Why do we believe anything about anything?

There are two words that we’ll be using again and again through this exploration of faith. They are “believe,” and “know.” We use them all the time in life outside of faith: We know that 2 + 2 = 4, that today is Monday, that we are hungry, and in Oshkosh we know that dead lakeflies stink. We also believe things – we believe that the appointment is at 5:00, that our children are smart, that you spell “lakeflies” “lakeflies.” We could be wrong about any of those . . . and so we use “believe” and mean that we’re pretty sure, but could be wrong.

“Believe” in the religious sense has come to mean that we profess certain “truths” about God and our faith – God is good, Jesus was the Son of God, God gave Moses the Ten Commandments, and so on. A “creed” is a listing of statements the one may profess, or not. But when we get to Marcus Borg we’ll find that “believe” may have a different meaning . . .

The classic split between science and religion seems to revolve around the difference between believing and knowing. Scientists, armed with the scientific method that allows and demands experimentation, repeatable and open to evaluation, tend to use the word “know” more, as in “We know we cannot live without oxygen.” The pure scientist may go so far as to say that only what can be measured and tested – matter that can be observed – is “real.”

Religious people tend to use the word “believe” more – unless you are a fundamentalist who thinks that, because of a direct experience with God, he or she KNOWS God exists. Fundamentalists also lay out the Bible as their base of all knowledge – by faith saying that in it and in it alone resides all truth, and that it’s easy to read and understand that truth. They therefore say that the KNOW all about God . . . they profess no uncertainties, and even label any hesitation as evidence of inadequate faith, of false faith. They like the word “believe” but use it to mean “know without a shadow of doubt.”

But setting aside those folks (who, in my opinion, have talked themselves into an untenable position, and cling to it for fear of the wrath of God or at least embarrassment at church), religious people like us use the word “believe” more than “know.” I certainly do, fully aware that what I have believed in the past has more than once proven to be wrong.

Hence the first book – on why human beings believe. And not just why they believe religious things, although the book looks most closely at religious beliefs. But it begins with asking why or how we believe anything at all . . . how we assemble our knowledge about the world, and how we come to expect things of the world and its inhabitants, based on certain “tools” that appear to be universal.

The first chapter lays out a summary of what is the current, generally agreed upon theories of how we think. This is all new material for me, and for most people. The scientific field of study called “cognition theory” is a new one. A glance through the bibliography shows that most of Barrett’s sources are less than twenty years old. However we come out religiously, this is a fascinating introduction on how the mind works.

It is challenging stuff. We are being asked to think about thinking – sort of turning our heads around to peer inside our brain, knowing that we can do so only by using that same brain. But one can observe the processes of the mind, and this book invites us to do that, using these current theories of the mind.

Barrett says we have two kinds of beliefs: Nonreflective, meaning ideas we think “automatically,” without thought, without reflecting on that idea; It just pops up out of our brains; and Reflective – those things we believe because we have thought about them, reflecting on them as to weather or not they are “true,” or to be trusted.

Barrett says our mind is like a workshop that has many tools. The mind uses these tools instantly – Categorizers, Describers, and Facilitators. Once we have applied a category to something – does it have life, or not, for example – certain describers instantly follow – we believe certain things unreflectively, automatically, without question. But given time and experience we can expose an unreflective belief to reflection, and start evaluating it validity. The table on page 9 compares Nonreflective and Reflective beliefs.

Barrett then starts looking at religious beliefs through the lens of cognition theory.