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5.2: Is it Good to “Have Faith”? (Noah Levin)

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    30071
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    27 Is it Good to “Have Faith”?
    Noah Levin37

    Faith is often viewed popularly as a virtue. The movie The Bucket List (Rob Reiner, 2007) stars Morgan Freeman as Carter and Jack Nicholson as Edward and follows their friendship that is forged through a shared experience of facing potentially terminal cancers. Carter, an agnostic, admits to Edward that he often laments his inability to believe and envies Edwards’s faith in God even though religion plays little role in Edward’s life. In turn, Edward pities Carter for his lack of belief, as Edward views his faith as something that brings him comfort. Carter represented only one type of non-believer, exhibiting the traits of the nonbelievers that Pascal targets in his wager: those that want to believe, but, for whatever reason, cannot bring themselves to do it or cannot find the final reason that will push them over the fence. For comfortable agnostics and atheists, this scene was disconcerting, as it implied that their views are due to the inability to believe in God, and not a concerted, conscious disbelief (or abstention from belief). It is a bit condescending to assume that everyone wishes to believe in God but might simply be unable to; likewise, it is condescending to assume that anyone that believes in God is doing so out of complete disregard for rational belief.

    I have chosen to look at the issue of having faith as asking this question: When is it rational to have faith? There are two ways that we can understand “faith” in the context of this work: as a set of religious beliefs or as a type of belief that one may hold. While my prior discussion could apply to both versions of faith (and I purposefully made use of this ambiguity), I will be using it more in the latter sense, as I am going to use the term “faith” to capture a simple notion that is used many times every day by most people: accepting something as true without requiring the normal sort of evidence and reasons we would regularly require in order for us to accept such a concept. It is extremely important to note that I am looking at having faith as a requiring less evidence than we would normally require to have that belief. For example, if I am stopped by a pedestrian on the road and warned there is a major accident ahead and I should find another route, I am likely to believe them. I am not going to ask for evidence, and even though I would be more inclined to believe a warning from a police officer, I would still believe almost anyone that warns me in such a situation. My standard of evidence in this situation is quite low. If someone were to tell me they knew a hot stock to buy that would certainly triple in value in a week, I’d ask for a lot more information and evidence (regardless of who they were). My standard to accept that belief is quite high. If someone were to tell me that a person I had never met was a bad person, I would be much more likely to believe it if I knew the person who was telling me this and I had a trusting relationship with them. My general standard, then, can be lowered based upon my relationship with the person. I am more inclined to accept this belief “on faith” if it comes from the right person.

    Now, if we turn to the types of beliefs that religious beliefs fall under, what sort of evidence should we normally require to accept them? To begin to answer this, we have to first examine how religious beliefs work. They may not be any different than regular beliefs, but I will focus this discussion on them directly. The reasons for religious beliefs vary greatly and there is no simple answer to describe how people come to have their religious beliefs. Some people are religious believers because they maintain that some integral part of the religion is a matter of fact, and this fact anchors and proves all other elements of the religion. For example, if someone were to believe it were a fact that Jesus were resurrected, then an important miracle integral to Christian religions will have been accepted as fact. This integral occurrence would then be enough to ground other beliefs that someone might not be willing to accept without further scrutiny: like the stories of other miracles, the metaphysics of the eucharist, and the second-coming of Christ. Some people accept them because there is a lot of history behind the beliefs (or a tradition of belief) and for seemingly no other reason. This reason is a very strong one, however, as it is simply stating that we trust those that have come before us, and their beliefs and reasons for them are important to us. Many people believe in a religion because they have a deep feeling or “religious experience” that makes them believe, like those that come close to dying and say they experience God. Still more are religious because they believe it will bring them some benefit, like those that believe worshipping will get them into heaven. Still others believe certain religious claims because they have determined it is the most rational thing to do given the evidence.

    We can thus divide religious beliefs into two general categories, and these two are not mutually exclusive (that is, a belief can have parts of both): those that are beliefs based on our regular standards of reason and rational principles and those beliefs that involve some amount of faith. Tradition (especially familial) and religious experience often form the basis of this religious faith. To come to the title of this work, the answer to the question, “Is it Good to ‘Have Faith’?” must be, “It depends.” There are many aspects of our daily lives that would get overly complicated if we didn’t utilize faith in a healthy dose, and many intimate relationships may never evolve if we didn’t allow for it from time to time.

    We believe a good deal of things. Some of these we have good reasons to believe (I believe this summer will be quite sunny in Southern California), some of these we don’t have good reasons to believe (I believe this textbook will become a best-selling textbook in the Philosophy of Religion), some of these we just hope will be true (I believe I will lose weight by thinking skinnier), some of these we shouldn’t believe because they are based on bad reasons (I can eat 5 cheeseburgers a day with no bad health effects), and some of these are simply irrational (I believe an invisible monkey hisses in my hear randomly throughout the day just to keep me on edge). There are certainly more categories of things we believe, but it’s important to recognize that belief is a different concept than things like thinking or knowing. Because of how it works, we can believe the impossible, even if we can’t think of it, conceive of it, or even demonstrate it to be true. The great Philosopher Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (whom you probably know better as “Lewis Carrol”) famously wrote in his 1871 novel Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found,

    ‘I’m seven and a half exactly.’

    ‘You needn’t say “exactly,”’ the Queen remarked: ‘I can believe it without that. Now I’ll give you something to believe. I’m just one hundred and one, five months and a day.’

    ‘I can’t believe that!’ said Alice.

    ‘Can’t you?’ the Queen said in a pitying tone. ‘Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.’

    Alice laughed. ‘There’s no use trying,’ she said: ‘one can’t believe impossible things.’

    ‘I daresay you haven’t had much practice,’ said the Queen. ‘When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast…’

    Belief is an interesting thing in this way. It describes a mental state in which we accept that reality is a particular way. For religious beliefs, we may have very good reasons to believe particular things or we may just be accepting them on faith, even if they are irrational to hold. But this is a very important aspect of belief: we can believe impossible things. Belief is powerful; and even if we can’t know impossible things, we can still maintain that the world is that way. Religious beliefs rather often contain things that we would otherwise disregard, and, as long as we don’t discuss these seriously and point out contradictions, no one takes issue with it. I would like to give two examples that illustrate what seems to be cognitive dissonance (when someone believes two contradictory things at the same time) to illustrate how this is a problem: Billy Ray Cyrus and his perceived relationship with the Devil, and anyone that believes in heaven but is afraid of death.

    Billy Ray Cyrus, the country music star and father of Miley Cyrus, was publically ridiculed when he said that he believed the Devil was messing up his life. At the time, his wife was committing infidelity and his daughter was having a number of public issues (alcohol, nudity, drug use, etc.). He said, with a very straight face, that the Devil was actively working to destroy his life because things had been going so well for so long and suddenly it was all falling apart. This was a part of his belief system, and the belief system of many of his fans and followers. American Protestantism contains a healthy dose of the notion that the Devil is alive and well in the world and actively engages people to tempt them and cause bad things to happen. The Devil is the source of much evil in this world. Yet, when someone who believes this genuinely says it, people ridiculed him and say that the problems aren’t the devil, but rather the people themselves. This interaction made me realize something: most people that claim the Devil is alive and well and interfering with our lives don’t actually believe it. Why not? There is plenty of debate about evidence for the existence of God, and the evidence in favor of the Devil, as often described in Evangelical terms, is extremely lacking. Thus, when pressed, most people would be apt to abandon their faith in the Devil being the root of problems and instead look toward a more anthropocentric explanation.

    With medical advances, there are numerous diseases that are no longer fatal. Cancer is perhaps the most notable: what used to be a certain death sentence is no longer as certain (but it is still fatal for many). When people contract a lethal form of cancer, they often say that they will “fight it.” The primary reason to fight it would be in an attempt to rid themselves of the disease and live longer. The alternate would be to let the disease run its course with the likely prognosis of death. Generally there are two options: undergo treatments and surgeries that are often very hard on the mind and body for months or years; or take your chances on the disease and let it run its course. Most people choose the first option (assuming it is available and affordable), but why not choose the second? Because they don’t want to die. Presumably, death is a worse alternative for these people. But, many of these people also claim to have an important belief about death (or what happens after death): there is an afterlife, that many think of as “the promised land” or “heaven.” If this is what will happen after suffering a bad disease and dying, why are so many fighting to avoid going there sooner than later? Most views on heaven believe that it is an eternity of bliss where you will join those that died before you and those that are born after you will come to join you when it is their time to die. So why the fear? Why the avoidance of such a wonderful place where you and everyone you love will end up? Some religious adherents do view it this way and will accept a fatal disease as a natural part of the process, choosing not to fight it. In all honesty, I am not sure why more don’t adopt that viewpoint rather than hold onto life as long as possible, and while I have been given reasons (most notably that God places value on this life and it is our duty to preserve it, possibly so that we may help others), I cannot find them convincing as they seem to conflict with their overall views on God, death, and the afterlife. I am left to conclude that the real reason is that there is an underlying belief that this heaven they have always accepted on faith might not be real. At least, there is enough doubt contained within their view of heaven to influence them to disregard it when the time comes.

    I only bring up this view on the afterlife because it seems that some people are willing to abandon it once they give it the same sort of scrutiny they give other beliefs. There are not many things we believe that are akin to some of the religious elements we believe, so it is difficult to determine the standards to use when we believe, for example, that there is an afterlife or God exists. If our beliefs don’t stand up to the normal sort of rational scrutiny we can use, we ought to (at the very least) recognize that we are requiring less support than we normally do and as a result we might want to lessen our certainty in them. For beliefs as impactful as religious ones, we ought to be careful when we choose to lessen our scrutiny and take things on faith.

    It would seem to be good to have faith when we are so inclined to do so (out of the plethora of reasons) and believing that thing can positively impact lives. When someone says they love us, we are likely to be accepting of that feeling without requiring much proof. The start of most relationships requires some amount of faith. There are many positive aspects of religious belief, and there is no harm in accepting them on faith if they do not bring negative aspects into lives. Even if they do, but we feel like we must accept them, it is not irrational to accept them merely because we are not rationally certain they are right. We are also not obligated to accept them, however. Oftentimes, there is no problem with faith, but we still ought to be careful in which beliefs we choose to have.

    As W.K. Clifford says in his work The Ethics of Belief (1875), “It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.” What constitutes “sufficient evidence” to believe will always be a matter of debate. What Clifford fails to take into account, however, is that we often do and should believe many things on faith, for if we don’t, we wouldn’t be able to have things like trust in one another and relationships. We are under an obligation to keep reigns on what we accept on faith, however, and if we have too much faith resulting in believing too many irrational or contradictory things, we are not doing our proper duty as rational creatures.

    For Review and Discussion

    1. What things do you accept “on faith”? Should you?

    2. Can people hold religious beliefs without requiring faith?

    3. What do you believe happens after you die? What are your reasons for this? Do you rely on faith for your beliefs?


    This page titled 5.2: Is it Good to “Have Faith”? (Noah Levin) is shared under a CC BY 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Noah Levin (NGE Far Press) .

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