What is belief?
This is part four in a series I promised you a month ago. It’s a good time to be talking about belief, since the many religious holidays occurring in December remind us that people may understand “belief” differently from group to group.
There are a few questions that we can ask when trying to understand religious belief (often termed “faith”). First, what is belief? Second, what is the role of belief in religion? Third, what is the ethical and/or epistemic responsibility of the believer? Below are a few statements commonly heard around Christmastime:
“I believe that a man named Jesus was born in Galilee or Bethlehem several thousand years ago.”
“I believe that Jesus was the son of God, come to save us from our sins.”
“I believe that the Christmas story is a helpful myth, but not historical.”
“I believe that Jesus has saved me.”
“I believe that God exists.”
What do these have in common?
We’ll come back to these examples, but first, What is belief? I’ll point you to the ever-helpful Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s entry on the term, but not go any further into the complexities of representationalism, justified true beliefs, etc. Take a look at it if you’re interested.
Pretty much, we can say that a belief is a stance or an attitude that human beings* take towards a proposition, i.e. that it is true. Generally, if I start a sentence with “I believe”, you are within your rights in assuming that I consider what follows to be true.
In what ways can the sentences above be understood as “true”? Do they all have true/false valuations? Some philosophers, like the logical positivists, would argue that these terms don’t point to anything in the world that can make them true or false, except for the first sentence.
What does this attitude have to do with religion? One way of looking at religions is that they are aggregates of believed statements, purportedly true, which have built up cultural and social rituals and dimensions over time. Thus belief in these statements is a central requirement for the practitioner of any religion. But just how much does someone need to believe in order to be within a given tradition?
The early Christian church, for example, during the years immediately following Jesus’ death may or may not have believed in substitutionary atonement. In today’s Christianity, this belief marks the distinction (at least among some) between heretics and the orthodox.
Another problem is just how “propositional” religion truly is. Does one become a Christian by believing a set of statements (embodied in creeds, say), or by participating in the cult practices (”cult” here is not a pejorative term, but technical) of baptism, prayer, eucharist, etc. What about those religions in which belief seems secondary? Buddhist sanghas are commonly differentiated by their lineage and their praxis, not contrasting beliefs about technical minutiae, although such differences do exist.
How important are the statements above to the religion of Christianity? Do statements 1 and 2 necessarily conflict? If not, does that mean that the statements are beyond the realm of truth and falsity?
What responsibilities do believers have? This is a question famously debated by Clifford and James. Clifford argued that believers (of any sort, religious or not) have the responsibility to ensure that their beliefs are defensible. It is, he claimed, unethical to believe something for which you have no evidence. But is this a legitimate standard for human beings? Surely we all have beliefs that, when pressed, we may not be able to defend (how do I know I am not a brain in a vat, hooked up to a world-replicating machine)? I recently blogged about Susan Haack’s amendation to Clifford, placing ethical responsibility upon someone only if their beliefs might endanger someone else. Otherwise, there is no harm in believing potentially false things. Is there?
Another way of looking at such responsibility is to argue, as Alvin Plantinga has, that some beliefs are “properly basic.” The sense of awe and wonder I have at the existence of the universe might serve as justification for my conviction that god exists. I do not need to defend myself or provide substantiation aside from experience. However, when a believer encounters another individual, with the same sense of awe and wonder, who uses it as justification for their conviction that god does not exist (or that god is nature, etc), do they then have the responsibility to examine their beliefs?
Conclusion
The questions that can be asked of religious belief are, in general, ones that can be asked of all other human beliefs as well. The role of testimony and experience, problems of holism and context, epistemic responsibility and justification…these are essential in any discussion of belief. Religious belief has become a hot topic because of the emphasis upon (as Dennett calls it) “belief in belief.” That is, for many religious practitioners, being sure that they have the correct beliefs is central. As well, in modern society, when we purportedly come by our surest beliefs scientifically, religious truths can appear to be flimsy by comparison. Further, we’re becoming more aware of the conflict between these beliefs, as we encounter other believers on a more regular basis (whether in person or through the news media) than perhaps any time in history.**
For all of these reasons, the examination of religious belief–historically, philosophically, theologically, and through cognitive science–is important.
Next: is belief a uniquely human stance?
[Notes]
*Whether only human beings can take the intentional stance is under debate. For some clear thought-experiments laying out the possibility that intentionality is not limited to humans, see David Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, chapter 14.
** Granted, I have no study or citation that I can use to back up this sweeping claim. However, when considering the population growth in the past two thousand years, the advent of the Internet and transportation such as airplanes, even if only a small percentage of the world is subject to this interaction, I have little doubt that it is a greater phenomenon than ever before.