Faith and Certainty

A common defense of religious conviction is the use of the conviction itself as a defense.  “It’s part of my faith.”  “I take God’s existence on faith and that’s all I need.”  “At some point you just have to have faith that God exists.”  What does faith mean in a religious conversation and does it differ from what it means in other conversations?

Does faith that gravity will keep you rooted to the earth mean the same thing as faith in the existence of God?  No.  The faith that you won’t fly off the earth is a belief based on the incontrovertible evidence of the effects of gravity.  Because of your knowledge of the laws of gravity and based on experiential evidence that so far, with each step you’ve taken, you’ve not flown off the earth, you are certain that you won’t fly off the earth with your next step.  It’s akin to saying that you have faith that the sun will rise tomorrow morning.  What if the possibility existed, no matter how great the odds, that at some point in your life gravity takes a holiday sending you spinning into space.  If you knew that possibility existed, could you still say that you had faith that you wouldn’t fly off the earth with your next step?  It would be related to saying “The odds that with my next step gravity will take a holiday are so great that I’m not really worried about it.”  Certainly you wouldn’t say that if the odds were 50-50.  Even at the astronomical odds of it happening you might say you have faith that it won’t happen, yet may not be willing to say that you were certain it would.  In this case, the difference between faith and certainty would be the existence of the aberration in the law.  Without the aberration you could be certain.  With the possibility for the aberration, you could still have faith that your next step will be into that mud puddle, but you couldn’t be certain. 

  So, does that mean that certainty and faith are different?  I think clearly they must be.  By most common uses of both words, if you’re certain of something, faith isn’t necessary and if you have faith in something, certainty isn’t possible.  For example, what sense is it to say “I’m certain the sun will set tomorrow, I have faith in it”?  Having faith that the end of the day will happen seems to be a weakening of the certainty that it will—as though you’d never seen a sunset happen and that lack of evidence would throw the certainty into some realm of doubt.  In this use, faith would have some measure of doubt inherent that wouldn’t be there with certainty.

However, some might say that their faith is all the certainty they need, essentially saying that their certainty is grounded in their faith.  This seems to me a rather queer thing to say, but let’s look at the defining phrase, “all the certainty they need.”  This seems to imply that the degree of certainty here is something less than, say, the certainty that your name is what it is.  The certainty allowed by the faith is “good enough for them,” as though there’s good enough certainty, better certainty and best certainty.  That’s understandable.  We all do that sort of probability calculus with certainty all the time.  We often say, “I’m fairly certain that . . .” to mean that the odds of something happening in our estimation are pretty high.  It’s a statement of confidence. 

Is it a misuse of the word “certain”?  Of course not.  Does the certainty in this use mean the same as the certainty that 1+1=2?  Not at all.  We often use the word as a sort of emphasis.  We know the strength of certainty that the addition tables are immutable.  When that lesson is learned it’s a certainty for us.  There can be no doubt.  So when we use the same word in a context in which there could be doubt but we assess the probability that something else may happen as very low, the use of “certain” becomes a signpost for what probability we’ve attached to what we’re talking about.  Once again, though, I don’t believe this is the meaning those of faith would admit to when saying that they are certain in their faith.

In order for their faith in God’s existence to be meaningful, for their certainty that there is a God, those who profess it must believe that their faith and certainty are beyond doubt.  Others may doubt, but for them it is a certainty—no less certain than that the sun will set and that 1+1=2.  This, I’d submit, isn’t false, it’s meaningless. 

First, imagine if I said, “I’m certain that 1+1=2, but John doesn’t believe it.”  Now imagine me saying, “With recent discoveries I’m certain that there’s life on other planets, but John doesn’t believe it.”  Is the first sentence the sort that the theists would say is closest to their certainty in God’s existence?  Does John’s disbelieve make sense?  Not really.  The fact of the matter is that 1+1=2 and for someone to say that John doesn’t believe it is just another way of saying that either John hasn’t learned his addition tables or John is mentally incompetent.  Imagine changing the statement just slightly to “I was certain that 1+1=2, but I don’t believe it now.”  This absolutely doesn’t make sense.  But, if we exchange “1+1=2” with “God exists,” it suddenly becomes very meaningful supported by numerous instances of that very thing happening. 

What’s different?  Obviously something about the nature of the certainty changed.  In the one case, losing certainty made no sense, while in the other, it made perfect sense (passing no judgment on the speaker).  The certainty means something different between these two statements.  What’s different is that in the second statement, “I was certain that God exists, but I don’t believe it now,” the possibility that the essence of the subject could change was inherent in the use of the word “certain.”  In other words, the certainty entailed an embedded probability that was later determined to be inordinately high.  That’s not possible in the former use of “certain” with the addition sample.

The point of all this was to say that when a person says that their faith makes them certain, what they’re really saying is that their faith establishes for them a high probability that what they’re claiming is actually the case.  Inherent in it is the possibility, for them a very low and perhaps unknown probability, that what they’re claiming could be wrong.  It’s an unintended agnosticism.

More to follow.