One philosopher defines faith as belief in the absence of sufficient evidence. Is it proper and responsible to believe anything under these conditions? Why not just confess ignorance, at least for the moment, until sufficient evidence is found?
In favor of faith is its inevitability; we’re ALL people of faith. We can’t prove that the future will resemble the past, which is the belief behind inductive reasoning, yet we all believe it. If we didn’t believe it, we’d have no reason to avoid touching a hot stove just because it burned us last time.
You might think that multiple experiences of the future resembling the past gives me evidence that the future will resemble the past, so inductive reasoning is based on sufficient evidence, not on faith. But all of those experience of the future resembling the past are in the past. You can rely on those past experiences as guides to the future only if you already believe that the future will resemble the past. So the universal belief that the future will resemble the past is based on faith, because past experiences are ruled out as evidence.
Another belief used in science and common sense is that every event has a cause. This belief is also based on faith. Human beings can’t verify that every event has a cause because we haven’t examined every event and found a cause. We just assume that whenever something happens, there’s a cause. This assumption has helped science by motivating searches for causes that have enabled us develop technologies that improve people’s lives in many areas, including transportation, communications, and health care. But we still lack evidence that EVERY event has a cause. We accept this on faith (except in quantum physics, where events are often explained statistically, not individually).
The inescapability of faith among human beings has led some religious thinkers to claim that faith in God is also justified. Faith in God led people like Martin Luther King, Jr. to believe that the moral arc of history will bend toward justice, as it has to some extent due to his activism. Some thinkers identify belief in God with faith in the eventual realization of uplifting possibilities that lead to human fulfillment. And statistics reveal that on average in the United States, people of faith are healthier, happier, and more generous with their time and money than most others.
But these findings don’t really make faith in God equivalent to faith that the future will resemble the past or that every event has a cause. In the first place, these latter faiths are universal because they’re necessary to lead a safe and productive life. Physical survival depends on these faiths. Faith in God, by contrast, helps many people, but isn’t universal. If it were universal, there would be no need for the faithful to try to convince atheists that God exists. No one goes around preaching that the future will resemble the past.
A second difference is that faith in causation and inductive reasoning spurs inquiry. We look to the past to learn about how the world works, both the natural world and human institutions, to guide our efforts to improve the world. We look for causes of events to discover how we might produce desired outcomes by manipulating reality in productive ways. Faith in God doesn’t have the same intrinsic relationship to inquiry. It sometimes spurs inquiry, as many scientists are people of faith who see themselves as uncovering God’s secrets. But faith has often been invoked to denounce scientific findings that the faithful find disturbing, including the theory of evolution.
Related to its role in suppressing unwelcome science is the problem of idolatry. The Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam disapprove of idolatry, which is the treatment of a human creation, such as a statue, as if it were sacred. However, the history of these same religions betrays a tendency among its adherents unknowingly to practice idolatry. They tend to regard not statues, but their own human beliefs as if they were sacred. The beliefs are often about God or the meaning of God’s commands. These are properly regarded as sacred in these religions, but any HUMAN BELIEFS about God or His Word aren’t sacred because they reflect the limits of human understanding, which is finite and fallible. Dogmatic religious certainty is a form of idolatry.
Finally, religious faith can be used to unite people, as everyone is considered equally to be a child of God, or to divide them, as the unrecognized idolatry of dogmatism impels many people of faith to denigrate the human worth of dissenters.
So faith is good when held with humility and respect for humanity; it has a very positive track record. When it’s dogmatic and intolerant, however, it’s better to embrace uncertainty.
You may respond by e-mail at wenz.peter@uis.edu.
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