By Faith Alone

A couple musings on faith which I've been pondering as of late; both a criticism and an affirmation. First, I criticize most religious understandings of faith that I've seen which put it contrary to reason and experience. Second, I affirm a more mythological faith.

When I talk about faith normally, I don't oppose to it reason and personal experience. Quite the contrary; faith is built on these. Faith is the willing to trust someone, but it is only virtuous if I know the person, her character, and her abilities; preferably both on a propositional level (certifications and her own past experience in the relevant area as documented facts) and on a level of personal knowledge (track record with me at doing what I trust her to do, and perhaps more indefinable characteristics).

Now, the level of reason I must have before I trust someone will change depending on what I want to trust her for. I don't need much reason before I lend five bucks. Lending my car is a bit more iffy, and letting someone watch my kids (were I to have any) would require significantly more reason. Further, were I not to have such reason before entrusting my kids to a stranger for an extended period of time, this would not be commendable, or better faith; it would be irresponsible.

When would I trust a relative stranger with a matter of extreme, perhaps absolute importance? I can think of only two cases. In the first, I would be in extreme, immediate danger and there is no other choice. Faith in such a circumstance is simply a necessity; this is not virtuous, but would be merely a difficult fact in less than ideal circumstances. In the second, it would be because I am an idiot, and perhaps a vicious one at that. Religions of faith may be able to play the first card, though it would seem that I would have plenty of time in my life for God/a Boddhisattva/whatever to give me the amount of reason appropriate for what I am being asked to trust them for.

In general, then, the concept of a "leap of faith" seems to me to be disgusting, unless I'm in imminent peril. There should be no leap, except into action, and an omniscient, omnipresent, omnibenevolent God (or Dhyani Buddha) would be able to help each of us reach that point in full view of the necessary step to take.

Now, I have also heard some people talk about having faith in faith, and others criticizing the notion; how can one have faith unless in something? By the above, this "something" is often not something worthy of faith, so I don't see how it would play any more of a role than an abstract or mythological faith. But in any case I think that such an argument ignores the fundamentally pragmatic character of religious pluralism and liberalism.

Consider James' thought experiment in The Will to Believe. A rock climber needs to make a jump across a chasm. If the rock climber believes she can make the jump, then her odds of actually doing so dramatically improve; if she does not believe she can, then she will plummet into the pit. What one believes changes what is true; one cannot simply and objectively regard the world because there is always a subjective element.

Now, one wants to believe that one can jump over the pit because of the result: one would rather not fall and die. But in order to believe, it helps to have an explanatory story. Maybe one just pushes everything else aside and wills oneself across; but one could also remind oneself about all of the training one has been doing. Heck, one could convince oneself that one is a reincarnation of the Monkey King Hanuman. As long as one gets across, that's the point.

Similarly with faith. People with faith may benefit, but a good portion of this seems to be from the faith itself and not necessarily the object of faith. Not that the latter is completely irrelevant, but in any case one can attain a certain peace of mind and courage of existence by believing that something is taking care of oneself. And if one walks into a church, it seems to be that people will give the pragmatic reasons for having faith: the peace, the presence and love of Christ, etc., and these are precisely what are comparable between faiths.

So what do we do? We tell ourselves stories. The mountain climber doesn't have to believe that she is Hanuman; she just has to suspend disbelief for the moment and live in the story she is telling. That will be enough. Similarly, the religious pluralist can approach faith with a myth. It offers a mythological faith, the faith of a story; a faith of suspended disbelief instead of belief. But if that does the trick, what's the problem?

Perhaps we could even see how to go from here to beef up the notion of myth. If one pretends to be Hanuman and actually makes the jump, than there was some truth after all in the myth; one did have the power and agility of a monkey for the moment, and suspending disbelief helped cause this to be true. So first, the myth does in a roundabout way suggest something objective: one did make the jump. Second, what the myth represents is not something other than what is causes, and so cannot be treated as a set of propositions. Well-wrought religious stories, philosophies, theologies, etc. would then offer very good and very intricate myths of this sort, with many far-reaching consequences beyond simply accomplishing one action or another.

At this point, some of my more conservative readers may be saying, "Yes, but that doesn't fix the problem of sin. The pluralist is still living in her sin and must be judged unless she has faith in Christ." Well, yes, we could all be wrong. But one must be convinced of the problem before one would have any need of the cure, and I for one would not be convinced of the specific problem of sin as laid out in certain Christian catechisms until convinced first of the Christian story, in which case I could have a legitimate rational faith and not have to worry about all this. Until then, though, I don't have need of heeding every quack diagnosing me with every illness known to man and then some. And again, the actual, observable effect of faith seems to be portable across objects of faith, suggesting that we are looking at psychological facts and not, say, the Holy Spirit.