Why do we have to believe in a Supreme Being?

[What follows is my own personal opinion, and may not be shared by my Lodge, Chapter or Valley, much less any of the broader jurisdictions in which they reside.]

There have been many answers to this question over the years, and you may have already heard some of them: that the obligation would be meaningless and non-binding for an atheist; that our ceremonies are in deference to deity and this would be uncomfortable for an atheist; etc.

But these all ring a bit hollow to me. We swear in judges and politicians who are atheists and Unitarian churches often have atheists in their congregations, attending services that are very deferential to deity. So, is the whole thing nonsense? Should we drop that requirement? Well, no.

There are two reasons that I consider most important that we require men to believe:

1. It's one of the Landmarks, and our system of regularity depends on universally supporting those Landmarks. We can't change them in one nation without losing recognition from all of the others, and belief in a Supreme Being is a pretty major item on that list.
2. The degrees are, as I've only realized in the past 6 months or so, far more condensed than most freshly minted Master Masons realize. They depend for the conveyance of key points on the exact conditions under which they are conveyed. If you read the degrees in a book, they would not convey the same information because you are a part of their presentation. They also depend on certain ideas being already present: a willingness to seek your own better self; a belief in a Supreme Being; the entire baggage of the male psyche; etc.

So, why don't we just rewrite the degrees and agree on the new version with all of the other Grand Lodges? Who do you know who's capable of such a thing? Is it even possible to convey the same ideas and subtle context in another way? Is there any way to get every Grand Lodge in the world to agree to such changes even if they were possible? My inclination is to say, "no" on all of those points.

And that is why one must believe in a Supreme Being in order to become a Freemason. We aren't just a social club. We perform a specific task and in order to perform it, we need our candidates to be ready to perform it with us. In other words, we are not a religion, but our ceremonies are religious, and that's not just a matter of paying lip-service, it is integral to the process of initiation.