Bob revisited a great blog post on Secular Faith and Religious Knowledge; a theme I like to go back to from time to time. I've blogged about faith and belief in the past, but haven't quite nailed the topic as well as I wanted to. I know I've come across too many intellectuals and pseudo-intellectuals (like Maher) that can't seem to question their own beliefs. For example, most people don't know much about climate change (or at least not enough where they could articulate the science to any great extent), but they have put their trust in science to the point where the science is settled. So settled, that some can make claims that the world is going to end in 12 years.
I'm not discounting that climate change may be a real thing, but from what source and to what ends? We know correlation and causation don't always line up in the way we'd like; so while we can accept some anthropogenic greenhouse gases may be a culprit, in the complexity of a global system we'll never be certain enough to know to what extent and therefore what cost-effective measures will truly mitigate the issue.
But if your belief has closed you up to other considerations, you've just found another religion (and not necessarily a better one). Bob says, “belief is generally a static thing. It takes the unknown and superimposes the known upon it, thus foreclosing the unknown. Once one believes something, the issue becomes settled, even if in reality it isn't.” So while we can be inclined to follow certain theories (some which may support other motivations we may have), “Nothing is truly settled until we have arrived at first principles, axiomatic truths, or empirico-sensory bedrock. Anything short of this is just arbitrary.”
It ultimately comes down to whom do we trust, because “Belief cannot establish its own legitimacy, but derives its legitimacy from someone who either knows, thinks he knows, or pretends to know.” We're all following someone's lead, but we'd be better off to watch out for the street dung along the way.
So while belief is generally static, faith can be more generative; allowing more more depth and coherence. Faith “is actually a subtle and sophisticated way to gain knowledge that transcends the senses, not a means to provide false but comforting answers and to vanquish curiosity.” We can stay with the question, and come from a place of not-knowing and knowing simultaneously. Instead of superimposing our cognitive ideas on reality, we inquire with our “psychospiritual probe...to explore transcendent reality” as it reveals itself to us.
When John Henry Newman said “Faith is a reasoning of a religious mind,” he was not discounting reason but emphasizing a Reason that comes from a deeper whole. He understood an truly integral person does not just use the modern version of reason to make judgments, but uses an accumulation of his/her sentiments, observations, experience, tradition, imagination, intuitions, and instincts to inform them. As such, faith is not anti-reason, but rather emphasizes the source of knowledge which lies beyond the competence of reason alone.
We need to inquire from within and without to get centered around anything. Otherwise we'll just arbitrarily go along with some belief we have just been indoctrinated into, or some idea that we have projected our subconscious drives onto. Better to have faith in the things that matter, and believe in the rest of it.