Is faith 'Believing six impossible things before breakfast'?

"Now I'll give you something to believe. I'm just one hundred and one, five months and a day", [said the Red Queen].

"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."

(from 'Through the Looking Glass' by Lewis Carroll)

Where there is evidence, no one speaks of 'faith'. We do not speak of faith that two and two are four or that the earth is round. We only speak of faith when we wish to substitute emotion for evidence. (Bertrand Russell)

Faith is not a leap in the dark; it's the exact opposite. It's a commitment based on evidence... It is irrational to reduce all faith to blind faith and then subject it to ridicule. That provides a very anti-intellectual and convenient way of avoiding intelligent discussion. (John Lennox, Professor of Mathematics and philosopher of science at University of Oxford)

Like it or not, your existence is grounded in faith. ( Jordan Peterson)

Summary

Faith is often conflated with belief by being described as a form of belief or the basis of belief. Atheists dismiss faith as 'belief without good reason' and believers will argue that faith is 'belief going beyond reason'. I argue that both are mistaken in their characterisation of faith. Faith is always logically based on preceding beliefs and so in a weak sense is always rational, ie, there are always reasons for your faith however poor they may be. A key difference is that belief is involuntary while faith is (partly) voluntary. This being so it makes no sense for religious believers to condemn non-believers for their lack of faith as the belief on which faith is predicated may be impossible for the non- believer.

1. Faith is always founded on belief

In a talk by Richard Dawkins he was heard to dismiss faith as:

...the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in-spite-of, even perhaps because-of, the lack of evidence.

Many atheists and humanists express a similar view going on to quote Mark Twain's famous dictum "Faith is believing what you know ain't so" or in the words of Alice's Red Queen, "...believ[ing] as many as six impossible things before breakfast".

My religious friends, on the other hand, often talk about their belief in the existence of God as a matter of faith, implying that faith is either a mode of belief or a valid foundation or warrant for belief.

It seems to me that both of these positions are mistaken in similar ways as they both misunderstand the relationship between faith and belief. They both think of faith logically preceding and providing a foundation for belief or faith being a mode of belief in itself.

Of course one side approves and the other disapproves, but they both agree on the nature of faith and belief and the relationship between them.

I want to argue that the relationship is the reverse of what both parties here appear to think. I contend that belief always logically precedes faith and the very possibility of faith is always predicated on logically prior beliefs.

2. The meaning of a word is in its use

It was the philosopher Wittgenstein who proposed that if you want to understand the meaning of a word then you should examine how it's used in everyday life; there is no source of meaning other than established, collective usage. In the case of faith I think it is beholden upon us to look at how it is used in everyday cases in order to truly understand what it means.

3. Blondin and faith

Perhaps one of the best explications of faith is the one I recall from my old Sunday School days. The story is told of the great Victorian tightrope walker, Blondin, who crossed the Niagara Falls on a tightrope in the late 1850's. On one occasion he walked across the Falls blindfold, pushing a wheelbarrow. Having successfully performed this feat he turned to a bystander and asked him if he believed that he, Blondin, could perform the feat again, but this time with a load in the barrow. The onlooker had no hesitation in replying "Yes—of course you can do it!". At this Blondin said, "OK, then jump in the barrow and I'll take you across". Predictably the onlooker demurred.

4. Differences between belief and faith

I think this story brings out four important features of faith and belief and the relationship between them:

(a) belief is passive while faith is always active;

(b) belief is involuntary while faith is (at least partly) voluntary;

(c) belief has a symmetrical relationship to the facts while faith has an asymmetrical relationship to the facts;

(d) faith involves an implicit commitment on the part of an agent to be faithful.

Let me explain...

4.1 Belief is passive while faith is always active

At its simplest level belief is an assertion that so-and-so is the case. It does not necessarily entail action, an evaluation (positive or negative) or an attitude of any kind. You can believe something without feeling it matters or that you need to do anything about it—you are just affirming that that's the way things are. Caring about it is a different issue.

Faith by contrast is action-oriented—even if that action is simply waiting patiently for something to happen. It would therefore be quite consistent (although unusual nowadays) for someone to assert that they believe in the existence of God but have no faith in Him. The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus is a case in point. He believed the gods existed but that they had no interest in human life and so sacrifice, worship and prayer were useless. This philosophical position is referred to as Alatrism.

Faith and belief are both cognitive states but they are different states. I expect that many people who assent to belief in God in public opinion surveys are simply 'of the opinion' **that God exists but have no personal faith or trust in him as such.

Indeed, this must be the state of mind of Satan in the Old Testament book of Job. As counsel for the prosecution in the heavenly assize Satan spends quite a bit of time going to and fro on the earth and chatting to God so he is obviously convinced that God exists (one might even say that he knows God exists) but it would be absurd to attribute faith to Satan on that basis.

"You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!" ~ James 2:19

4.2. Belief is involuntary while faith is voluntary

Faith is at least partly voluntary in the sense that you can choose, or make an effort, to risk exercising faith while you cannot simply choose to believe something (which is what makes the Red Queen's encouragement of Alice to try harder so funny). Belief is involuntary and forces itself upon you. You may entertain beliefs with different levels of confidence but you cannot make yourself believe something that you do not already hold to be true or feel you have good reasons to believe. If you are not convinced, try this experiment. Sit down in a comfortable chair and concentrate your mind on believing that the Red Queen in Through the Looking Glass** is a real person. I guarantee that you will find it impossible, even if I were to motivate you with a large bribe!

4.3. Faith has an asymmetrical relationship to the facts

It's like this: if the facts are so-and-so you are acquainted with their truth, then belief follows automatically and involuntarily. (I know I am oversimplifying here, but stay with me). If you are shown the facts are not so, then you can no longer continue believing. It makes no sense to say that you continue believing something you admit has been shown to you to be false.

Faith, on the other hand, is (partly) voluntary and cannot be simply compelled by the facts. It always goes beyond the facts to some extent and involves making a judgement. Blondin's audience were quite clear as to the facts and his ability to walk the tightrope but that did not engender faith in their hearts and minds and a firm commitment to sit in the barrow.

However, while faith cannot be compelled by the facts, it can easily be defeated by the facts. Madame Butterfly, in the eponymous opera, has faith that Pinkerton will return to marry her and take on the role as father to their child but that faith is betrayed. He comes back to Japan with a new wife and takes the child away. Butterfly's faith is thereby shown to have been ill-founded and an error.

4.4. Faith involves a promise to be faithful

Faith involves a promise to be faithful by someone or an agency of some kind. This may be an explicit undertaking, as with God in the Bible, or it can be tacitly understood by the participants in the situation. However, it clearly involves the object of faith being an agent in some sense as only an agent can make, fulfil or betray promises. It makes no sense for someone to claim they have faith in the roulette table in a casino as the roulette table itself operates by determinate laws and has no choice in what it does. Superstitious gamblers who want to exercise 'faith' in this context have to invoke some sort of invisible, quasi-personal agency like 'luck'.

5. 'Belief-that' and 'Belief-in'

Sometimes the distinction is made between belief-that and belief-in. To believe-that is to assent to the truth of a proposition while belief-in is to take a risk on it and commit yourself to acting on that belief. It is one thing to say that you believe-that God exists (merely assent) and quite a different thing to say that you believe-in God as your Lord and saviour (making a life-commitment, taking a risk on that belief, trusting that he will make things work out OK in your life). However, to believe-in something logically presupposes belief-that something is the case or that something or someone exists in whom you can invest that faith.

Faith is essentially a 'transitive verb' as it always implies a person or state of affairs in which one has faith. This means belief-that a certain state of affairs pertains is a necessary, although not sufficient, condition for belief-in. You cannot drive a wedge between belief-in and belief-that; the former is logically dependent on the latter. Faith cannot be free-floating in mid-air. It has to be anchored to something factual (or believed to be factual) and that something has to be an agent who has undertaken to be faithful.

It could be said that the British people had faith in Winston Churchill during World War Two as they believed-in his ability to lead them to victory. However, this belief-in was founded on several beliefs-that, eg, that Churchill was UK Prime Minister; that he had the backing of the wartime coalition government; that the service chiefs respected and backed his leadership. It would have made no sense to say you had faith in Churchill unless all of these other beliefs were in place first. On the contrary, you can argue against the appropriateness of the exercise of faith in a specific situation by pointing out how someone has got their supporting beliefs wrong in some way.

6. Faith in God

My religious friends are therefore mistaken, I would argue, when they say they have 'faith that God exists'. God's existence is a matter of fact, and therefore of belief, and not a matter of faith. Faith can only be exercised after belief in the object of faith has been established. Once you have established that God is, only then does it make sense to talk about having faith in God. But my atheist friend is also wrong in his/her analysis of faith, for if there is a state of affairs in which you can have faith then you can give 'reasons' for your faith. In a weak sense then, faith can always be said to be 'rational'—ie, you can always give some sort of a justifying 'reason' or rationale for your faith although it does not follow from this that you necessarily have sound reasons for your faith. That is a matter of judgement that has to be examined on a case-by-case basis as there are no universal rules by which you can determine whether any belief or action is rational. However, the infidelity of the object of your faith does not show that your exercise of faith was irrational—sadly mistaken perhaps—but not necessarily irrational.

Madame Butterfly has good reasons, from her point of view, to trust Pinkerton but she is brutally betrayed as it turns out. Butterfly's faith does not pay off in the end but that does not render it irrational, simply tragically mistaken. However, suppose before Pinkerton returned Butterfly was given convincing evidence that he had married and was intending to come back to Japan to claim their child. Suppose she had been sent photos of the wedding in the US, a copy of the marriage certificate, a copy of his letter to a mutual friend telling of his intentions. If, in the light of all this overwhelming evidence, she continued to cling to her belief that Pinkerton would fulfil his promises, then we would have to conclude that Butterfly was deluded, engaging in wishful thinking and being irrational.

This case also demonstrates that it is always possible to describe circumstances that amount to one's faith either succeeding or failing to pay off. Indeed, I would want to say that unless you can state up-front what fidelity or betrayal would amount to in a specified situation, then your claim to be exercising faith is empty.

7. Moral responsibility for faith and belief

I have argued that belief is involuntary and so it seems to follow from this that we are not morally responsible for our beliefs. It is a general intuition, which I don't intend to defend here, that you can only be held morally responsible for matters over which you have some control: ''ought-implies-can'' is one summary of this idea that moral philosophers often quote. So how can we condemn anyone for their beliefs? But, of course, we do criticise people for their wrongheaded beliefs all the time! For instance we would condemn someone who believed that black people are inferior to white. However, I suggest that it's not the belief per se, that we are condemning, it is the way they arrived at their beliefs, which is indeed under their control. We might want to say that they are rationalising their prejudice and engaging in self-deception. Their belief is in reality motivated by a desire to feel superior but they deceive themselves into thinking that the belief is forced upon them by the facts.

In contrast we can imagine the case of a young child living in the Southern States of the USA in the early nineteenth century having been brought up with everyone around her telling her that black people are inferior to whites and therefore natural slaves. The child would have only encountered poor, brutalised blacks who fit the stereotype she is constantly being presented with and so it is only to be expected that she believes blacks are inferior to whites. In a case like this we could not morally condemn her belief since it is sincere, subjectively well-founded and involuntary. The child cannot believe otherwise. It might be unfortunate and regrettable, but it is not morally condemnable.

We also criticise people for arriving at their beliefs carelessly. How carefully a person collects and handles the evidence supporting their beliefs is a matter over which a person clearly has some control and so we can hold them responsible for that. If someone fails to consider all the evidence or is sloppy in drawing conclusions then we feel justified in condemning that person. We say they are lazy or thoughtless. However, where someone has simply made an understandable error or was unaware of certain pertinent facts at the time, we do not hold them responsible for being wrong. We might regret their error but we would respect their sincerity, integrity and their 'good faith'. In science, for instance, we do not criticise 17th century scientists for believing the Phlogiston theory of combustion even though nowadays we have every reason to believe it false. Believers in Phlogiston theory were simply mistaken but not morally culpable in holding their erroneous beliefs.

8. Error in religion

Now consider how error in religion is regarded. The Trinitarians won the debate with Arius over the wording of the Nicene Creed in 325 CE and the Trinity was accepted as the correct doctrine of God. However, Arius was not treated as someone who had just made an unfortunate mistake. His error was not simply an intellectual one, it constituted a moral failing as well—indeed a sin—which was harshly condemned. Arius' motives and intentions were completely irrelevant. And so we find in all world-religions the notion of an honest mistake over doctrine, made in good-faith, is completely absent. All errors of belief are heresy and culpable sins.

If I am right in my claim that faith is always logically dependent upon belief and that belief is involuntary, then if someone cannot believe certain propositions, the act of faith that is dependent upon those beliefs is also impossible for them. It follows from this that failure to exercise faith where the supporting beliefs are absent cannot be a subject of moral condemnation. The honest atheist who has weighed up all the facts and has come to the conclusion that God does not exist, cannot reasonably be condemned for his lack of faith (from a religious perspective, that is) even if he is in error.

The only recourse the theist has at this point is to assert that the non-believer is either rationalising a deep-seated antipathy towards God and religion (he really knows deep-down that God exists but is in denial) or that he has been careless in his assessment of the facts. Both amount to thin ad hominem attacks which are very difficult to substantiate.

9. Summarising where we have arrived at

This is a summary of where I think we have arrived:

● Faith is not a species of belief. ● All faith has to be warranted by logically prior belief and judgment. ● Belief is passive and neutral while Faith is evaluative and action-oriented. ● Faith relates to important issues and is about taking serious risk. ● Faith can pay-off or be betrayed. ● Life is impossible without faith, good-faith and faithfulness. ● Faith is only a virtue if the object is worthy.

10. Three positions that place faith prior to belief

Finally I want to consider three alternative views that place faith logically before belief.

● Faith without an object ● Faith as positive-thinking ● Faith as foundational

10.1 Faith without an object

Some liberal and radical theologians have nowadays given up on the idea of an independent, benevolent, supernatural, personal God who has agency within the world. However, they appear to still want to employ the word 'faith' even though they have no substantive object of that faith. I find this difficult to comprehend. If you cannot specify who or what you are exercising faith in, and if there is nothing that could count as infidelity within your framework of understanding, then it seems that neither the word nor the attitude have any work to do.

Sometimes such theologians may talk about having faith in 'Life', 'the World', 'the Universe', 'the All', 'Nature', 'Evolution', 'the interconnectedness of all things', 'Existence', or even the 'Ground of Being' or 'Being-itself'. But none of these constitutes a benevolent agent capable of entering into a relationship of trust with you and so it is impossible to see on what grounds you could ever claim to have been betrayed by them. What would a claim that 'Being' is faithful (or unfaithful) to me amount to? And if 'Being' is incapable of being faithful to me, why should I invest faith and trust in it?

Without a personal God or gods, or some sort of benign and just metaphysical force controlling the world, like karma say, the best we can conclude is that the natural world is merely indifferent to our human desires, plans and interests. This does not necessarily lead to cynicism, nihilism or despair. We just have to face the fact that there is no one 'up there', or a force 'out there', looking after us. If I were to be caught up in the middle of a tornado it would be absurd of me to have faith that the tornado will not destroy my house. It might or it might not. It has made no commitments to me and so while I may hope it will not destroy my house, and while I may remain optimistic, faith is quite literally meaningless in this context. What we really need in this situation is knowledge, skill, judgement and understanding—in short—wisdom. We need to know the best kinds of strategies to employ in an indifferent world to maximise our chances of collective survival and flourishing.

It seems to me that radical theologians are wedded to a paradigm of faith and belief that makes no sense any more. Once you have dropped the idea of an omniscient, omnipresent, omnibenevolent personal God who is in full charge of the show you have lost the logical basis for faith (in the purely religious sense, that is). These theologians, however, are reluctant to drop the word faith completely as that would entirely sever their connections with traditional religious language and institutions (and possibly harm their job security!). They therefore hang onto the word but try to invest it with a revised meaning so as to stay at least tenuously within the ambit of Christian orthodoxy. But the new meaning they give it makes no sense. The most charitable interpretation of this new style 'faith' is that it is another word for optimism or for Nietzsche's amor fati (bravely embracing and loving one's fate).

10.2 Faith as positive-thinking — The tragic Wesley Parker case

In 1974 the parents of 8 year old diabetic Wesley Parker were prosecuted for involuntary manslaughter and felony child abuse and placed on 5 years probation. They had withdrawn Wesley's insulin treatment for diabetes the previous year preferring to trust in faith-healing despite his clearly deteriorating health.

The parents, Larry and Alice Parker were members of a fundamentalist, evangelical Christian church, the Assemblies of God, who practice faith healing in a big way. Members of the congregation encouraged the family to put their faith in prayer and faith-healing and when they came to believe that the boy had been cured, they threw away his medication and allowed him to come off his diet. Larry said:

We're gonna believe this all the way! We're gonna fast! We're gonna read our Bibles! We're gonna pray! We're gonna strengthen our faith till there's no room for doubt!

During intense prayer meetings where the congregation would work up feelings of confidence and positivity, the father started to express doubts as the boy continued to deteriorate. However, the prayer group deemed this wavering as 'blasphemous' and pressured the family to continue placing their faith in prayer. One member said, "If you had half the faith in the Lord that you place in doctors and needles, I believe that boy would get well". The deteriorating condition of their son was therefore put down to the parent's lack of faith.

When the boy eventually died Larry Parker was quoted as saying, "There won't be any funeral. No, we're not making plans for any because my son, Wesley, is going to come out of that coffin this afternoon". They were trusting that their son would be resurrected like Lazarus. They delayed the funeral for four days and even prolonged the funeral itself waiting for God to act.

Following their son's death the parents were prosecuted and placed on probation. During their probation Larry Parker wrote a book about the family's experiences entitled 'We Let Our Son Die' which was made into the 1988 film 'Promised a Miracle' (1988)[*1].

According to a 2004 Newsweek poll, 72 percent of Americans said they believe that praying to God can cure someone, even if science says the person has an incurable disease.

According to the American Cancer Society:

A review published in 1998 looked at 172 cases of deaths among children treated by faith healing instead of conventional methods. These researchers estimated that if conventional treatment had been given, the survival rate for most of these children would have been more than 90 percent, with the remainder of the children also having a good chance of survival. A more recent study found that more than 200 children had died of treatable illnesses in the United States over the past thirty years because their parents relied on spiritual healing rather than conventional medical treatment.

Is this really faith or is it the power of positive thinking as preached by Norman Vincent Peale (and his follower Donald Trump!). It's as if generating really strong feelings of confidence will bounce God into keeping his promises.

10.3 Faith as the ultimate foundation of belief and action

Finally I want to consider what I regard as the most interesting alternative to my point of view: the idea that faith is basic and precedes all belief. Jordan Peterson puts it succinctly when he says:

"Faith is an ultimate foundation. Like it or not, your existence is grounded in faith."

This is best examined by looking at its contrary which is expressed by the Victorian philosopher William Kingdon Clifford in his Ethics of Belief when he says:

"It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

This position which might be characterised as pure empiricism implies that it is both desirable and indeed possible to check every individual belief we have and verify it by strong proof before accepting it.

The pure empiricist is like a man walking along the beach of truth picking up individual stones (or 'facts'), checking each one for cracks and imperfections before placing it in his bucket of knowledge. He accumulates knowledge by collecting verified facts one-by-one.

The reality is, surely, that we don't verify every item of knowledge we possess. Much that we accept as true is just assumed as common- sense background to all our other beliefs. We don't even consider doubting them.

Wittgenstein says:

I have a telephone conversation with New York. My friend tells me that his young trees have buds of such and such a kind. I am now convinced that his tree is [as he describes it]. Am I also convinced that the earth exists?

Another example comes from Cardinal Henry Newman who raised the question of why we believe, without the slightest doubt that Britain is an island. None of us have direct experience or evidence. Would flying around the coast provide satisfactory evidence? Would ascending in a stratospheric balloon be a good empirical test? More importantly, if we did ascend in a balloon and saw with our own eyes that Britain was connected to France by a large isthmus would we not reject it as a trick. The fact is our knowledge that Britain is an island is stronger than any empirical evidence that could ever be produced one way or the other.

That fault here lies in the inaccurate 'bucket' metaphor of knowledge. The facts that make up our world are not discrete entities but interconnected in multiple ways and are mutually reinforcing. Newman puts it like this:

Our reasons for believing that we are circumnavigable are such as these: first, we have been so taught in our childhood, and it is so in all the maps; next we have never heard it contradicted or questioned; on the contrary, everyone whom we have heard speak on the subject of Great Britain, every book we have read, invariably took it for granted, our whole natural history, the routine transactions and current events of the country, our social and commercial system, our political relations with foreigners, imply it in one way or another. Numberless facts, or what we consider facts, rest on the truth of it; no received fact rests on its being otherwise.

Today we might add that every weather presenter on TV has a map of the British Isles and every photograph of the Earth from space on the news shows the Earth as an island. The fact is we just cannot doubt that Britain is an island however much we might want to.

I suggest a better metaphor for our knowledge is that of a huge crossword puzzle. Imagine the words near the centre of the grid are millions of letters long and there are no black squares so all the words ('facts') are interlocked up and down. To change any one word in the centre would entail altering millions of other letters and words around it that interlock with it and that is a practical impossibility.

So while folk like Jordan Peterson are right in pointing out that masses of our basic beliefs are without empirical or experiential foundation I don't think they are right in calling our confidence 'faith'.

Faith involves judgement and voluntarily taking a serious risk. In the case of our everyday foundational belief of which we never express doubts it is impossible for us to believe otherwise, so the voluntary element and risk are removed.

11. And the moral is...

As the Dutchess would say to Alice… 'And the moral to all this is that…'

(1) Atheists should not use 'faith' as a facile way of rejecting beliefs that they think have poor foundations, and neither should they treat 'faith' as a dirty word.

(2) Theists should not use 'faith' as a quick and easy way to sidestep the demand to justify their beliefs.

Faith and fidelity, clearly have meaning and utility, and are virtues, within human relationships and institutions (even if often betrayed) but it makes no sense whatever when applied to a larger framework of existence, unless one already has a belief in a benevolent cosmic agency or principle such as God or karma. And whether one is justified in believing in such agencies is a question that cannot be answered by faith.