Freeing Faith from Fiction

            It’s a common misconception to believe that having faith is equated with purporting claims which disregard the given facts. A more appropriate label for this falsehood would be a lie, considering its ease of disabuse hasn’t resulted in its own marginalization. As reputed by many, faith is merely unwarranted belief due to absent or insufficient evidence. The speciousness of this pseudo-definition is merely due to its inordinate exposure on us, which results in its oblivious adoption, thereafter, becoming something taken for granted. Unfortunately, or perhaps by design, this ignorance of faith’s true definition obscures the vital role it serves in everyone’s daily life.

            Faith describes a belief that has gained a significant amount of one’s trust, rather than how that belief is justified or discovered. No one comes to believe anything because of faith itself. Instead, one’s faith concerns what is already known and believed. Disconcertingly, many insist that people of faith acquire and vindicate their beliefs by just believing or hoping they’re true. To the contrary, people of faith use reason to attain their beliefs by identifying and evaluating the available evidence. Only after a belief is adopted does anyone appreciate their faith in it. Faith is not a method or claim itself, rather, faith is an attitude toward a claim (one’s level of trust in it).

            We all have faith, regardless of what many have presumed from today’s secularized media culture. Every moment of one’s life involves maintaining faith in a variety of factors, which are unexhausted by any investigation, that anticipates the result of one’s total certainty. That is, one ordinarily depends upon their beliefs about the world, that lay beyond the reach of their full comprehension, as well as any attempt to justify it. However, one could object by citing the capability for functional adaptation to the environment, despite the lack of total certainty. A lack of total certainty in reality’s contingent facts shouldn’t be conflated with an inability to function in life. Still, although functional knowledge is pragmatic, it fails to disclose whether its usefulness stems from a fiction or a reflection of reality.

            An illustration of faith’s role in ordinary life can further elucidate its vital nature, for forming the capacity to perform any action in accordance with reality. Knowledge of aviation (piloting, navigation, aerodynamics, mechanical engineering, etc.) is far from being equally distributed among the public, because most occupational roles are outside that industry. Entertaining the notion that it’s impossible for some hypothetical person to learn any knowledge of aviation with total certainty, provokes a critical question: if this person were to use commercial air travel, then how would they regard the facts and narratives related to the shared experiences of airline passengers? Would it even be possible for such a person to have any capability to conceive of flying in a plane?

            This hypothetical individual is an analogy for the ordinary person, within the context of existential knowledge (commonly referred to as the “big” questions). Instead of lacking knowledge of aviation, people in general are uninformed of their absolute meaning, value, and purpose. Consider this hypothetical character boarding the plane. They lack any means to understand how anything about the plane works (beyond a lighthearted appeal to magic). Yet, what could they rely on to build any trust in the plane working as intended? If verifying that the given pilots are sufficiently competent and the plane’s parts are in working order, are the only authoritative criteria, then it’s impossible for this character to totally ensure the plane would fly as intended. Although, this hypothetical airline passenger is unable to be certain if the plane would work as intended, is there an alternative method to establish enough trust to allow the belief that the plane will work as intended?

            While totally certain knowledge is out of the question for the hypothetical airline passenger, other available facts can help increase their relative certainty that flying will be safe and work as intended. Several factors, such as the following, act as indications of certainty that planes work: the historical and cultural precedent of commercial flying; other’s assurances of familiarity with flying; pilot schools and those who are experts in flying; etc. An illimitable litany of these factors can reasonably convince one that commercial flying works as intended, despite the inability to achieve a decisive certainty of that; the same is true for all of one’s beliefs.

Everyone’s beliefs require evidence that satisfices (satisfies and suffices) their personal level of credulity, which justifies those beliefs they’re willing to place their faith in. Although, this process is typically unconscious, it establishes a personal demarcation between what’s plausible and improbable. Yet, sharing a culture demands tacit agreement on the anticipated level of credulity, to converge on evaluations of phenomena, which inform the appropriate variety of interactions one is expected to have with others. Given how embedded and pervasive the process of satisficing a belief is, its operation can be transparent to observation (like water to a fish), thereby remaining unnoticed amid its vital operations. Therefore, despite its ubiquity and significance, the faith one places into each of their beliefs is commonly overlooked and unaccounted for.

Fortunately, ignorance of the faith one has in each of their beliefs is not a necessary condition of the mind. Since no single viewpoint can encompass all others (akin to one’s incapacity for simultaneous perception of all space-time), an ultimate level of certainty is unattainable, due to the possibility one has yet to consider additional relevant information. Learning of the faith placed in each held belief requires suspending (or framing) one’s connotation of it, freeing the term from a mere association with religious belief. Some falsely assume that having faith always entails a theological dimension. Faith in the overwhelming majority of held beliefs needn’t require any accommodation to a religious deity. One’s inability to ascertain total certainty for all their held beliefs, the adoption of beliefs according to evidence that satisfices an arbitrary level of personal or cultural credulity, and the ramifications of critical prospective evidence for all claims, encourages an appreciation of the important and consistent role of faith, in every domain of a person’s life.

In the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Hebrews, he defined faith using, what some questionably claim, is ambiguous language. Several have seized on his declaration, to an assurance and conviction of hope for things not seen, as a concession of belief in that which cannot be verified (or seen). The elucidation from the appropriate and relevant interpretation to Paul’s words, can vanquish this, along with any other, disinformation that endeavors to pervert the Bible’s message of Christ’s loving sacrifice; to redeem every sinful person who has allowed His love to commandingly influence their heart, mind, soul, and strength. For Paul, that which is unseen refers to the possibility of additional, yet, unknown information, that disputes a given belief; unseen does not denote an absence of evidence. Paul is conveying the possibility of trust in Christ, notwithstanding the lack of a satisficing answer to every doubt. Far from urging ignorance, Paul is instructing one on how to believe in Christ with conviction, despite their failure to placate every doubt (due to their lack of total certainty).

In sum, expanding the secular understanding of faith’s purpose, from allowing one to hold convictions in the absence of evidence, to an evaluation of whether the available amount of evidence satisfices confidence in a belief, despite the impracticability of procuring total certainty in it. Hopefully, this novel and important reimagining of faith may elicit an understanding of its valuable role in answering life’s biggest questions, finding ultimate meaning, value, and purpose, and knowing God. Faith allows us to hold fast to what we believe is right among the perennial, invasive, and consistent onslaught of inextricably irreconcilable doubts. Faith is the only way for any person to authentically live according to their beliefs, amidst any of the guaranteed doubt, that’s begotten by the lack of total certainty in those same beliefs.

 

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the people of old received their commendation. By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.

Hebrews 11: 1-3 (ESV)