What is the experience of faith?

Have just read "What is faith?" on Digital Bits Skeptic and have to admit some disappointment. Great title but sadly a rather short article whose focus is on the pronouncements of faith rather than the experience of faith. My feeling is that looking at the ejaculations of the religious faithful under a rational microscope merely defines the linguistic boundaries between faith and reason but tells us little about what it means to actually have faith.

Faith is a state of mind and trying to accurately describe one's own state of mind - never mind trying to comprehend someone else's - is a subtle task. We are, however, fairly good at describing changes of state. If I say "I'm feeling happy" then I think most people will know what I mean. The state of happiness comes and goes and manifests against some background state because of its transience. If I were in a permanent unalloyed state of happiness I would probably cease using that statement or it would take on a different meaning to that in general use.

This seems to me the basis for the fundamental lack of communication and understanding between the faithful and faithless. However, the testimonies of people who have switched sides, or flipped states, are revealing. Taking Christians as our subjects the overwhelming feeling that accompanies this switch is that of falling into, or out of, love. Dropping out of Christianity is uncannily similar to falling out of love. Suddenly the mist has cleared and the object of our affection is revealed as the ordinary, flawed individual that they always were - or the mundane, flawed supernatural construct that it always was.

I think the choice of the word 'love' is not accidental. It feels like love because it is love; in this case the love is directed towards a supernatural construct rather than another human. All the reasons we wish to give for our love are mere excuses, rationalisations for an irrational state. Perhaps arational is a better word as love is neither rational nor antirational but is just an experience that, as aware beings, we seek to justify and accommodate into our personal mental landscape.

This process of accommodation is what we usually refer to as rationalisation. But the problem here is that we are masters at deluding ourselves. We cannot step outside our own state of mind (although it is possible to achieve a high degree of detachment through various meditations) so that our language is itself clouded by the particular state we are in. The way out of this potential self-delusion is through philosophy and science. The sciences we currently have are the consequences of medieval philosophy. The quest of the philosopher is to question everything in order to reach understanding; and even then continue to question our understanding. This can be achieved by the individual to some extent by externalising thoughts by the simple process of writing them down.

It is now time to question faith; not the articles of faith but the experience of faith. It is, after all, one of many human experiences and there is no logical reason why it should be accorded some special treatment. There is already a barrage of propaganda from the fideist religions: the so-called 'God spot' being the most prominent. But so long as there are philosophers in the world then there is a chance we may get to the truth. By adding faith to our list of human emotions means it can be subjected to the same scrutiny as other emotions such as happiness, anger, fear, hatred and love. The aim of the philosopher is to ask the right questions; the aim of the scientist is to answer them. Game on!

Beliefs and Opinions: A Thought Experiment

One of the many rhetorical devices used by the faithful is the argument that science is also just a belief system. It is unfortunate that the word 'belief' has two distinct meanings that are easily confused if one is not careful. Here I propose a thought experiment to prise out how psychologically and emotionally different they are. It would, indeed, be better if one were to use different words, such as faith and opinion, to delineate their separate natures - but that would destroy the religious rhetoric.

Let's assume you have a religious faith, whatever it might be. Your faith is in a particular set of doctrines and probably a particular deity. From the point of view of a believer, the beliefs are obvious, self-evident truths. Now, is it possible to have two faiths simultaneously?

Is it possible to be, for example, a Roman Catholic and a Zen Buddhist at the same time? Is it possible to be a Jehovah's Witness and a Hassidic Jew at the same time? Is it possible to hold two distinct and different religious beliefs simultaneously?

The beliefs have to be distinct in that any fusion between two belief systems is a form of syncretism and thereby results in a third belief system that is different from its two original components. Many cults have developed as tributaries from one main source, but they still regard themselves as different with a distinct set of beliefs.

I propose that it is not possible to hold two different religious beliefs simultaneously. It is just not possible to have the emtional certainty in two conflicting beliefs, such as in an eternal heaven and hell and in rebirth, at the same time.

Now, let us add to our thought experiment some simple scientific 'beliefs'. "I believe the sun will rise tomorrow." That is not a particularly controversial belief but perfectly scientific. Is it possible to hold such a 'belief' and at the same time hold on to one's religious faith? There are innumerable scientific propositions about our universe that are indisputable. There are also many scientific propositions that are still hypotheses waiting for verification or falsification. By phrasing every scientific proposition in the future tense gives them all the status of hypotheses waiting for personal testing.

This is not the place to delve more deeply into the philosophy of science; remember, this is a psychological thought experiment. The point here is that the religious believer thinks that by labelling scientific propositions as 'belief' he is according them equal status to the doctrines of his religious belief. But they are not the same thing - they are two different states of mind. That is why it is perfectly possible to be a religious believer and a scientist at the same time. The vast majority of science does not even impinge on religious doctrines. When it does, then the individual has a dilemma.

I am becoming convinced that religious belief is an emotional state of mind, somewhat like being in love. Try telling someone that the love they have for their partner is a delusion! What kind of reaction would you get? Try also telling someone who is not in love that their "non-love" is actually in reality a form of love! What reaction would you get then? This aspect of belief needs some research but would be interesting to see who would have the bravery to fund it.

For the religious believer, trying to call scientific propositions beliefs is the sign of self defence. Imagine someone told you that your partner had been unfaithful to you. The reactions are myriad, from disbelief to outright divorce. The emotional turmoil is very real but love is not so easy to turn off, even in the face of evidence that it isn't reciprocated.

These last thoughts require another article. For now, it suffices to say that religious faith is an altogether different state of mind to opinions held about scientific theories - our language should reflect this difference rather than obscure it.


Originally published at AAKOM.

In the footsteps of Galileo science must value faith and reason

In the recent edition of the Osservatore Romano (16-17 Feb 2009) there is a very short piece entitled "In the footsteps of Galileo science must value faith and reason." The message is spelled out in the first sentence, stating that scientists are called upon by the Vatican to not renounce "neither reason nor faith". To suggest that scientists do not value reason is an insult of the highest order. But the abuse of language which is one of the hallmarks of Vatican propaganda needs not only to be exposed for what it is, but also needs some explaining so as to highlight how truly misguided and false is the whole Catholic edifice.

What do we mean by reason? More importantly, what do Catholics mean when they use the word? A look at the Catholic Encyclopedia is necessary to discover what these people are really talking about. However deluded their view of the universe, they are sadly a part of it and their effects need to be mitigated. We perhaps have no argument with calling reason a cognitive faculty, but the Encyclopedia goes on to say that "Kant employed the word in a transcendental sense as the function of subsuming under the unity of the ideas the concepts and rules of the understanding. Subsequent German philosophers, as Schopenhauer complained, "tried, with shameless audacity, to smuggle in under this name an entirely spurious faculty of immediate, metaphysical so-called super-sensuous knowledge"." Now we're getting closer - and good on Schopenhauer!

"In its general sense, therefore, reason may be attributed to God, and an angel may be called rational. But in its narrower meaning reason is man's differentia, at once his necessity and his privilege; that by which he is "a little less than the angels", and that by which he excels the brutes." How we have suddenly jumped to God is left mysterious, but the previous views of Kant are not far off this. It is, however, one of the peculiarities of Catholic theology that it has a certain distaste for mystical states, hence, even though for non-believers Kant's epistemological mysticism seems very close to Christianity the scholastics noticed a vital flaw in the argument in that it undermines authority - the Church's authority. I will write about this further but just to note here that if personal mystical experiences gave true knowledge about God then everybody's experiences would be as valid as anybody else's. This could lead to a kind of heretical anarchy, which as we know from history is precisely what the Church wants to avoid at all costs.

As is often the case, the real Catholic point of view is expressed near the end of the Encyclopedia's article. And thus we find that "without certain experiences of feeling and willing we should not be able to draw certain ethical conclusions. This may be admitted as a psychological fact, viz. that there are many exercises of reason which we shall not correctly perform without an ethical habituation." There we go! Reason is thus the forming of correct judgements based on a correct ethics - not based on logic or on facts.

With this eccentric definition of reason we can go back to the original quote and see that what looked to anybody in possession of a dictionary like an insult turns out to be a double castigation. Not only do scientists have no faith - no Catholic faith - but they also lack the Catholic faculty of reason, as based on their ethics. I have to repeat this as few seem to believe me, but this abuse is a symptom of a new determination to create a Catholic science. It has to look like natural science to avoid looking as stupid as creationists but it will be guided, not only in spirit but also in the direction of research, by a Catholic ethic and the ultimate truth that there is an omniscient deity.

As the neurosciences look deeper into the operations of the brain and mind the Church is very much aware that at some point their faith will look like a mere biological process. This can be avoided by having 'reasonable' scientists who will 'faithfully' adhere to and promote the values of the Church and the legitimacy of their supernatural doctrines.

The excuse for this short article in the Osservatore was a mass in remembrance of Galileo, who is nauseatingly being recast as the scientist with a soul. The mass was the high point of the conference of the World Federation of Scientists and celebrated 445 years since the birth of Galileo. There is "in Christianity a peculiar cosmological conception, which found the highest expressions in medieval philosophy and theology." The aim is to make scientists understand this and value the opportunity to explore the fertile soil where faith and reason can be explored to their very depths. I suspect that the Vatican's actual fear is that scientists will indeed explore the depths of faith. That is why an investigation into faith through the prism of Catholic reason is necessary to achieve a reasonable interpretation of the results.

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Other articles in the news

Herald Tribune

Galileo, Neurotheology and the Vatican - Osservatore Romano review

With the International Year of Astronomy and the Year of Darwin, the Vatican is going to have a lot to say about science in 2009. In my previous article I looked at a conference on Galileo coming in May as well as the catholic Church's insistence that the Galileo case should not be seen as a clash between science and religion. Perhaps one should not use the broad brush of religion in general as it brings into this particular argument other faiths, but to be more specific we are talking about the clash between the Catholic Church and science - between dogmatic control of ideas and the liberal tendency of natural philosophy. The science of astronomy obviously won the argument. It won this argument a long time ago. So why are we still talking about Galileo? What is the Church really trying to achieve here?

The Jesuit-run Stensen Institute of Florence will host a conference entitled "The Galileo Case. A historical, philosophical and theological re-examination". To quote from their website: "For the first time after 400 years, members of the Vatican Observatory, the Pontifical Council for Culture, The Sciences Academy and many other Institutions, that were historically involved in the Galileo affair, are among the experts invited to the congress with a view to showing how "recent scientific and historical research" might alleviate the "tension and conflict" still clouding the relationship between the church and science."

The Osservatore Romano ran a brief interview with one of the organizers on 31 January 2009. It starts off by quoting John Paul II, who saw the Galileo trial as a "tragic mutual incomprehension"; as usual, always seeking to spread the blame. The interview is, however, interesting in that it mentions biotechnology almost as much as Galileo. Here we get an inkling on why the Church is so obsessed with Galileo. It seeks to separate the decision of the Inquisition from the philosophical standpoint of the Church. It seeks to legitimize itself as an arbiter of science and to place Catholic doctrines as guides to what can and cannot be researched. The article, indeed, goes on to say that it is of fundamental importance that the Church promotes biotechnology for the benefit of humanity, and that morality must be placed above science in order to achieve this. For the Vatican, the "politics of science" is to place Catholic doctrines above scientific progress.

Two things are immediately clear. For anybody who has looked closely at the Galileo case it is obvious that above the philosophical positions it was the political climate that ultimately condemned Galileo. The Inquisition needed to make a point and the Counter-Reformation was gaining impetus. Even the Jesuits who initially supported Galileo knew that survival of the Church was more important than one man. The same Jesuits taught Galileo's theories in the Far East, away from the troublesome Reformation in Europe. The Catholic politics of science continues to this day with the same aims. This is why they want the world to accept that their position is at least legitimate.

The interviewee, who remains anonymous to the end so probably a Jesuit at the Stensen, then goes on to discuss reason and faith. Scientific progress in the "bio-techno-sciences" is leading to a greater understanding of the human experience and a refinement in the categories of faith and reason. Here we are now looking at the neurosciences rather than biotech or genetics. Indeed, research into consciousness and mind is progressing to the point where it seems fairly obvious even to the faithful that a state of belief could well just be a function of the brain. The scientific attack on faith itself, rather than just antiquated or supernatural doctrines, would be the most serious challenge the Church will have ever faced. Philosophical and doctrinal positions have to be articulated before the research data comes out. Better still, by placing Church doctrines above science they may even be able to avoid research going down that road. "I believe because I think", says our respondent! He thus turns around "I think therefore I am" into "I think therefore I believe". A possible sign of belief as a mental disorder but that's for another article.

These are interesting articles and this particular interview ends with a shot across the boughs of scientists, but I suspect neuroscientists in particular. The neuroscience of religious experiences is often called neurotheology. I know, some people object to the name but it may well stick. Neurotheology is a branch of the cognitive neurosciences and seeks to use new techniques such as fMRI to investigate which parts of the brain are active during experiences such as meditation, praying and other religious activities. The serious problem here for theologians is the coming debate that once belief becomes just a state of mind then any claim that faith is a special kind of knowledge gets blown away. The primacy of faith and the theological logic that supports it have to be defended. If the Galileo case is admitted as an "error of faith" then we should be mindful that an attack on faith not be an "error of science". That was the conclusion from our mystery interlocutor.

Interesting times ahead for science and religion debates.

Pope 2.0 - Catholic Propaganda Hits YouTube

Yes, the Vatican's propaganda machine has opened up a YouTube channel. I couldn't even access that page earlier as, no doubt, the world's Catholics have flocked there to be told what to believe. I will actually write more on this as the Osservatore Romano has a few articles on communicating on the internet. For now, enjoy the shows.

Vatican YouTube Channel