Faith

I've been thinking a lot about faith lately - trying to understand what it is and how it works - not faith so much in a religious sense, for I do not "do" religion, but faith as it relates to epistemology and faith as a doorway to spirituality and, ultimately, to a life of harmony and peace.

The idea of defining faith as "seeking understanding" was set forth by St. Augustine in his statement "Crede, ut intelligas" ("Believe in order that you may understand"). This statement extends beyond the sphere of religion to encompass the totality of knowledge. In essence, what this Carthaginian monk was saying is that faith must be present in order to "know" anything. In other words, one must assume, believe, or have faith in the credibility of a person, place, thing, or idea in order to have a basis for knowledge. Pretty hip for 4th century Algeria, huh?

One illustration of this concept is in the development of knowledge in children. A child typically holds parental teaching as credible (God help us all), in spite of the child's lack of sufficient research to establish such credibility empirically. That parental teaching, however ridiculous, becomes a foundation upon which future knowledge is built. Thankfully, parental instruction may be the historical foundation of future knowledge, but that does not necessarily make it a structural foundation.

Even adults attribute the basis for some of their knowledge to so called "authorities" in a given field of study. I believe that there is a structure called the Eiffel Tower in Paris, even though I have never seen it (or Paris for that matter) for myself - I have faith that it is in fact real and there. Unfortunately, people seem to have widely varying thresholds for qualifying or determining what is, or is not, a believable source. For example, how many times have you heard someone start out a sentence with: "you know, they say that....." The "authority" in this case is the proverbial "they", and it is quite alarming how often and how easily knowledge is built on these foundations of urban legend, wives' tales, half truths, quasi-science and rumor. This is often true, however, because one simply does not have the time or resources to evaluate all of his/her knowledge empirically and exhaustively. "Faith" is used instead.

It would appear from my observations that the primary filter or criteria used for making the decision of whether or not to place faith in a given proposition is popular opinion. It would also seem that if most people believe that a proposition is true, other people are inclined to go along with that proposition and similarly place faith in it as truth. Is this merely a time saver, or is it the construction of knowledge out of some perverse need for conformity. Remember that Mark Twain famously said, "When you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect." Sage advice in my opinion.

The good news in all of this is that everyone, even people who profess not to, have faith. What is even better news is that faith, and therefore knowledge, can be grown. Consider Plato's classical model of knowledge (see the venn diagram above). Of all the ideas or propositions that can exist, some are truths, some are beliefs and of the intersection of these two sets - propositions that are both true and believed - knowledge is a subset. Thus, by expanding the set of beliefs (growing faith), knowledge-space must expand. In any event, it seems clear that we humans have the unique ability to "choose" to believe whatever we want - this is "free will".

Let's consider for a moment how different all of the above is from what the "common man" would reply (at least in our culture) if asked to define faith. I have tried it and I generally get an earful (sometimes two earfuls) of dogma. Our culture is dominated by a Christian view of faith - a view that paints faith as synonymous with religion, and therefore dogma. This Christian view of faith (like the Islamic view) hales, for the most part, from the root of Jewish thought on faith, from which both Christianity and Islam sprang. Moses Maimonides, a twelfth century Moroccan rabbi, in his commentary on the Mishnah, compiled what he refers to as the Thirteen Articles of Faith from Judaism's 613 commandments (and you thought there were only 10) found in the Torah. It is easy to see the similarities these hold with Christian and Islamic Views - they are as follows:
1. Belief in the existence of the Creator, who is perfect in every manner of existence and is the Primary Cause of all that exists.
2. The belief in God's absolute and unparalleled unity.
3. The belief in God's noncorporeality, nor that He will be affected by any physical occurrences, such as movement, or rest, or dwelling.
4. The belief in God's eternity.
5. The imperative to worship Him exclusively and no foreign or false gods.
6. The belief that God communicates with man through prophecy.
7. The belief that the prophecy of Moses has priority (or Jesus or Mohammad).
8. The belief in the divine origin of the Torah (or the Gospels or the Koran).
9. The belief in the immutability of the Torah (or the Gospels or the Koran).
10. The belief in divine omniscience and providence.
11. The belief in divine reward and retribution.
12. The belief in the arrival of the Messiah and the messianic era (or His return for Christians).
13. The belief in the resurrection of the dead.

Bleeechhhh! Dogma! But be of good cheer, for I've found that it doesn't have to be this way. For a rather refreshing contrast, consider the Bahá'í Faith, which is practiced by more that six million people in over 200 countries. In the Bahá'í Faith, personal faith is viewed as a progressive understanding an individual goes through to learn the truth for oneself, towards the end that one may learn of God, of oneself, and also develop a praiseworthy character, not simply by knowing the truth, but by living honorably in relation to it. Different ways of learning the truth for oneself are all respected and culminate in a spirit of faith or indwelling spirit by which the Holy Spirit informs one's belief without recourse to senses, intellect, intuition, scripture, or experience and research. Wow! Sign me up! Do I get a T-shirt?

If the Bahá'í Faith too exotic for one's taste, one could always consider Buddhism. Faith in Buddhism is 1) A conviction that something is, 2) A determination to accomplish one's goals and 3) A sense of joy deriving from the other two. It doesn't get much simpler that this.

That's all for now - keep the faith.