About (not) being religious about something

I think I have discovered an interesting asymmetry in relation to the expressions ‘being religious about’ and ‘not being religious about’:

The positive variant, such as ‘Ann is religious about her garden’, means that Ann is very careful and conscientious about it because it is very important to her. In contrast, the negative variant, such as ‘Bill is not religious about Linux’, means that although Bill thinks Linux a terrific operating system, he is not dogmatic in his attitude; he agrees it is in principle possible to convince him there is a better one (even if he does not consider this a likely scenario).*

But whereas ‘being religious about’ can sometimes mean ‘being dogmatic about’ (instead of ‘being conscientious about’), ‘not being religious about’ only means ‘not being dogmatic’ and not ‘not being conscientious about’ (on the contrary, stating that one is not being religious about something is actually a way of saying it is highly important).

So there is a difference in sense between ‘being religious about’ and ‘~ not being religious about’, and I think this difference reveals something interesting about the way religion is normally conceived: namely that religious beliefs are regarded as sort of ‘immune’. The idea is that religious beliefs are assumed not to yield, even to what appears to be a far superior argument (and maybe also that the believer is fully aware of this and possibly considers it a mark of distinction).

If I am right, this shows that the ordinary way of seeing religion goes against the common philosophical misconception that religious beliefs are a purely intellectual matter.


* Note that only the negative variant is viable in Danish.