I Want to Believe...

But I don't. Some thoughts on the nature of belief and why it's better to remain an unbeliever.

As I was falling asleep last night, I had an unsettling thought: I’m not sure I actually believe in anything. I have no credo, no philosophy, no religion, no dogma, no faith. There are things I want to be true. There are things I “know,” but I am even ready to toss those out at the first sign of trouble: give me a good “the moon landing was faked” documentary and I will watch it every single time. There are concepts in which I profess allegiance - freedom of speech, for example. But that’s a different kind of belief, more like fandom.

We call people who don’t believe in anything “nihilists,” but I don’t believe I’m one of those either because a nihilist takes a deliberate stance against belief – which itself is a form of belief - whereas I am willing to believe pretty much anything but remain unconvinced about pretty much anything beyond the utterly provable.

So that got me thinking about the nature of belief. What does it mean to believe? And what is the difference between believing and knowing? As far as I can tell, there is none. To believe in Santa is to know Santa will be arriving via chimney on Christmas Eve with a bag filled with presents for good little girls and boys. If you don’t know Santa will be making an appearance, how can it be said you truly believe? Is belief just knowledge plus wiggle room? Or is belief more like supersized hope?

To me, belief has to be evidence-based. When I say I “believe” something, I just mean that the evidence suggests that something is more likely than not, but that doesn’t give me the assurance I imagine believers possess. When a Christian says they believe Jesus Christ was the son of God, I take that to mean that they have no doubts about such a bizarre supposition. Then I have a hard time believing that they believe it. In other words, I don’t even believe in other people’s beliefs.

What would it mean to actually believe something like that? Or to believe that crystals have healing energy? Or that we can communicate with the dead, as I wrote about yesterday?

Fundamentally, beliefs such as these would mean that everything we “know” is incorrect, that the world as I have come to understand it is not the world in which I live. Conversely, if the world I live in is denuded of the mystery and wonder that belief provides then the world is a lesser place. I cannot dismiss the strange and mystical experiences people have had, nor can I dismiss my own, but at the same time, I find it impossible to fully bridge the divide between materialism and non-materialism. In other words, as The X Files used to say: I want to believe. I just don’t (at least not all the way, which is the same thing as saying I don’t).

Must I?

How are beliefs formed? Through inculcation, ritual, communal acceptance. Belief is maintained through ritual and societal pressure. “Evidence” is often presented to those professing beliefs – “Look, Santa’s cookie and carrot plate is empty!” – but would such evidence be necessary if the belief system was actually as sturdy as professed? Why would we need evidence of God’s goodness if we believe God to be good?

The only explanation I can think of belief must be different from certainty, and must require continual support to maintain. In other words, doubt must be a necessary component of belief.

Which seems paradoxical.

I don’t doubt, for example, that basic arithmetic will function the same every time I calculate the sum of two and two. I understand the concept on a fundamental level. The law of 2 + 2 requires no trust on my part, no evidence beyond that which was first explained to me. I don’t need to confirm its truth. Nor do I ask others to accept it as truth. I have been persuaded as much as humanly possible that such a concept is immutable. I have no belief in it; arithmetic is not an article of faith for me.

Moreover, I can extrapolate from I subject I understand, arithmetic, to a subject I do not, calculus. I have never taken calculus and know nothing about it. I’m not even sure what it is other than (I think) Isaac Newton created it to (I think) predict the motion of planetary orbits or some such thing. I know it works because people have been using it since then with the same unfettered success. So, although I personally cannot calculate planetary orbits, I know that calculus can be used to do such a job. I don’t have to take its efficacy on faith. It works. If it didn’t, a lot of high school teachers would be out of jobs.

Moving over to my own predilections, I often say I “believe” in UFOs. What do I mean by this? I mean that evidence I’ve seen suggests that UFOs are an actual phenomenon that has been with us for centuries, we don’t understand what they are, where they come from, or why they are here. Beyond that, I don’t have a belief, only a confusing tangle of theories that sort of fits the evidence and sort of does not. I am willing to accept any explanation for their presence, but I hope we do not find such an explanation.

And that, I think, is the crux of my relationship with belief. Belief implies a higher level of certainty than hope. We profess a “belief” in order to provide a solution to mystery. It transforms the unknowable to the known. Which is exactly what I do not want. Which raises the question: can belief survive in a mechanistic, rational world? I suspect not.

Belief is the God of the gaps, the answer to the unknown. Extend that further and belief is also the answer to that which cannot be known. A mechanistic, rational universe suggests that everything, eventually, can be known. If that is the case, there’s no use for belief. There’s also no use for God.

Far be it from me to disagree with Nietzsche, but I think he was wrong to declare God dead. In fact, I would say the opposite is true: God is not only alive, God is thriving. (Finger snap in Z formation.) The more we learn about the world, the more need we have for Something to fill in the gaps we keep creating. Every answer we find provokes a thousand more questions. The more we discover about the world, it seems, the less knowable it becomes.

God is commonly understood to be the First Progenitor and Keeper of All Knowledge. To know God is to know All. Is such a thing possible in a rational world? I doubt it, which leads me to believe that the world is irrational, which does not seem to make sense on its face, which leads me back to the world being rational, which also does not make sense given everything that we “know.” So either our understanding of the possible falls short or our understanding of the world since the Enlightenment is woefully lacking. Belief is the glue that connects the two worlds.

When I was in bed last night thinking about my lack of belief, I realized I like it that way. Belief closes off possibilities, whereas uncertainty flings them open. Uncertainty is the engine that powers belief; belief is the regulator that limits uncertainty. I prefer to live in the world of the uncertain, in which all possibilities as to the nature of reality remain available, as well as the possibility that the further we drill down into the workings of the world the less certainty we will find it. After all, quantum mechanics tell us that nothing is certain, only a series of probabilities. Everything remains possible because nothing remains fixed. Do you believe that? I do.