As a child, I had the opportunity to participate in many different activities which in turn allowed me many opportunities to explore my world. For a time, I was part of a Christian youth group. My parents were not what one might call religious, and so there was no formal spirituality discussed in my home growing up. As such, my time with the youth group was quite significant to me. I had never formally encountered a main stream religion up to this point.
What I did not understand for a long time, up to and beyond the time I was with the youth group, is that most people are quite spiritual in nature, and arguably most follow some sort of main stream religion to a greater or lesser degree. In other words, I had been deeply embedded in spiritual and religious beliefs my entire life; I simply did not recognize this fact until much, much later. This all said, the youth group was, for me, my first real interaction with spirituality in a manner I recognized as being spiritual.
The group suggested that one need not be a Christian to participate in the group, however, they did encourage exposure. For me, I was quite enthusiastic to learn more about this as I was unfamiliar with it. The people in the group seemed so happy and excited to be alive, and I wanted to be a part of that. I wanted to be happy and excited to be alive.
I join various reading groups and bible study groups. I read scripture and discussed the passages at length. I was quite interested in Genesis and Revelations in particular, likely because they represented the beginning and the end of things. But I also found the New Testament interesting as well, discussing this strange individual Jesus who claimed to be the son of God. It was all so surreal to me. Unfortunately, I had something it seems like most of the others did not have going into these discussions: critical thinking. This is not to say that the other people didn’t reason or follow logical arguments and such. This was something else.
I said my parents were not religious. They were not. However, as I figured out much later, they were very spiritual. Even more important was the fact that they had a lot of beliefs. However, especially my father, did not consider their beliefs as beliefs. For him, his beliefs were simply facts. Truths about the world we inhabited. For him, these truths were not simply his truths, they were everyone’s truths. When I figured this out, I started referring to his beliefs as “absolute truths.”
The people in my youth group had different beliefs than my father in many areas. However, what they had which was very much like my father was this almost stubborn passion with their beliefs. Like my father, for them their beliefs were more than just beliefs for them, but they called their beliefs “faith” instead of “truth.”
It has been a long time since those days. When I think about my father’s “absolute truth” and the youth group’s “faith,” I realize that they are virtually identical things. In both cases, there is something that they all hold as a belief (a typically passionate and stubborn belief), and at the same time, this something is suggested to apply to everyone. Furthermore, in many cases, these beliefs could not be confirmed nor denied.
In the case of the youth group, their belief in God and their belief that the bible was without error are both ideas that cannot be confirmed nor denied. The existence of God is suggested in the bible, and the bible is without error because it was written by God (in a fashion, it is the word of God that generates the bible, and the word as manifested through people is how it is written down physically). But this is certainly a circular argument. If God is required to prove that the bible is without error, then the bible cannot be used to prove the existence of God. Similarly, if the bible is required to prove the existence of God, then God cannot be used to prove that the bible is without error. To achieve a belief of these two things, something beyond reason or evidence is required. Hence faith.
I am unable to provide a similar example of my father’s beliefs. For my father, he simply knew when something was true, and there was no talking him out of it. When my sisters and I were loudly conversing in the basement one day, my father yelled down at us to stop fighting. My sisters and I all shouted back up at my father simultaneously that we were not fighting, to which he responded in an even louder voice that we should cease fighting. For my father, in this particular circumstance, he was convinced we were fighting which would have explained our loud discussion, but my sisters and I were simply discussing something and we all have very loud voices. There were no conflicts nor problems at the time. We were all very amenable in this particular circumstance. Of course, this sort of situation was a rarity for us, as conflicts were frequent, so it is understandable that my father might believe we were fighting. But in this very specific instance, we were not, and nothing was going to change my father’s mind on the matter. For him, it did not matter what we said, he simply knew the truth, and acted accordingly.
I suspect that example is less than convincing. It is hard for me to explain my father. Growing up, I thought he was simply correct at all times. Whenever I needed some piece of accurate information, I would always ask my father, and I trusted he would never make an error. Inevitably, once I was older, I discovered many errors. And, unfortunately for me, once my eyes were open, I was able to reflect on past events and realize just how often these errors took place.
This isn’t the worst of it, however. I think most people discover something like this about their parents at some point. Or about someone in their lives that they trusted for a very long time. Not that it needs to be malicious. Often, it culminates in what my parents described to me as being “white lies,” such as the perpetuated belief in Santa Claus. When I was much older, and an uncle to a niece, I was instructed by my parents to continue the false belief in Santa Claus to my niece, which I refused to do. In arguing with my parents regarding this, they suggested that perhaps I might be mistaken, and that Santa Claus might still exist. Or perhaps that Santa Claus exists because he isn’t a physical person like you or I, but instead he is an idea or hope for young children. For me, to this day, I simply consider Santa Claus as a fabrication used by adults to assist in their control over small children. I believe this in part because I KNOW that most of the small children I encounter are far more intelligent and insightful than most adults give them credit. Even my niece knew Santa did not exist before I had to say anything. She came to me and asked, and then suggested she already knew and simply wanted confirmation. And then she proceeded to ask me not to tell her grandparents, so as not to dismantle the magic for them. It is a very strange situation when the child is asking for you to perpetuate the “white lie” to the adults, for fear that the adults dreams might be diminished.
I admit, I’m on a bit of a tangent now. This post is starting to get pretty long. Ultimately the point I wish to make is that there have been some extremely rigid beliefs that my father held that he considered to be “absolutely true,” and that no amount of arguing and discussion on my part would change his mind. It seemed to me that evidence or reason did not play a role in the generation of, nor the continuance of, these beliefs my father held. Like the youth group, it seemed as though he simply had “faith” that he was correct. And also like the youth group, my father made decisions and pursued his projects as though those beliefs were in fact true.
Using both cases, I think I can made something of a definition for faith. Faith is a form of belief; it is something someone considers to be true, and that person will act as though the thing is true under all circumstances. Faith is unprovable; it is something that cannot be confirmed, nor denied, regardless how much evidence, reason, or logic is used. To put this second point another way, no amount of information will completely satisfy conditions in order to elucidate the truth value of faith. If evidence comes to light that is able to confirm or deny a faith claim, then the claim can no longer count as faith; if the evidence confirms the faith, then it becomes a reasonable belief; if the evidence denies the faith, then it becomes a sort of delusion or self-denial. (This is, of course, assuming that the individual continues to hold onto the belief, regardless of what the evidence does to the belief).
In my previous post, I suggested that perhaps faith was something like True Belief, but I would like to correct myself. Part of the nature of faith is that we cannot know whether it is true or not, thus, faith is left as being simply Belief, with some other caveats, as I have laid out above. A faith claim cannot be proven true, nor false; that is part of why it requires the individual to simply believe it. This all also requires that one believes it is possible for individuals to hold beliefs without reasons. In my next post, I will continue exploring this idea of faith, and start tying it to free will.