate flimsy thoughts. The thoughts that mesh the best with reality keep the details in.

This reasonable and experienced point of view is the opposite of the frequent advice to not "get hung up on the details". Offering that innocent-seeming advice can quickly deflect any question...rather than the ordeal of attempting an answer. Even so, the above comments show why it's inherently flawed. It's not as convincing as intended. For the more that someone is nonchalant about the details of the position they're arguing for, the more they deepen the impression that their position is independent of reality. 

This isn't an insult; it's simply the immediate consequence. Real things have many nonnegotiable details in many categories: characteristics, histories, forms, appearances, patterns, locations, interactions with other things, etc. Furthermore, the thing's details are the exact "handles" for grasping its existence. The different existences (substances) of, say, a marshmallow and a bowling ball, are observed through differing details. The more that details don't matter, the more that the nature of a thing appears to be closer to that of a hazy thought than a solid reality.

(Naturally, there are all sorts of creative and nuanced versions of deities that embrace the quality of being more like human thoughts than real things. In these, "God" isn't an anthropomorphic mind that ponders and takes action. It exists more like an abstract ideal such as Order or Oneness. I'd guess that most who say "don't get hung up on the details" aren't going that route.)

On the other hand, the advice to drop the details could have several pluses. First, it's probably an earnest reflection of how the speaker really treats their own beliefs. It isn't a ploy. It isn't someone pretending that their beliefs are a logically constructed system of propositions. It isn't the pretense that they arrived at their beliefs after carrying out a long intellectual study. Instead, it's what someone would say after they've already decided what to think. When someone is committed to a stance, they don't need to know the details. They've already signed up, so they're uninterested in double-checking the fine print. Unsurprisingly this attitude is far less appealing to someone who isn't using a belief as a basic assumption or granting it "the benefit of the doubt"—when a belief is under the magnifying glass, the full details do make a difference.

The second plus of dropping the details is that it's diplomatic. The fewer details that someone insists on, the easier it is to potentially reach a common ground, and the less hardheaded they appear to be. Yet once more this quality has an inherent flaw. If the details of a real thing can easily be viewed differently by different people, then that thing suspiciously resembles subjective thoughts: preferences, wishes, fantasies. Wording is crucial. To say that a detail can be whatever you like or however you see it is to undercut the objectivity of the thing the detail applies to. If the details of a thing can be poured into people's minds, and the details expand to fill each mind's unique shape, then that thing must not have much of a shape of its own. It's worth remembering that these "details" aren't mere interpretations of a thing but its fundamental attributes.

Admittedly, this result can be dodged with enough imagination. Retreating into paradoxes and mysticism has a long tradition. Religious followers could opt to make themselves very slippery indeed. They may bluntly claim the equal accuracy of many contradictory details. (They may need to do this anyway after they've been forced to harmonize incompatible doctrines.) The key is to propose that a thing is so special that contradictions are united in it: it's too huge or beyond understanding or many-sided. Its form of "realness" is unlike normal realness. It doesn't obey the usual rules. It can't be analyzed or translated into language. This time around, the inherent flaw is so blatant that it hardly needs stating: this level of specialness amounts to the demand to remove the thing from the dangerous realm of logic and debate. The advice to give up on asking a particular question, i.e. not get hung up on the details, mutates into the more drastic advice to give up on the entire mode of thought that the question sprang out of. 

In effect, the suggestion is to compartmentalize the beliefs and apply a lower standard. The scary aspect of this suggestion isn't its strangeness; it's the complete ordinariness of it. Like the brain's cerebral cortex coexisting with the amygdala, the deliberative frame of mind coexists with competing frames of mind that operate along different lines. It consumes more conscious attention and develops at a slower rate. Extracting, collecting, and judging details is harder than accepting a detail-free statement at face value. It's also more intuitive for some personalities than others. These challenges highlight the preciousness of plain details in the search for objective reality. The alternative can't compete: a pile of superficial and/or ambiguous decrees made by authorities who cannot be contested.

The final plus of the advice to drop the details is that it might be a sign of the faint level of loyalty that the religious follower has. And that would be the happiest outcome—from my perspective. If a follower treats their "belief" as nothing more than a creation of their native culture, then of course the details aren't of vital importance to them. (Anthropologists and historians know that putting belief at the center of religious practice isn't a universal or constant social norm anyway.) They may openly state that they pick out the bits that give them inspiration or reassurance and discard the rest. Or they may value their belief purely as raw material for drawing analogies. Given that it doesn't rule them or impair their comprehension, some may cheerily consider themselves quite "secular" otherwise...perhaps to the point of declaring "I'm an atheistic ______ ." Whether they're idly repeating words that mean nothing to them, or undergoing empty rituals to feel connected to their traditions, we de-converted tend to let them be. They might even concede that they too would want the beliefs to firmly stand upon bold details—but only if they were trying to equate the beliefs with realty in the first place!