Belief in Faith Issues
As a psychiatrist, I consider how a person’s faith is helpful to their mental health and recovery. I don’t influence anyone’s faith. Faith is highly individual and is greatly influenced by family and culture. From Atheism to Theism, Faith-beliefs are subjective, personal and, strictly speaking, outside the realm of science. We can still have a scientific approach to handling them.
Population vs individual level
The words “belief” and “faith” steer our minds towards population-level religious matters:
Does an after-life exist?
God, god or gods, what are we talking about?
What should we believe in this country?
How can we better tolerate differing faith systems in society?
Tudor England couldn’t cope with two faith systems, Catholicism and Protestantism, even they were similar. We’re better at embracing differences now. It’s natural for each of us to believe that our own Faith-belief is “right” (for us) but this can lead to conflict. A live and let live attitude helps us negotiate it.
On an individual level, our faith-belief is our business and is heavily influenced by family, culture, emotional factors and our own choices. If your faith is in Atheism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, a New-age supreme being or Universal consciousness, belief in this area doesn’t rely on scientific evidence; the purpose of this belief-type is to help navigate things beyond science. The Theism-Atheism debate, for instance, rages because no-one can produce enough evidence one way or the other. Let’s consider a more nuanced approach.
Theism or Atheism?
Richard Dawkins proposes this 7-point continuum scale to consider theism to atheism strength of belief:[1]
1 100% sure that a supreme being exists
2 Strong theist
3 Leaning towards theism
4 agnosticism
5 leaning towards atheism
6 Strong atheist
7 100% sure a supreme being doesn’t exist
Dawkins puts himself at 6.9 and Carl Jung somewhere around 1.0. As different as they are, Dawkins and Jung would agree on much in science.
If evidence proved that a supreme being exists, then everyone could accept this just like everyone accepts that 2+2=5.
If evidence proved that a supreme being doesn’t exist, then everyone could accept this like accepting that the sun sets in the west.
Individuals may differ in their faith-beliefs but can agree on the rules of mathematics and the behaviour of the sun.
Faith is important in faith-belief; evidence is important for science.
While some people expect all scientists to be atheists, many highly-esteemed scientists are theists or agnostics.
Conservatives, liberals, centrists or others can score anywhere from 1 to 7 on Dawkins’s scale.
Faith in science is recognized as a form of faith-belief offering hope, purpose and well-being akin to other religious affiliations.[2]
Faith-belief and belief in scientific fact and theory are very different even though we use the same word “belief.” The context changes the meaning of “belief.”
What drives faith issues?
Belief in faith issues appears to be unique to humans and is ubiquitous. We have theories about religion in the brain[3] and we can be scientific about religious experience.[4] Humans are a blend of objective reason and subjective emotion, will, culture, personality, opinion and more. Faith-belief isn’t driven by reason: “There is no such thing as a rational [faith-]belief. ... We cannot help believing [in faith-issues], but no [faith-]belief can be grounded in reason.”[5] Issues of faith-belief, rather, are driven by cultural heritage, emotions, will and people.
CULTURAL HERITAGE. We each have a cultural as well as a biological inheritance.[6] People generally retain the faith-belief of their country and family, but many do not. We tend to flow with our cultural heritage and with the people around us, but some of us flow against it. Moving country and living in a new culture affords the opportunity to re-examine culture and faith.
EMOTIONS. It “feels” right to believe in our own faith-belief; Atheism included. This is based on emotion. Public debates and people around us influence our emotions as we are connected through our anterior cingulate gyrus, insula and mirror neurons in the brain. Emotions are contagious; we can be moved by people around us or we can react against them. People move our emotions which in turn inform our faith-beliefs.
WILL. Many people decide on faith matters as an act of will. They may accept or reject the belief system of their parents and conversions tend to occur when we are young; 76% happen before thirty.[7] They involve the will and the influence of other people. Marrying, change of location, peers, and other life experiences also inform our faith decisions. Any choice, including our faith beliefs, involves the will.
PEOPLE. Culture is the result of people. Our emotions and our will are greatly moved by people. So people greatly shape our beliefs as we flow with or reject their ideas. As a clinical psychiatrist, I see this in action. Many theists flow with the beliefs of their church family and parents. Many atheists flow with the example of their atheist parents. Others become atheists because they were “pastor’s kids” who felt let down by parents. Some church ministers are theists in defiance of their parent’s atheism. The example of two brothers – staunch atheist Christopher Hitchens and staunch theist Peter Hitchens – shows that highly intelligent people can react to the people around them differently.
People, cultural heritage, emotions and will strongly inform faith-beliefs. In science, however, the aim is not to allow any of these factors be an influence. This highlights the distinct difference between these Belief-Types.
Belief change in faith issues
In The Life of Pi, Yann Martel’s protagonist explores several faith systems, including Atheism. He asks which is the best story? He then chooses based on the people he meets, his emotions, his heritage and his preference. Belief change in faith issues is highly individualistic and variable; it doesn’t follow a rule.
In faith-belief:
Evidence is less important; faith is more important.
It is driven by culture, people, emotions and will.
You can choose to make changes in your faith-belief.
Cheers.
[1] Dawkins, Richard, and Lalla Ward. The god delusion. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006.
[2] Farias, Miguel, et al. "Scientific faith: Belief in science increases in the face of stress and existential anxiety." Journal of experimental social psychology 49.6 (2013): 1210-1213. Aghababaei, Naser, et al. "Predicting subjective well-being by religious and scientific attitudes with hope, purpose in life, and death anxiety as mediators." Personality and Individual Differences 90 (2016): 93-98.
[3] Kapogiannis, Dimitrios, et al. "Cognitive and neural foundations of religious belief." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106.12 (2009): 4876-4881.
[4] As in William James’s book The varieties of Religious Experience.
[5] Russell, Bertrand. Bertrand Russell. A History of Western Philosophy and Its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances: From the Earliest Times to the Present Day. Simon and Schuster (printed by H. Wolff), 1945. (Chapter on Hume.)
[6] Kim, Heejung S., and Joni Y. Sasaki. "Cultural neuroscience: Biology of the mind in cultural contexts." Annual review of psychology 65 (2014): 487-514.
[7] Barro, Robert, Jason Hwang, and Rachel McCleary. "Religious conversion in 40 countries." Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 49.1 (2010): 15-36.