Faith has countless definitions. Consider how the word faith is used in this sentence: “Melvin subscribes to the Mormon faith, so he thinks his skivvies protect him from tsunamis.”[1]+ In this sentence, faith denotes a sectarian organization or a collection of religious tenets. We might similarly speak of the Catholic faith or the Muslim faith, assuming we have nothing better to do.
Now consider this sentence: “I have faith that my friend Rob, despite his name, will repay the $666 he borrowed.” This usage of the word faith denotes confidence accrued through practical experience. A chemist in her lab accrues faith about how familiar chemical interactions will unfold. The cheerful little orphan girl has faith that the sun will come up tomorrow.[2]+ This usage of the word faith is about establishing trust in a conclusion, as opposed to denoting a religious sect or a collection of tenets.
Consider again our friend Rob. It is possible that Rob will fail to repay the money he borrowed. We were cognizant of that risk when we granted him the loan. We may nonetheless have chosen to act in a trusting manner toward our wavering friend to strengthen our friendship. Though one’s behavior may be strategically out of proportion to one’s level of faith, one’s level of faith is never knowingly out of proportion to the evidence. Giving someone the benefit of the doubt is an acknowledgment rather than a denial of doubt. This kind of everyday faith, what we might call secular or rational faith, implies confidence proportioned to evidence (to the best of our ability). Believers and nonbelievers alike embrace secular faith.
Our third definition of faith, from Hebrews 11:1, is “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (KJV) or “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (NRSV). By this definition, faith is a strength of conviction exceeding the strength of the externally available evidence. Such belief, by trespassing beyond the perimeters of the evidence, conflicts with the rationalist’s mantra: “proportion belief to evidence.”
We thus witness tension between two competing views of how belief and evidence should align—or not align. Augustine boldly chose sides in this debate: “Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.”[3]+
Author Kahlil Gibran wrote, “Faith is an oasis in the heart which will never be reached by the caravan of thinking.”[4] He analogized reason to a barren, desertlike obstacle, something that faith must transcend. Former stand-up comedian Pat Condell scoffed that “faith transcends reason in the way that a criminal transcends the law.”[5]
The Christian philosopher Timothy McGrew disagrees with both Gibran and Condell. He contends that religious faith is eminently reasonable. But, if so, what, if anything, distinguishes religious faith from ordinary secular reason?
McGrew marks the distinction by noting that we use the word faith when a lot is at stake.[6] Really? I have faith that, when I step out of the room for two minutes, my wife will not drink my glass of buttermilk, which she maligns as “nasty spoiled milk.” I just used the word faith to describe a situation where little is at stake. Even if the word were used only when a lot is at stake, McGrew is simply describing the context in which the word is used. What we seek is a definition.
McGrew explains that the word faith in the New Testament is a translation of the Koine Greek word pistis, which means “trust.” Right, but our trust in Rob is proportioned to evidence. In contrast, religious faith, by which I mean the kind of faith unique to religion, the kind mentioned in Hebrews 11:1, entails trust beyond the evidence. Trust proportioned to the evidence logically precludes trust beyond the evidence. You can’t have both.
McGrew assures us that religious faith is evidence-based, though he concedes that it may not be perfectly proportioned to external evidence.[7] Religious faith, he says, often draws upon internal evidence, as when someone feels the presence of the Holy Spirit.
Fine, but plenty of secular claims also rely on internal evidence. For example, my belief that I have a headache rests solely on internal evidence. You would likely accept my headache claim based on my verbal statement alone. My statement qualifies as external evidence to you. If you wanted more external evidence, my peevishness and my swallowing aspirin might suffice. If you were highly skeptical of my headache claim, and if I were highly motivated to convince you, a cranial CT scan might add more external corroboration.
It would, of course, be rare for anyone to insist on such extraordinary evidence to confirm that someone else has a headache, and we would never seek external evidence of our own headache. My point is simply that all of us, theists and atheists alike, routinely rely on internal evidence. Hence, reliance on internal evidence does not mark the distinction between religious faith and secular faith.
That being so, why does McGrew emphasize that religious faith draws upon internal evidence? Is he suggesting that we should be especially receptive or uncritical toward reports of internal evidence specifically on the topic of religion? When is it appropriate to rely on internal evidence and when should we demand external evidence?
My headache (or yours) is far less consequential than gods, angels, and demons intervening in the world, so it makes practical sense to demand comparatively stronger evidence for the religious claims. If Noah’s flood and the exodus really happened, plenty of external evidence would be readily available. Unfortunately, not only is corroborating evidence wholly absent, but the available evidence positively disconfirms these fables.
McGrew attests to his internal evidence for God, but he can’t present that evidence for our review. The evidence accessible to us suggests that McGrew is insufficiently critical of his spiritual intuitions.
The poet William Wordsworth defined faith as “a passionate intuition.”[8] Wordsworth, like McGrew, was clearly alluding to internal evidence. Intuitions are not inherently rational or irrational. What is irrational is stubbornly clinging to an intuition that should be, but isn’t, proportionate to the totality of the available evidence.
I respect theists’ right to believe on whatever evidence seems appropriate to them. My objection is against those who presume that their internal evidence should carry weight with me or perhaps even stifle my expressions of doubt.
And that brings us to my own definition of religious faith as belief that is knowingly held without the strength of external evidence required by a reasonable third party. The phrase “knowingly held” is necessary to distinguish faith from ordinary mistaken beliefs—that is, beliefs incorrectly gauged to be externally warranted.
The faithful feel that they are justified in their beliefs, but they can’t provide adequate external evidence. Well, that happens to all of us at times. When it does, we should abide by the following two rules: (1) subject the evidence for and against our beliefs to critical examination and (2) understand that sensible listeners will not grant us a free pass when we make claims that don’t comport with the external evidence.
Religionists flout both these rules. They invoke “faith” to justify a lower evidentiary standard that applies specifically to religious beliefs, or more specifically to their own.
But not so fast.
There is another definition of faith that we need to consider.
If you’ve spent much time around a six-year-old, you have surely experienced a scenario in which the child asked an innocent question, such as “Why are some clouds higher in the sky than others?” No sooner did you answer the question than the child followed up by asking, “Why?” No matter how many answers you provide, the child tirelessly responds by asking why. Eventually you become bitterly impatient. If you find it in yourself to remain civil and cooperative, you will eventually find yourself fatigued. Persist in playing this sport long enough, however, and your head will become locked in a tilted position, your expression betraying a state of baffled contemplation. After a period of intense calculations and reflections far beyond your pay grade, you sigh and admit to the child and to yourself that you don’t know.
The lesson the child is so graciously imparting is that none of us has an infinite train of answers. We all ultimately hold beliefs that we can’t rationally defend. Among these beliefs is a category of beliefs that philosophers label as properly basic. The word “basic” signifies that these beliefs are the base or foundation of our structure of beliefs. The word “properly” signifies that these beliefs are special. Precisely how they are special is a topic of some debate. One criterion often used to designate properly basic beliefs is that those beliefs are essential to reason.
We naturally presume that the future will, in key respects, resemble the past. In other words, we naturally assume the principle of uniformity. This was first pointed out by the philosopher David Hume, who showed that we cannot provide a rational argument to prove that the future will resemble the past. It won’t work to argue that the future must resemble the past simply on the basis that it always has. That is a circular argument, taking for granted the very point in question. The belief that the future will resemble the past is not something we can learn strictly from experience. After all, our confidence that the future will resemble the past is the prerequisite mechanism of learning itself. Please note that I am not repudiating the principle of uniformity—and nor was Hume. If we are to reason at all, we must make the presumption of uniformity. The necessity of making this presumption is one of the criteria (perhaps the sole criterion) for designating properly basic beliefs. If you can toss an idea overboard and still reason, then that belief was not properly basic.
Although, as mentioned, philosophers debate among themselves about the appropriate criteria to identify properly basic beliefs, they generally agree on one central point: we all hold some properly basic beliefs. That means that even atheists and agnostics hold properly basic beliefs that they cannot rationally justify—at least not without engaging in circular reasoning. If properly basic beliefs can be accurately classified as faith, then we all accept beliefs on faith.
Are properly basic beliefs a form of faith?
In April 2017, I engaged briefly with Ozymandias Ramses II (“Ozy”) on this question. He and I appeared on a discussion panel of believers and nonbelievers on the New Covenant Group’s “The Place” podcast. Ozy argued that we should use the term faith for our properly basic beliefs, whereas I argued for sticking to the term properly basic and avoiding the word faith. Let me reiterate that our dispute was not over whether we have properly basic beliefs. Ozy and I agree that we all do hold such beliefs. The dispute was over whether we should classify such beliefs as faith.
I object to labeling properly basic beliefs as faith on pedagogical grounds. When trying to communicate clearly, one should avoid terminology that unnecessarily fosters confusion. Most believers who hear the word faith will assume it to mean the kind of religious faith with which they are familiar. I wish I had a nickel for every time a believer has cried out, “You skeptics also accept things on faith!” These believers have in mind instances in which skeptics have declared an opinion on a topic where the skeptic does not have all the facts. As I try to explain to these believers, holding a provisional opinion on incomplete data is not equivalent to religious faith; the skeptic is not advocating that we dissociate the intensity of our convictions from the quality of the evidence. If I were immersed in such a conversation with a believer, and if Ozy were to interject that everyone accepts beliefs on faith, his comment would only reinforce the believer’s misconception.
Ozy’s contention that we all believe things on faith may be helpful toward establishing rapport with a believer. Conversations often get off to a better start if we establish some common ground with our interlocutor before launching into a discussion of our differences. But softly cooing that we all believe on faith does not genuinely establish common ground, given how divergent our conceptions of faith are. By the way, I am not suggesting that Ozy classifies properly basic beliefs as faith for the purpose of establishing rapport with believers. He sincerely believes that the label of faith is accurate.
The Christian philosopher William Lane Craig agrees with Ozy that properly basic beliefs are a form of faith. Craig cites biblical references to the word “faith” and to the phrase “witness of the Holy Spirit” and opines that these references are to properly basic beliefs. Craig makes a point of contrasting these forms of faith with fideism, a word that denotes beliefs held without evidence. Craig is not alone in his campaign to market personal revelation or pious presuppositions as properly basic. The religious philosopher Alvin Plantinga likewise decrees that religious convictions are properly basic beliefs.
Ozy, like me, would raise objections against many faith-related claims by Craig and Plantinga. But Ozy nonetheless refuses to shrink from using the word faith. He insists that flawed arguments by religious philosophers or conflation of terms by everyday Christians should not cow us atheists into abandoning the perfectly legitimate term faith. As Ozy has pointed out, when we speak of evolutionary theory, we know that a segment of the Christian population will misconstrue the meaning of the word theory. They think it means something like speculation or conjecture, when in fact the term theory has a well-established meaning within the scientific community. The last thing we should do, Ozy protests, is dumb down our language.
That’s an excellent point. But when we examine more closely Ozy’s analogy between the words theory and faith, we discover that the analogy serves my side of this debate as well as it does Ozy’s. After all, the word faith has a well-established conventional definition within the religious community. It is Ozy, not everyday Christians, who is trying to inject some novel definition to compete with the established conventional definition.
I’m not arguing against novel definitions per se. Nonbelievers are free to appropriate words that have religious connotations. The word design, for instance, is routinely used by evolutionists as a shorthand when describing traits or features that give the appearance of conscious design. Evolutionists use the term design in a teleonomic sense rather than a teleological sense. Perhaps the word faith could be likewise dispossessed of its religious baggage. But, for reasons I won’t delve into here, the word faith will prove far more resistant to such secularizing efforts.
A reasonable person reading this blog post might accept that faith is a fitting label for properly basic beliefs. If you are such a person, let me give you something else to consider. Suppose, hypothetically, that I invite you to a zoo, exclaiming, “Come with me! There’s an amazing exhibit at the zoo! They have a living, breathing theropod dinosaur!”
So, we eagerly rush to the zoo. You examine their specimen and then turn to me and grumble, “Daniel, that is a pelican!”
I smile devilishly, “Yes. I know. Scientific consensus maintains that all modern birds, including pelicans, are theropod dinosaurs.”
You might award me points for technical accuracy, but you surely would not award me any points for effective communication. My labeling of the pelican as a theropod dinosaur would mislead, not only a scientifically illiterate person, but also any ordinary person expecting clear language. Sometimes it is best to call a pelican a pelican. Likewise, it is best to label properly basic beliefs as properly basic beliefs rather than faith, even if we think the label of faith is technically accurate.
A professor of paleontology might object that there are contexts in which there’s educational merit in identifying pelicans as dinosaurs. I gladly grant that point. Labeling a pelican as a dinosaur provides the professor with an opportunity to discuss with students the commonalities between modern birds and extinct dinosaurs, including their both having gizzards, the developmental relationship between scales and feathers, the presence of air pockets in their bones, the fact that both modern birds and extinct dinosaurs have built nests and laid eggs, and the similarities in their DNA. While our hypothetical paleontology professor makes a valid point, please notice that it applies only to students who antecedently appreciate the distinction between modern birds and extinct dinosaurs. The students must enter the classroom already able to tell a titmouse from a T-Rex. I welcome opportunities to compare and contrast faith with properly basic beliefs, but first we must be sure that our audience does not conflate the terms.
When Ozy and I crossed swords (rhetorically, not literally) over this issue, he characterized the difference between religious faith and properly basic beliefs as subtle, whereas I characterized the difference as radical. Given that Ozy and I share similar perspectives about religious faith and about properly basic beliefs, why do we voice such starkly different appraisals as to whether the difference is subtle or radical? I decided that if I could resolve this quandary, I might be closer to settling our definitional squabble.
Here’s something to keep in mind about definitions. Using the same term with wildly dissimilar meanings is not inherently a bad idea. Consider, for example, the word dog. This word can denote a canine or it can be used as slang for a sexually promiscuous man. Those are two very different things. We rely on the conversational context to determine which meaning is intended.
Here’s another example. The philosopher David Hume coined a new definition for the word impression. He used the word impression to denote a lively conception or perception. Within the context of his book, it was easy to discern whether he intended the conventional definition of this word or his novel definition.
If using the same word for radically different concepts does not foster confusion, and if (as I argued) faith and properly basic beliefs are radically different, doesn’t that weaken my case against using the same word? Conversely, if Ozy is right that the difference between faith and properly basic beliefs is subtle, does that ironically strengthen my position over his? It began to appear to me that Ozy and I had each been inadvertently arguing against our own positions.
We have seen that using the same word for radically different concepts does not necessarily foster confusion. Let’s now examine the flip side of this coin. Does using the same term with very similar meanings foster confusion?
Consider, for example, the words objective and subjective. Each of these words has been assigned so many subtly different definitions that students of philosophy face a real challenge. The philosopher Richard Joyce once remarked, “So many debates in philosophy revolve around the issue of objectivity versus subjectivity that one may be forgiven for assuming that someone somewhere understands this distinction.” I sometimes think we could relieve ourselves of three quarters of the difficulty in understanding philosophy if we just didn’t have to memorize every philosopher’s idiosyncratic vocabulary. In any case, our proclivity to confuse two closely-related meanings of a word does not always motivate us to invent a new word.
After pondering the use of a single umbrella term for multiple concepts of varying likeness, here is what I concluded. If faith and properly basic beliefs appear to differ subtly in a key identifying aspect, but otherwise have widely divergent characteristics that are prone to be under-appreciated, then lumping them together under a single term will be especially likely to foster confusion. And that, I contend, is precisely the situation we face with regard to applying the term faith to our properly basic beliefs.
The key identifying aspect—the most conspicuous feature that religious faith and properly basic beliefs share—is that they pertain to our holding of unwarranted beliefs. That’s undeniably an impressive-sounding commonality, though I think it is more superficial than it might initially appear.
If we look beneath this superficial commonality, we find striking differences. For instance, we are biologically programmed to hold properly basic beliefs. Everyone holds these beliefs. I am, of course, using a more restrictive definition of properly basic than do people like William Lane Craig and Alvin Plantinga. In my view, religious beliefs held on faith are not biologically programmed into us. Granted, we may have some psychological or cognitive biases that predispose us to religious beliefs, but the beliefs themselves are not hardwired into us. Indeed, religious apologists could not promote faith as a virtue unless they perceived there to be a voluntary aspect to accepting beliefs on faith. God gave us free will, we are told ad nauseam.
Think about Dorothy in the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz. The tornado dropped her house on the wicked witch of the East. Dorothy was hailed by the Munchkins as heroic. The Munchkins saw Dorothy’s eradication of the witch as an act of valor. That’s how faith is often viewed—as virtuous and laudatory. But, in actuality, Dorothy did not voluntarily kill the witch. And that’s the way we view properly basic beliefs: embracing them is not a voluntary act.
I wish to stress this distinction. As we have seen in debates over homosexuality, it matters whether you speak of it as something that occurs to a person involuntarily or as a willful choice. Likewise, our legal system treats defendants quite differently depending on whether the defendant’s actions were willful or involuntary. The distinction between faith and properly basic beliefs is even more pronounced, since there are striking differences both in the content of the beliefs and in the epistemic mechanisms by which these beliefs are formed.
Ozy cites as a similarity between faith and properly basic beliefs that they are held intensely. If we examine the intensity levels carefully, however, the differences quickly outshine the similarities. Properly basic beliefs are held by all conscious animal species with no known exception. At any given moment, animals of innumerable species, scattered around the globe, are betting their lives on their properly basic beliefs. In contrast, appeals to faith are limited to a subset of a single primate species, and those appeals are expressed in voluntaristic rhetoric: “Ya gotta have faith!”
Moreover, the persistence of faith depends upon active encouragement through elaborate social and political infrastructure, censorship, and indoctrination. Society’s extensive investment in promoting faith is a symptom of faith’s inherent weakness, not its strength. Despite this intense pro-faith campaign, for every atheist who converts to religion, four religionists convert to atheism. Comparing the intensity of properly basic beliefs to the intensity of faith is like comparing the intensity of the strong nuclear force to that of the electromagnetic force. They occupy entirely different scales of magnitude. I therefore classify the intensity with which beliefs are held as one of the major dissimilarities between faith and properly basic beliefs.
A second dissimilarity is that properly basic beliefs, being essential to rationality, are not only rationally unjustifiable, but are also unfalsifiable. How could we falsify beliefs that are essential to reason? Who would undertake such a paradoxical project as to falsify reason using reason? In contrast, beliefs defended by religious faith are not only often falsifiable, but are in fact falsified. The belief that Earth is six thousand years old is a case in point.
The third dissimilarity is that properly basic beliefs are, as mentioned above, essential to reason, whereas religious faith actively subverts reason—that’s its raison d’être, as anyone acquainted with Martin Luther would attest.
The fourth dissimilarity is that properly basic beliefs are prehistoric, generated by neural circuits that evolved hundreds of millions of years ago, whereas the notion of religious faith is largely a post-Enlightenment invention by theologians striving to circumvent reason.
The fifth dissimilarity is that properly basic beliefs are non-normative—they’re descriptive rather than prescriptive—whereas faith is normative, as we see in the Proverbs 3:5 depiction of faith as a virtue.
The sixth dissimilarity is that the innateness of our adherence to properly basic beliefs implies doxastic involuntarism, whereas religious faith implies doxastic voluntarism.
The seventh dissimilarity is reflected in the disparity between the intellectual merit of the ideas to which faith and properly basic beliefs conduce. Properly basic beliefs are essential to our non-basic inferences. They are thus prerequisites to all rationality, as well as to philosophers’ efforts to enumerate an inventory of fallacies to which we humans are prone—a task vital to improving our critical thinking. In contrast, religious faith strives to lower the standards of evidence required to embrace particular dogmatic tenets. Whereas properly basic beliefs undergird and nurture reason, faith undermines and desiccates reason.
These dissimilarities between religious faith and properly basic beliefs amply justify my use of the adjective radical. Such radical differences, when coupled with the comparative superficiality of the resemblance between religious faith and properly basic beliefs, constitute a reasonable argument against lumping them together under the umbrella term faith. Moreover, there are pedagogical reasons to prefer the term properly basic. It is both more descriptive and less likely to foster confusion.
If, having read to the end of this blog post, you remain unpersuaded on all these points, then I wish to thank you for your perseverance. I will close by urging a compromise. Please consider adopting a term such as “animal faith” for properly basic beliefs in recognition of the dissimilarity to religious faith.
[1] To be clear (and fair), Mormons don’t literally believe that their panties, known officially as temple garments, magically protect them from natural disasters. Their undies simply keep them mindful of their spiritual commitments. For more info, there’s a video at www.mormon-underwear.com, which I assure you is not a porn site—or if it is, it’s not a very good one.
[2] Or maybe the sun will come “out” tomorrow, but that’s strictly a personal choice and we should respect that.
[3] Source: Augustine’s sermons. Similar quotations: “Believe so that you may understand. For, unless you believe, you will not understand” (Sermon 119: Converts and the Creed). “I have already told you: you believe now, afterwards you will see” (Sermon 350: Sermon on Seeing). “For, if you require me to show you what God promises you, I cannot do so. However, you have heard the words with which the Gospel of John ended: ‘Blessed are they who do not see and yet believe.’ You wish to see and so do I. Let us believe together and we shall see together” (Sermon 259: For the Octave of Easter).
“Full text of ‘The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation Volume 38,’” Internet Archive, https://archive.org/stream/fathersofthechur009512mbp/fathersofthechur009512mbp_djvu.txt.
[4] Kahlil Gibran, Sand and Foam, 1926.
[5] Pat Condell, “Your Faith Is a Joke,” December 16, 2010, YouTube video, 6:26, https://youtu.be/P4dSiHqpULk.
[6] “Peter Boghossian vs Tim McGrew – A Manual for Creating Atheists,” May 23, 2014, in Unbelievable, podcast, MP3 audio, 1:25:00, https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Saturday/Unbelievable/Episodes/Peter-Boghossian-vs-Tim-McGrew-A-manual-for-creating-atheists.
[7] “Peter Boghossian vs Tim McGrew – A Manual for Creating Atheists,” Unbelievable.
[8] William Wordsworth, “Skepticism and Modern Poetry,” Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 115 (January-June, 1874), 226.