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Romashka comments on Making My Peace with Belief - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (42)
Maybe 'faith' would be a more fitting word?
Faith isn't quite right; I can recognize that a belief is useful without believing that it is true.
Does "faith" imply any more endorsement than "belief" does? To me, I think it actually carries less implication of actually-believing-in.
Atheists frequently make the same mistake religious people do, in assuming those that don't share their beliefs are merely -pretending- not to share their beliefs, and secretly, in their heart, believe as they do.
Religious people may use the fact that atheists use the word "God" as proof that they secretly believe, because the word connects to a concept in their own mind that it doesn't connect to in an atheist's. Saying "God doesn't exist" is a denial of the self-evident to the religious person, in the same way "I don't exist" is a denial of the self-evident to the atheist.
Atheists think that when religious people avoid putting their faith to the test, they're afraid it will fail. They're unaware that faith -demands- that tests of faith fail, because that's how faith is proven. They expect God to prove himself to man, whereas the religious expect man to prove himself to God.
I'm not sure what relevance any of that has to the question I asked, unless you're suggesting that I am one of those mistaken atheists who assume religious people are merely pretending. As it happens, I'm not. Neither "belief" nor "faith" is Secret Religious People's Code for "pretending to believe". Sometimes (quite rarely, I think) people do just pretend to believe; sometimes (quite often, I think) they simply and straightforwardly believe with perfect sincerity and great confidence; sometimes (most often, I think) something in between, usually still comfortably in the region where I'll happily agree that the belief is genuine. It seems to me that on average cases where the word "faith" is used are, if anything, just slightly further towards the "pretending" end of that scale than cases where the word "belief" is used. That's all.
"I'm not sure what relevance any of that has to the question I asked, unless you're suggesting that I am one of those mistaken atheists who assume religious people are merely pretending."
"It seems to me that on average cases where the word "faith" is used are, if anything, just slightly further towards the "pretending" end of that scale than cases where the word "belief" is used."
Look to one. Look to the other. Look to my third paragraph again. These three ideas interact in a very important way, which is that I don't think you know what the word "faith" means to religious people. It attaches to a different concept in your brain than in theirs.
ETA: Which is to say, I think, if you were religious, looking at the exact same set of uses of the word "faith", you wouldn't feel that more were pretending than not.
I don't feel that more are pretending than not. You are misunderstanding what I write, in ways that contradict my explicit statements, and at this point I'm finding it difficult to escape the conclusion that for some reason you are so anxious to see me making the mistake you wrongly think I am making that it matters little what I actually say. And, while totally misunderstanding what I write, you are being patronizing at me about it. This is slightly annoying, and I hope you will not be too badly annoyed because I am now going to be patronizing at you in turn; I have at least the excuse of actually being right.
Here is a scale drawn in beautiful ASCII. I have marked on it the left and right endpoints L and R, and two other points on the scale A and B.
L--------------------------------A-B----R
Suppose someone says: It seems to me that on this scale point A is, if anything, just slightly further towards the "left" end of that scale than point B.
I claim that (1) they are correct, (2) both A and B are in fact nearer R than L, and (3) there is no inconsistency between 1 and 2.
In case I have not yet made it sufficiently explicit:
None of that is any different from what I said before, and in particular the bits that explicitly contradict the view you are trying to foist on me are all there in the grandparent of this comment too. But perhaps I have now made it clear enough not to be misunderstood?
Until age 36 I was actively religious myself (Christian, as it happens). My wife and plenty of my friends still are. I have run Bible studies and (to my shame) helped to lead Christian children's holidays. I have (this proves nothing but may be some kind of evidence) more theology books still on my bookshelves than, I would guess, at least 95% of actively religious university graduates (I include the last two words because otherwise the comparison would be kinda unfair). I am, furthermore, not actually an idiot. As a consequence, I have a pretty good idea of how religious people use the words "faith" and "belief". (Part of the answer: Different religious people, on different occasions, use them quite differently.)
You can get a (very incomplete but perhaps still informative) idea of some of what I think religious people sometimes mean by "faith" from this thing that I wrote around the time I stopped being a Christian. Or you could read C S Lewis's essay "On obstinacy in belief" which touches on these matters, not because I agree with everything he says (that would imply still belonging to his religion, which I don't) but because it's a pretty good exposition of some things religious people say about faith and belief, and I'm very familiar with it, and therefore what it says is part of my understanding of how religious people use those words.
In an I-hope-not-too-futile attempt to forestall a possible objection: No, I am not saying that, e.g., what C S Lewis is describing is a matter of pretending to believe things one really doesn't, and if you think I should be then you need to read what I wrote again until you stop thinking it, or else ask me for further clarification.
I see you; do you see me?
I think you're wrong, and I think the reasons you are wrong are subtle. You think I'm wrong, and you appear to think the reasons I am wrong are obvious. Assume, for a moment, that I, also, am not an idiot.
I'd say the fact that you stopped being a Christian might suggest you have a different relationship to faith than those who do not. You expect "God to prove himself to man" - faith is about a belief in God, and if there's insufficient evidence, your faith is misplaced. To a religious person, faith is about them proving themselves to God; evidence or non-evidence of God doesn't actually enter into it.
Your comment about having faith in people is apt, but inverted; faith isn't expecting God to live up to God's promises, however, it's about them living up to what God expects them to live up to. Faith isn't trusting God, it's living up to God's trust in them.
Which makes more sense when you go back to the root of the word - allegiance, fidelity, loyalty. Its misuse as a referent to belief is because belief is the -first- of the loyalties (debts?) owed to God. As a virtue, it is more than belief, however.
As a word to stand in for belief - it stands in for belief on the basis of loyalty, rather than evidence. As a word to mean belief, it is inherently flawed, because that's not what it is.
Well, you see, two comments ago you were telling me I was wrong for obvious reasons. You told me that I don't understand and if I understood I wouldn't think X, when in fact I do not think X.
I will not presume to guess how subtle the reasons are for which you are wrong. But you assuredly told me, with every sign of great confidence, that I think something I don't in fact think. You are now doubling down (in that you continue to insist that I am wrong) while backing off (by now saying you think I'm subtly wrong, where what you were accusing me of before was in no way subtle). So I think you may if you please claim either intellectual or moral high ground here -- but not both.
I do, I assure you.
No shit, Sherlock. On the other hand, (1) it's not so clear that it means I had a different relationship to faith from that of other Christians, (2) the fact that I lived as a Christian among Christians for decades and remain married to one and friends with plenty more means that I'm not exactly starved of opportunities to discover or remind myself how they think, and (3) you are still writing as if all religious people think and feel the same way about these things, which is demonstrably false.
The New Testament's use of phrases like "faith of X" is notoriously ambiguous, and indeed "faith" can mean "faithfulness" in the sense of trustworthiness rather than anything to do with belief. (And, I think more often, "trusting a person" rather than anything to do with factual belief.) However, I think you are simply factually wrong if you are claiming that most use of the word "faith" by religious people in general, or Christians in particular, has that meaning; and wronger than wrong if you are claiming that "faith" can't reasonably be used to denote something closely akin to belief, which I think is what would need to be true to invalidate the suggestion that you use the word "faith" rather than "belief" to describe the particular sort of thing you feel more positive about these days than you used to.
(I remark that earlier in the thread you were clearly happy to use the word "faith" to describe a particular kind of belief or something very closely akin thereto; taking "faith" to mean anything like "trustworthiness" makes total nonsense of the comment I just linked to.)
Now, of course you may quite reasonably feel that my opinion about how Christians use the word "faith" is of no value since I am not a Christian. So let me pull a few books off my shelves and see what they say about it. (No cherry-picking; I just took the first books I found that looked like they might have something to say on the point.)
That'll do for now. The point is just this: These books -- written by Christians, mostly for Christians -- are utterly irreconcilable with the claim that "faith" in the Christian context mostly means something like trustworthiness. They mostly take it to mean a kind of belief or a kind of trust or both. Of course they also claim that it's a belief-and/or-trust with a divine origin and all sorts of marvellous consequences, and that it should have consequences for how one lives; but they do not appear to agree at all with your suggestion that it's a misuse to use "faith" to denote a kind of belief.
(They do, to be sure, make it clear that for them "faith" is not simply a synonym for "belief", but I never said or suggested or thought that it is. I mention this merely because some of what you've written seems to suggest that you think I do think that.)
I should maybe add that I've focused on Christianity here because (1) that's the religion I know best, (2) I'm pretty sure it's the religion you know best, and (3) it's one of the not-actually-so-many for which notions of "belief" and "faith" are actually a big deal.