3 posts tagged “faith”

I’ve been in a discussion with an online acquaintance about the evolution of God from the beginnings of Judaism to today.  The point I was trying to make was that the God of the Old Testament, the God of Abraham, has changed pretty dramatically over the years so that the God most Christians claim today cannot be the same God. 

An example I was using was the battle of Jericho when God told Joshua how defeat the Canaanites at Jericho.  The Israelites obeyed God’s strategy and when the Jericho walls fell, they killed every man, woman, child and beast (except for a spy and her family).  Following the battle, one of Joshua’s men took some gold and silver from the city, something expressly forbidden by God (I find it rather odd that He would permit the slaughter of every living thing in the city, but not permit the taking of gold or silver).  In retaliation, God permitted the death of 36 Israelites attempting to capture the city of Ai and then directed that the thief be burned to death. 

So I asked my online acquaintance, the following question when he told me that this was, in fact, the same God he now believed in as a “born-again Christian”:

What I'm trying to understand is, given certain facts about the bible, how does someone of faith discuss them?

His response was:

I think that a person of faith has to ultimately realize that there are things beyond our comprehension, to some extent. That's what faith does. It takes what we see as limitations and makes us ponder the bigger picture.

I find that to be an entirely unsatisfactory answer.  It’s as though he’s saying, “Ignorance allows me to believe whatever incongruent and inconsistent notions I want.”  So, my question is, is this an accurate portrayal of faith?  Does faith allow an individual to believe in an incongruent being with no hint of doubt in that being?

I had a comment on my Faith and Certainty entry that was essentially, instead of “I have faith that X,” try “I act as though X is true.”  For the observer, and we all are, the indications that someone has faith in one thing or another is found in how they act.  A person’s thoughts are only meaningful to others when they are observed though the thinker’s actions. 

This would seem to be an effective way of translating a very private thing into something that would be meaningful to the external observer.  I can place my spare change on the dresser which is an act as though gravity is true and won’t allow the quarters and pennies to float away, and it could be said that my action was an indication of my faith that certain things will happen due to gravity.  Or I can set my alarm in anticipation of the sun rising the next morning and that’s an act as though the earth spinning on its axis is true.  I guess that could be translated to “I set the alarm having faith that the sun will rise tomorrow.” 

But, is ‘acting as though X is true’ necessarily the same as ‘having faith that X?’  When I put my change on the dresser would anyone really say that that action indicated faith in gravity?  If I were a dunce and had no knowledge of gravity, would I act any differently?  Probably not, and this would mean that acting doesn’t necessarily indicate faith.  And does faith necessarily result in acting a certain way?  I don’t think so.  Someone can proclaim profound faith and their actions wouldn’t reveal that faith in any way.  For instance, there are those who claim faith in a young earth based on a literal understanding of the bible.  Except for their statement that they have this faith, you may never realize it in their actions.  It would be difficult to imagine someone saying, “they act as though the earth is 6,000 years old is true.”  What would acting like that be like?  Yet, we can’t deny that these adherents of a young earth have faith in the bible being the literal word of God.

All this gets to is that in at least some cases, having faith and acting as though something is true aren’t necessarily the same.  We can talk about faith and it means something different, even if only slightly, than observing someone’s action.

What about language?  Can the use of language be considered an “act as though something is true?”  Certainly.  This may be the only way that we know that a young earth adherent believes in the literal truth of the bible.  They are, in fact, very vehement in their assertions regarding the truthfulness of the bible and falsity of reported scientific findings.  So, yes, their act of linguistic vehemence could be an indicator of their faith.  But now we get into a quandary of people acting as though any number of things is true.  After all, people can say or write just about anything and claim it to be true.  How would we treat statements of con artists and swindlers?  I don’t think those with religious faith will admit their belief is as easily pliable as that.

Let’s replace X with a religious concept and see what that gives us. 

1.  Tom has faith that God created heaven and earth in six days. 

2.  Tom acts as though God created heaven and earth in six days is true.

For me, statement 2 is rather tough to imagine. What would acting in that way look like?  Or how about these statements:

3.  Tom has faith that God exists.

4.  Tom acts as though God’s existence is true.

Again, I’m not sure what the action in statement 4 would look like.  Going to church?  What if Tom is an agnostic who accompanies his faithful wife to church and goes through all the same actions that she does in church to keep her happy?  He may act as though God’s existence is true (because he’s a considerate husband), but we can’t say that’s his faith.

So, where have we gotten?  I think we can say that how a person acts is a good indicator of their faith . . . but not the sole indicator.  I think the whole point of the comment was that so called mental states are only meaningful to others when they're indicated by action. While I agree most of the time, I think one can equate what's being said about a mental state with one's own private experiences or reports of other people's mental states that makes what's being said about a private mental state meaningful. For instance, it's perfectly meaningful to me when you say "I believe in God" even though your actions could mean any number of things including that you believe in God. And understanding that you believe in God doesn't necessarily mean that I expect you to act in a certain way. I don't have a problem that you're making an observation of a private mental state and I understand it to be such. My concern is this--what is the nature of that private mental state and how does it compare to other private mental states, such as certainty that 1+1=2.

Wittgenstein would roll over in his grave. 

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.