During a recent (perhaps ongoing) discussion of faith (among other things), we found that the four people in the discussion are using four different definitions of faith. Naturally, this led me to ask: “What is faith?” So, I used my faith in Google and in the Internet to get some ideas.
First off, Google told me that this question is not trivial. There are several whole books written just to answer the question “What is faith?” and some of the pages that came up danced around the question without ever really defining faith. Others’ definitions required so much jargon that it seems “faith” must be a technical term that belongs only in professional journals for people with advanced degrees in Theology. (Cohomology also can’t be explained to laymen in a jargon-free sentence or two — despite having a precise definition — but I don’t blithely toss it around as though everybody knows what it means.) But a few took a stab at writing a clear and concise definition.
From About.com Christianity: “Faith is belief with strong conviction; firm belief in something for which there may be no tangible proof; complete trust; opposite of doubt.” This appears related to this definition: “Mind is rational while faith is irrational. Mind is logical; faith illogical. Mind is doubtful while faith is doubt-free. In our modern culture, we have become more dedicated to doubt than to unbridled possibility. We are more committed to the calculations of the rational mind, than to the holistic wisdom of spirit.”
(I’ve argued that people of faith shouldn’t use that definition, but clearly some use it — just watch the first few minutes of this video.)
In a related definition: “Real faith, in any promise made by God, is actually the evidence. It is the belief that is the evidence.”
Others appear to equate faith with inductive reasoning, as you’ll discover if you read all the way to the end of this one. This one seems to as well: “Pistis here is a matter of trust in a God who has demonstrated His ability to be a worthy patron, and the examples are those of clients who, knowing this ability, trust in God’s record as a patronal provider.”
According to these two faith is any belief that is strongly held and inspires action — regardless of how you came upon that belief.
Then we have this one which says “we do not acquire new knowledge through faith. Instead, faith is a response to what is revealed.” (i.e. faith is a belief in things you learned via revelation/spiritual witness).
It’s possible that some of the above can be combined — which makes it that much more confusing because it’s not clear which [combination?] of the above definitions a given person is using when s/he uses the word “faith”.
What definition of faith do you use? One (or more) of the above? Think about it for a minute.
Now, to help pin down what everybody here means by “faith”, I’ve prepared a list of statements. The “I” in each case is the subject who may-or-may-not be using “faith”. For each statement, please mark it as (F) faith, (NF) not faith, (D) it depends (on what? be specific in your answer!), (PF) partially faith, (NO) no opinion. Note that many of the statements below may be claims you think are false. Don’t just immediately mark all of the false claims “F” unless your definition of “faith” is “believing things that are false.” People can believe things that are false for many reasons.
1. I assume that some sort of external reality exists, and that my mind — synthesizing information from my senses — gives me some limited-yet-relatively-consistent window on that external reality.
2. I believe that some supernatural entity hears and understands my prayers because I have seen the results of answered prayer.
3. I believe that some supernatural entity hears and understands my prayers because I can feel it in my heart and soul.
4. I’m sure that my biological parents had sex at least once.
5. Ignoring air resistance, the speed of an object falling freely near the Earth’s surface increases by about 9.81 metres per second every second.
6. The scientific statements in the Koran are things that were known in Muhammad’s time, and that he could have had access to.
7. The Koran could not have been written without divine/supernatural assistance.
8. The Book of Mormon could not have been written without divine/supernatural assistance.
9. I think that the evidence for God’s existence leans (at least slightly) in the direction of “God exists.”
10. I think that the evidence for God’s existence leans (at least slightly) in the direction of “God does not exist.”
11. I believe God (or gods) exist(s).
12. I believe God (or gods) do(es) not exist.
13. I believe that I exist, that other humans exist, and that I can communicate with other humans through language.
14. I understand that the current scientific consensus on climate change is that human actions are changing our planet’s climate.
15. I believe the scientific consensus on climate change (that human actions are changing our planet’s climate) is accurate.
16. When I need to know some simple facts or information, I turn to Google and/or Wikipedia first because Google and Wikipedia can lead me to useful information on a variety of subjects.
17. I need to fight for what’s right and make this world a better place.
18. God loves gay people just the way they are (gay).
19. My family loves me.
20. Unfettered free-market capitalism is the most efficient way of providing goods and services.
Please write your own answers before reading anyone else’s. 🙂
John — Thanks for your answers! Also, thanks to Paul — sorry I forgot to thank you earlier!
Me too. as I said from the beginning — even before this thread — I generally take “faith” to be a word for using a particular type of evidence (spiritual witness). However, way back on the thread that sparked this discussion, I said that I thought a definition of “faith” as acting in defiance of evidence was a “straw man”. Since writing this thread, I take that back — plenty of believers really do define “faith” that way, and that definition has plenty of scriptural justification.
Your definition is actually a fairly standard one (probably more standard than mine) — see Jonathan @48, among others.
And I think your response lends further justification for my conclusion @45. As a Mathematician, I like definitions that clearly and precisely distinguish one thing from another. If faith is indistinguishable from belief (or if it might-or-might-not be, depending on who’s using the word, and there’s no obvious way to tell how the person might understand it), then it’s not a useful word.
“Book of Mormon historicity apologetics functions by demanding 100% certainty of a negative.”
That’s a distorted view of apologetics. You’ve confused a single tool for the entire enterprise. In some isolated instances, yes – demanding 100% proof of the negative is actually appropriate. But not for the whole package deal.
Believe it or not, there area lot of intelligent Mormon apologists who believe that the “likelihood” of the evidence is actually on the side of the faithful Mormon explanation.
Frankly, the only reason that many of you DO NOT find the evidence credible, is because you’ve already made up your minds that God, angles and stuff don’t exist. So any evidence to the contrary is immediately dismissed or explained away. At which point Mormons accuse you of the same thing you just accused us of.
At any rate – no – apologetics is not primarily concerned with demanding 100% proof of the negative. Just because that particular tool gets used on some of the dumber, flashier more superficial issues in apologetics does not mean that the entire enterprise operates that way.
I simply do not find it credible that ANY human being in the 1800s could have produced the Book of Mormon – period. And I find the commonly cited conspiracy theories to the contrary to be even more far-fetched than Joseph Smith’s original story. I read the content and find it to be powerful POSITIVE evidence. All the connections, all the “lucky guesses” that match up perfectly with Mesoamerican culture, etc.
I find the weight of evidence to be on the side of the Book of Mormon, and that doesn’t change just because the thing cannot be definitively proven in a lab test.
Sorry John, I didn’t intend to argue in this thread. But you’re not getting away with outrageous statements like that without comment.
Well, now I’d say “I have confidence in my film crew” instead. God only knows what the film director really means by that. 😉
“If faith is indistinguishable from belief (or if it might-or-might-not be, depending on whos using the word, and theres no obvious way to tell how the person might understand it), then its not a useful word.”
See, I don’t agree. I think that’s the application of mathematical precision to human interaction.
“Faith” as a term is valuable because it is invested in cultural value and historical power regardless of its precise definition. Words aren’t ever mathematically precise. If we allow “people of faith” (so-called and self-defined) to claim the term and define faith as believing in things we know to be superstition, we are losing our own inheritance and letting superstitious people rebrand themselves with a term with long-standing, invested, cultural value.
If we instead lay claim to the inheritance ourselves, we call into question their definition. By making my own claim to the word, it becomes disputed, and superstitious people are not merely “people of faith” — they are people who have faith in a particular kind of world-view, i.e., a superstitious one.
Ambiguity can be beautiful in so many contexts. We probably couldn’t have humor without it, and many other arts depend on it.
For myself — in contexts where I intend for my meaning to be clear — I will avoid ambiguous terms, especially ones where there’s a strong chance my listeners may be unaware of the ambiguity. But that’s just me — your mileage may vary. 😉
Seth R: I don’t think the question of God’s existence is relevant to my analysis of the evidence regarding Book of Mormon historicity.
I do tend to make outrageous statements because that’s more fun for online arguing.
However, I think that my judgment of standard BoM apologetics is sound. Rather than look at the general picture, which is conclusive, BoM apologists imagine that supposed “hits” like “Nahom” are meaningful and keep the question open.
As another example of this kind of apologetics — as my sister Chanson mentioned, I’m a member of the Community of Christ. Traditionally the RLDS Church denied that Joseph Smith Jr. instituted polygamy. The Prophet Joseph Smith III (who had some training as a lawyer) believed that as long as he didn’t have 100% smoking-gun “proof” the question was open and he could legitimately deny that his father was the instigator. This is an apologetic mindset. In fact, the historical evidence that Joseph Smith Jr. is the actual source of Mormon polygamy is overwhelming.
Of course the historical evidence for Joseph Smith being the source of polygamy is “overwhelming.”
Joseph was channeling God’s instructions. So of course he looks like the historical source.
No – freaking – duh.
Oh, and I wasn’t referring to isolated hits like Nahom. Wasn’t even thinking about that example actually.
Well, I wasn’t referring to you specifically in my original, blanket statement. I was referring to the apologetic mindset in general. And Nahom is a fairly frequent example I run across in general BoM apologetic arguments.
Obviously, we’ve found an example (Joseph Smith Jr. and polygamy) where you agree that some apologists have their mindset wrong. And we should note that beyond the old (and dead) RLDS prophets, there are many, many living faithful believers in the RLDS tradition (and elsewhere) who still maintain all the old, apologetic arguments about why Joseph Smith Jr. had nothing to do with polygamy.
They, likewise, are almost all BoM historical literalists. But in the end, the evidence that the BoM is a 19th-century work that does not relate to actual ancient American history is even more conclusive than evidence regarding the Joseph Smith Jr. polygamy question. Neither question is in actual dispute.
For example, if a historian of ancient American history wrote or taught using the Book of Mormon as a historical narrative, all of academia would consider that historian’s work to be illegitimate.
Of course they would consider it an illegitimate curriculum item.
So what?
Nahom is used because it’s an easy example. But there’s a lot more weight of evidence being put together. It’s a subject that generally requires a lot more in depth reading than most ex-Mormons I argue with are willing to invest.
That merely illustrates that the question is not in dispute.
Hold the phone – the Book of Mormon has not been demonstrated to be a “19th century work” with “no relation to ancient American history.”
Not even close.
And I’ll tell you why – because none of established academia are interested in taking the text seriously in the first place. It’s merely a case of entrenched academic confirmation bias.
Academics have better things to do with their time than investigate the writings of a quirky religious organization that they do not belong to. So the book has never been taken seriously to begin with. Except by Mormon scholars – whose work is inevitably rejected as biased – no matter what their credentials (funny how anti-Mormon sources are never asked to provide THEIR academic sources and boma fides, but I digress…).
So I’d hardly say the Book of Mormon has had a “fair trial” in the court of academic opinion in the first place. As such, academia’s general disinterested and uniformed opinion on the subject is of little interest to me.
FWIW, I’m with John about apologetics of all sorts, not just Mormon apologetics. The whole project is to create enough wiggle room so that people who want to believe can do so. That’s intellectually dishonest.
However, you’ve got me curious about the cases where apologists think that the preponderance of the evidence favors Mormon claims. In most such cases that I’ve seen, they’ve been coming from assumptions that I don’t share (e.g. the authority of the Bible). I guess that’s nice for people who share their assumptions, but from my perspective, it begs the question. Mormon apologists (and religious apologists in general) haven’t done very well in answering questions like “Why should I believe in your god?”
Words commonly have more than one meaning. It does not seem at all unusual to me for the same person to use the same word in multiple ways. I don’t think “faith” is privileged to be any different than the overwhelming majority of words in the dictionary.
Off hand, I can think of several ways in which I use “faith”. When discussing faith from a philosophical standpoint, I tend to more or less follow Descartes, Hume, and numerous others. I’m happy at such moments to define faith as any belief held that one cannot be absolutely certain is true.
But I’ve also used the same word to mean any belief held counter to a weight of evidence — which is “faith” used in line with some notions of it found in the New Testament. And then, there’s “faith” synonymous with simple belief. And I think neurology is likely to eventually provide us with a considerable weight of evidence suggesting that even the most fervent faith in deity is neurologically indistinguishable from a strongly held secular belief. I know Sam Harris, for one, has expressed an interest in doing research into that question.
There are other ways of defining faith. I don’t see it’s use as being limited merely because there are multiple common definitions of the term.
That sounds like a a distortion of a quote I once made myself.
I once wryly characterized apologetics as “helping people not feel stupid for holding beliefs that they already held for completely different reasons.”
No one believes in the Book of Mormon over the trivial little sideshow snipe topics that critics bring up. They are ultimately trivial to the truth of the book.
Horses, in America or not?
Who cares? No matter what the answer is, it’s not going to establish faith in the Book of Mormon as scripture.
But these little sideshows can damage the faith people hold in the book. So it is important to neutralize them.
But conviction of the book is established by the weight of other kinds of evidence.
It’s not about creating “wiggle room.” Its about allowing people to keep the overwhelmingly powerful and compelling evidence they already have. This is not about us fighting a losing battle and being nearly choked out on our “last legs” after “decades of retreat.”
So it is important to neutralize them.
That illustrates our difference in mindset. I would instead say that it’s important to get to the truth. Apologetics generally isn’t interested in seeing what the evidence says, it’s interested in reconciling the evidence to their worldview. We all do this to some degree, but it’s the apologist’s bread and butter.
Another thing religious apologists haven’t been good at is justifying these other forms of evidence and why we should find them compelling. I’ve never seen a good answer (or really a serious attempt) at explaining why we should find these other forms of evidence compelling in the case of Mormonism and not Islam. Basically, these other forms of evidence are extremely problematic if your project is to find out a single version of the truth.
@ Seth R: You say “Hold the phone the Book of Mormon has not been demonstrated to be a 19th century work with no relation to ancient American history. Not even close.
The burden of proof is not on academics to prove that the BOM is a recent document with no relationship to ancient America. The burden of proof belongs to the person making a claim – and that would be Mormons who claim the BOM is an ancient book translated by Joseph Smith.
Apologists, in order to create space for belief, try to shift the burden of proof away from them, and onto people who make no claim at all – in this case non-Mormon scholars who won’t give the BOM a fair shake because of their “entrenched academic confirmation bias.”
And the cry that scholars won’t take the BOM seriously rings hollow when you consider that Mormons don’t take the Koran or Baghevad Ghita seriously either, nor the claims made by it. The burden of proof does not rest with Mormons to disprove every assertion made by the believers of these other canons of scripture. They are upon the claimants themselves.
Also, I’m perfectly serious in my request for you to point me to the cases where Mormon apologists feel they have the support of the evidence. 🙂
Ooh, that’s really interesting. I’d never thought of it that way before, but it really is the converse of “leaving just enough room for belief.”
That’s certainly untrue in my case. I was well aware of which side the evidence supported even when I was completely convinced that God, angels, etc., exist. I only stopped believing in God when I stopped assuming that he existed and looked at the evidence for his existence and found it overwhelmingly lacking.
That might be unclear. I should have said, “I was well aware of which side the evidence on the Book of Mormon supported…”.
Kuri,
If I were to stop just assuming, and start rationally looking for the evidence that my wife loves me, I’d probably wind up divorced in short order (this is actually a common reason for divorce).
Doesn’t mean she doesn’t love me.
Just means my inquiry was screwed up from square one.
Josh, of course the burden of proof is in our court. I never suggested the burden belonged to the secular academics.
I’m just saying you can’t use their lack of interest or support as positive evidence of any sort.
And Jonathan, apologetics is actually interested in what the evidence says. It’s just we allow a broader range of evidence than you do. But I consider that a defect in your view of “evidence” more than anything else. If you feel that our “intellectual space” is declining and vanishing, that’s because you’ve arbitrarily ruled out many major sources of evidence which are still vibrant and thriving.
Jonathan — I agree that since most people, in general, dont have a completely considered method that they use to weigh evidence, theres a tendency to do exactly what you say. We call all the things that we like rational, and all the things we dont like apologetic.
Although weve run off course a bit with the particular example employed, my actual attempt here was to illustrate a difference in approach between the preponderance of evidence (rational/scientific/academic) method and the how do you explain this? (apologetic) method. (I’m glad you agree it’s an interesting idea to explore, Kuri.)
To cite another example, Seth correctly points out that many ExMormons have not put the time in to personally weigh all the evidence regarding BoM historicity. (I am not among them; I believe that I have given the question sufficient attention.)
But this point can be illustrated by noting the popularity among ExMormons of the Spaulding Theory of BoM authorship. Neither question is open academically and (despite Seths personal feeling to the contrary), both have been given a fair hearing academically. When I say the Spaulding Theory is not open academically, I mean that despite the fact that a scholar has published a word-print analysis in an academic journal, no scholar in the broad field of Mormon history has published an article or book laying out the general thesis for Spaulding authorship and why this thesis best fits the evidence.
So why do ExMormons have the capacity to accurately weigh the evidence regarding the former case, while simultaneously lacking the capacity to weigh the evidence in the latter case? The answer is that people dont have the time to weigh every question personally, and, not having the time, or even (in some cases) having the time, they lack the capacity to draw the correct (i.e., most probable) conclusion or even to avoid utterly improbable conclusions.
So Spaulding theorists become like BoM historicity apologists. We dont even have a case for the overall big picture, but we have little details — like: how do you explain the fact that Sidney Rigdon had a post office box in Pittsburgh when the second (theoretical) Spaulding manuscript was said to be in a printshop in Pittsburgh next door to that post office? The actual answer is that this coincidence, like Nahom, ends up being an irrelevant data point, because the preponderance of evidence leads us to a very different conclusion.
Seth, you write: No matter what the answer is, its not going to establish faith in the Book of Mormon as scripture.
I absolutely agree and I personally accept the Book of Mormon as scripture. Im a member of the Community of Christ (the former RLDS Church). I preached from the Book of Mormon when I gave the talk in church three weeks ago, and I teach about the Book of Mormon when I taught the adult Sunday school class last week.
The books status as scripture transcends these questions of history. Indeed, I think that believing manifestly false propositions about the book’s historicity is like building your house of faith upon the sand.
Good to know where you are coming from John.
Personally, I thought the Jockers-Criddle wordprint analysis was a bit of a joke.
For crying out loud, they didn’t even include Joseph Smith as a possible test candidate for authorship.
Seth — we are in agreement about the wordprint analysis.
If you’ll forgive my putting in a plug for a prior blog post, I think you’ll like my take on the Spaulding Theory here:
http://bycommonconsent.com/2009/07/18/the-spaulding-fable/
I doubt that divorce is commonly caused by people kicking back and dispassionately examining the question of whether their spouse loves them. (Fault finding isn’t the same as unbiased investigation.) Conversely, I doubt that marriages are held together because the spouses are ignorant of what the evidence says.
Depending on your definition of love, I’ve got pretty good evidence that she loves me. I can’t prove that she does, but the preponderance of the evidence supports the idea that she does.
I’ve actually given these other sources of evidence (assuming we’re talking about the same things because you haven’t specified what you mean) a lot of consideration, and for various reasons, I’ve come to the conclusion that they can’t be used to support the kind of religious claims that the LDS like to make. I didn’t just dismiss this evidence because I didn’t like what it said or because it wasn’t science-y. I’ve given the question of the reliability of this evidence it about as much attention as I can be reasonably expected to.
Jonathan, my point is – once you enter that dispassionate, detached, “just the facts ma’am” stance – you’ve already killed the trust in the relationship and probably doomed the relationship as well.
So… if you don’t think your wife loves you because she acts like she loves you, why do you think it?
FWIW, I also find the evidence for the Spaulding Theory to be lacking. It’s actually a good place for the application of Occam’s razor: the fact that the theory requires an additional entity (a second manuscript, for which there’s no good evidence) makes it less likely from the start.
Kuri, if I want solid proof that she loves me – just her “acting” like she loves me obviously isn’t going to cut it.
I’m trying to understand this. If you don’t think that she loves you because of her behavior, why do you think that she does?
Jonathan, you’ve been around the block and it wouldn’t surprise me if you’d read all these, but here are a few likely articles on the subject of positive evidences that a friend reminded me of:
http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/transcripts/?id=1
http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/review/?vol=17&num=2&id=582
http://www.fairlds.org/FAIR_Conferences/2001_Boomerang_Hits_and_the_Book_of_Mormon.html
http://www.fairlds.org/FAIR_Conferences/2006-Daniel-Peterson.pdf
Also, another friend of mine runs a website compiling evidentiary issues regarding the Book of Mormon:
http://bomevidence.wordpress.com/
Sorry, that last post had too many hyperlinks and went into the SPAM filter.
Kuri,
I suppose I have faith that she does – waded into the relationship on that premise, committed myself to it, and had a wonderful personal experience as a result.
None of which would do me a lick of good in an Internet debate with someone who was determined to be skeptical of my claims of affection, and was demanding absolute objective laboratory-verified “proof” of the love.
“I suppose I have faith that she does…”
But you’re not saying that her behavior is irrelevant to that faith, are you? Or that if her behavior changed completely, you wouldn’t lose that faith? (Those aren’t rhetorical questions; I’m really trying to understand what you’re saying here.)
Well, her love could be verified in a lab, you know. We could tell her to think about you and then measure her hormones, use fMRI to see what her brain does, etc. 😀
Kuri, those lab tests prove chemical reactions.
Not love.
So, if we were to test a bunch of people and find that there is a consistent set of chemical reactions in people who report that they love someone, you don’t think that the test could subsequently be used to verify if a given person actually does love someone?
It’s true that most words are ambiguous and many have several distinct definitions. I’m just saying that — from this conversation and other experiences — it appears that with the word “faith” in particular, two people may be using it to mean very different things (in the same conversation) without realizing that they’re not on the same page on what they’re talking about. So, if I want to avoid misunderstandings, I’ll pick a less ambiguous word (such as belief or hope or confidence or passionate conviction or spiritual witness — depending on which of those I’m referring to at the moment). And if I hear people talking about faith in the future, I’ll be sure to ask them to define it first — if only out of curiosity. 😉
You certainly started an interesting discussion, Chanson!
That’s right Kuri.
I don’t think they could be used in that fashion.
Thanks Paul!! 😀
So, if you can’t verify love by looking at behavior or at physical reactions, how can you verify it?
The intuitive and experiential whole.
No silver bullets for these kind of puzzles Kuri.
“Observed behavior” and “experience” are entirely different, then?
Thanks for the links, Seth. I don’t want to sidetrack the discussion, so I’ll confine my response to the concluding paragraph of Boomerang Hits and the Book of Mormon:
The article has a valid point that absence of evidence isn’t the same as evidence of absence (however, such a thing as evidence of absence does exist). It then puts that point to intellectually dishonest service in two ways. First it uses emotional blackmail.
More important to this discussion, it also isn’t asking “What does the preponderance of the current evidence show?” Instead it encourages the reader to ignore the current evidence stacked against the historicity of the Book of Mormon in a gamble that the evidence is wrong. That is encouraging faith in spite of the evidence, and it’s typical of most apologetics.
Jonathan, that was actually a part of the article that I was hoping you would ignore because it didn’t deal with POSITIVE evidence for the Book of Mormon, but was more involved in dealing with a common criticism. So I didn’t really consider that part of the article to be relevant to your request in the first place.
But it’s been a while since I read it. Maybe I need to revisit it.
Well, I didn’t want to respond to specifics in the articles because it would seem pretty off topic, but that paragraph leaped out at me as relevant to the discussion. 🙂
Here’s an example to bolster my case (made in the other thread) that some religious believers explicitly embrace the contra-logical nature of their faith.