Does the word "belief", when used in a religious context, always refer to objective thought?

Great Debates
1

The contemporary atheist author Sam Harris is frequently identified as one of the “new atheists”; the other three are generally considered to be Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens. Having read just about everything that Harris has written and listened to most of the lectures/debates that he has posted online, I have noticed a particular thread in Harris’ criticism of religion.

Harris criticizes religion from a strongly belief-centric perspective. Harris thinks that religious believers just think that the cores of their religions are true in the same sense that anybody thinks anything is true. In his mind, Muslims think that Allah has paradise in store for martyrs in much the same sense that I think I’m typing at a computer: we just think that’s how reality is and that’s that.

Furthermore, Harris believes that this is exactly why religious believers fight for seemingly obscure causes. In Harris’ mind, Catholics go to mass because they think there is an omnipotent being who wants them to. In his mind, Islamic Jihadist suicide bombers blow themselves up to kill people because they think that they will live in Heaven forever for doing so and because their enemies are hated by the ruler of the universe, Allah.

And so on, and so forth. To some, this view may seem obviously true: what else would the term “belief” mean anyway? Doesn’t “believe” just refer to the acceptance of certain things as objectively true? And if fanatics like suicide bombers didn’t think that there literally was a paradise waiting for them, why would they really blow themselves up? Why question the idea that religious people just think that their beliefs are, well, true?

First, I do not question that a great many religious people do think that all or most of the things that they are taught are objectively true. I imagine that Kirk Cameron (unfortunately) really does think that the world was created in seven days. I imagine that Osama bin Ladin really does think that a supreme being exists and that he is totally sure that paradise awaits him.

But this does not tell us what all or even most religious people get out of religion. This first occurred to me when I was asking my father about whether he thinks that an afterlife exists. He said “does it exist in the same sense that this street exists? I don’t think that, no.”

People do not normally distinguish between kinds of truth. After all, in everyday life, the sciences, and just about every other area of life, we just say that certain ideas are correct or incorrect. What else would they be? Moogamoogacorrect? Moogamoogaincorrect?

Yet my father is not the only person who has made statements like this to me. I have often heard people say that there are different “kinds” of truth - scientific truth, religious truth, etc - and that they are all valid. Just what is going on here? I mean, God either exists, or he doesn’t, and that’s just true, right? Not “scientifically true”, not “true in a religious sense”, just true, right?

This made me think: maybe many religious people don’t really think that their texts’ sayings (or their religious leaders’ statements) are objectively true in the normal, usual sense of the term. My suspicions only grew stronger when a Christian friend of mine said this to me:

If the word “beliefs” is construed as referring to an acceptance of objective truth, this statement doesn’t make much sense. It makes a little sense if he means that he thinks Christianity is probably correct, but he did not, upon further query, suggest that he has any strong reason to believe that Christianity is more right than other religions. So in just what sense does he “believe” any of the tenets of Christianity?

I’ve heard statements like this from tons of people. Lots of people say things like “I don’t think everybody else is wrong, I just personally believe in Christ/Allah”. The statements don’t make sense if we suppose that the word “belief” solely denotes objective-truth-belief. After all, if Christ really is the redeemer, then Islam is just wrong, period, end of story, along with just about every other religion out there.

It seems to me that religious belief may, for some people, may be less of a matter of “I think this is objectively true” than a matter of “I live as though this were true; it could be true, but it also could be false. I just live my life as though Christ were the Lord, that’s my faith” (here I refer to Christianity - similar phrasing could be used for other faiths). In other words, it seems to me that belief, in the religious sense, is for some people more of a statement of moral or spiritual outlook than a statement of objective truth-claims.

Could I be right here?

2

If I had to guess what your father meant, it would be that he’s not talking about a type of truth, he’s talking about experiencing reality in a different way. Some people seem to believe that “going to heaven” is not too far from moving into a better neighborhood with nicer neighbors. Others believe the experience of an afterlife is something qualitatively different, like actually becoming part of some larger body. You hear New Agers talking about Energy, and that is a similar idea. You have some primal essence which continues after your body dies and, well, blah blah blah.

I think a lot of religious people are not especially well educated in the fine details of their religion. I’m an atheist, but I was raised Catholic, and I don’t know exactly what the Cathlolic versiom of the afterlife is. I mean, I know there is supposed to be a heaven and hell and purgatory, and the hell is supposed to be quite painful, but beyond that… So I think that leaves a lot of wiggle room for people to project their own beliefs into their chosen religion.

I’m not really sure if this addresses the idea of ‘types’ of truth, but I think you may be defining that term a bit broadly.

3

I expect that many people do fit within what you describe. Religious belief likely covers wide spans of intensity, precision, completeness, and concreteness.

On the other hand, I don’t think that believing that God actually exists makes one a fanatic, either.

4

What you seem to be overlooking is that nothing can ever be proven. You can’t prove that you exist, much less that I exist, and you certainly can’t prove that God exists, or doesn’t exist. To me the interesting thing here is that it seems that the theists understand this, and you, presumably an atheist, do not.

You say that people don’t normally distinguish between different kinds of truth, but in my experience that is untrue. People distinguish between different kinds of truth every day, either explicitly or implicitly.

If you ask some random board members to answer a series of questions either “true” or false" they will likely say it is true that they love their wife, it is true that G. W. Bush lied about his reason for the Iraq war, that it is true that Angeline Joliwe is sexy, that it is true that they enjoy oral sex, that it is true that the Earth orbits the sun and that it is true that human activities have warmed the atmosphere. But if you queried them further they would distinguish between those truth as being objective, subjective, scientific, intuitive, opinions, nuanced, debatable and so forth.

Or as Frank Herbert said: Whose truth, interpreted by whom, in what way and for what purpose?

People do, indeed, distinguish between different types truth. And they do that in large part because we recognise different ways of arriving at the truth. Scientific paths are useless for evaluating emotional hypotheses, and religion is useless for evaluating emotional truths. While it is equally true that my wife loves me, that most people are horribly ignorant and that the Earth is an oblate spheroid, the means by which I arrive at the conclusion of truth for each of those facts is completely different.

In the life sciences we certainly don’t only say that certain ideas are correct or incorrect. We also say that certain ideas are supported by the evidence or not, or that they are based on rational argument or not. What else would they be aside from correct or incorrect? Well, based on flawed reasoning, or based on a preponderance of evidence for example. In real science nothing is “True”.

For example, in ecology it is ( or at least was) common for experts to debate whether there is such a thing as a climax community. And I have several times heard them make use of very similar phrasing to the example you used: “does it exist in the same sense that an oak forest exists? I don’t think that, no”. The meaning being that while a climax community may not exist in the way that an oak community exits, it is still a very useful concept and still true, albeit for different values of true. You will hear similar expressions differentiating values of truth in discussions of the Gaia hypothesis, quantum mechanics and many other scientific beliefs.

Have you really never heard the numerous ways that the different belief systems can be welded together? If so I am astounded. Try doing a Google search for “many paths up the same mountain”.

Why do you not also say “If QM is true then relativity is wrong, period”. The current understanding of the two theories are mutually exclusive, but nobody says that QM or GR are wrong, period, just because they are contradicted by the other theory. Maybe both are wrong, maybe one is wrong, maybe both are incomplete. But you can’t declare that one is wrong, period. Neither can be applied all the time by all people, but both will produce the right answer some of the time for some people.

Now substitute in Christianity and Islam for GR and QM.

Of course you are right. Where you go wrong is assuming that it is somehow unique to religious belief… Nothing is objectively true, that’s why science doesn’t work on truth. The objective truth may be that we are all be strapped into the Matrix. But you don’t accept that, instead you live your life as though something else is true. If you are truly rational then you will acknowledge that this belief that you live by could be wrong, that we could be strapped into the Matrix. You can never prove it is not so, but you live your life that way.

In other words, belief, in this sense, is for you more of a statement of philosophical outlook than a statement of objective truth-claims.

As I said at the start, I find it somewhat ironic that the theists understand this and express it, whereas the atheist struggles with the concept.

5

I think you’re absolutely right. I think a lot of the more intelligent religious people understand their faith as a sort of elaborate extended metaphor for the unknowable mysteries of life, rather than any sort of literal objective “truth”. Sadly it seems like their more… literal-minded friends are in the majority, or at least a lot more vocal.

Of course, as Blake has touched on, a lot of our knowledge is based on metaphors too. We evolved to understand things on a certain scale, both in space and in time, and very little makes intuitive sense outside of our immediate comfort zone. That’s why we have these stories about light being sometimes a wave and sometimes a particle, or atoms bouncing around like little billiard balls.

6

Belief is less strong than knowledge, which we usually mean as an extremely high probability of correctness, if not proof. But belief seems to come in two flavors. The first is provisional belief, which is usually non-religious. We can say that we believe a hypothesis is correct or that Chakari will will the third race, but we are ready to revise our beliefs as new evidence comes in. Religious belief is often less amenable to revision in this way, since losing belief gets you kicked out of a peer group. They even use faith as a particular kind of belief that resists contradiction by falsification.

I don’t think belief in a religious context is any more or less objective than any other type of belief. It is openness to refutation that distinguishes it from common belief.

7

Au contraire, everybody distinguishes between kinds of truths all the time. There’s indisputable truth. For example, in Sam Harris’ book The End of Faith, it says that the Catholic Church was until recently torturing scholars to the point of insanity for speculating about the stars. I know this is true because I can pick up the book and read it as many times as necessary. I can’t consider the possibility of it being false unless I’m a David Hume-style complete skeptic. One step removed from that would be something like: Sam Harris wrote that the Catholic Church was until recently torturing scholars to the point of insanity for speculating about the stars. All logic and reason point to the conclusion that Harris did in fact write the book that has his name on it and which he’s been promoting for years, but it’s physically possible that someone else wrote the book. It’s just absurd. Another step away would be: Sam Harris’ statement about the Catholic Church torturing scholars to the point of insanity… is incorrect. Of course we have no record of the Catholic Church doing such a thing, but it might have happened and simply not have been recorded in history. Far-fetched, of course, but possible. Further down the line would be statements like: Sam Harris deliberately lied about the Catholic Church torturing scholars to the point of insanity… It’s the most likely explanation, but on the other hand he could have been mislead my someone else. etc… We all manage different layers of truth on a daily basis. It’s such a regular part of our daily lives that we may not notice it often, just as we don’t notice ourselves crossing t’s and dotting i’s when we write.

Nor is science any different. Do you believe that magnetic monopoles don’t exist? If so, you surely would defend the belief on the grounds that none has ever been observed, but you’d have to acknowledge that a magnetic monopole might be found someday. (Wait, it just happened.)

Religion has always included full awareness of the different levels of certainty that are involved in different statements. Indeed, I’d agree with Blake that religious people are more aware of it than secular people, by and large. Just look at the Catholic Church’s careful gradations of their beliefs, from dogmas that never change down to devotions that are merely recommendations.

More importantly, as Saint Thomas Aquinas famously said, “The most slender knowledge of the higher things is worth more than the most certain knowledge of the lower things.” It’s basic common sense. The things I can know with absolute certainty, such as the fact that the cover of a textbook lying on my desk is brown, are the things that are least worth knowing. As we ascend up to higher levels of being, we encounter knowledge that it less certain but more important. Truly important knowledge, which is knowledge about what takes place in the minds of other people, is uncertain by definition. I can never truly be sure about what any other person is thinking, because direct mind-to-mind communication does not exist. (As far as I know.) So it makes sense that knowledge about God is the most uncertain, since He’s at the apex of the chain of being.

Do I go to mass because I believe that God desires it sure? Sure, I do. But I’m happy to listen to anyone who argues otherwise. I’ve read scores of books, hundreds of articles, and thousands of message board posts about religious topics. The beliefs that I hold now are an assimilation of the arguments about God that I’ve found most convincing, coupled with my personal experiences. They could certainly change, but it would take something major to affect a major change.

8

I believe that God is. But basically anything that I could understand or say about that God paints it as smaller than it is. Neither atheists, with all due respect, nor most believers, have an way of comprehending or explaining.

I do accept atheists with no problems with their lack of belief. I really liked O’Hair and supported some of her goals.

All I object to from any source is misstatement of “facts.”

9

This post is great. I think it’s also true that what I’m going to call “religious fact believers” receive disproportionate attention, both from media and New Atheists, because they’re very easy to set up and knock down. Analysing religious metaphor, and why people use it, is a lot more complex, which I think is why writers like Hitchens and Dawkins don’t bother.