What Does Believing Mean?

“Everyone needs to believe in something. I believe I will have another beer.” This bumper sticker really made me laugh.

In Through the Looking Glass the White Queen proudly tells Alice “Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Having grown up in a secular humanist family, the idea of believing in something seemed silly. One should strive to know things based on evidence. Ideally, one should not just “believe” anything.

One time in high school Latin class one of my classmates, Manuela, was talking about something in her Catholic religion. I innocently asked her why she believed that thing. Our teacher Ms. Paska came over and said to me that Manuela shared my beliefs but just added some of her own.

I puzzled over this and realized that Ms. Paska meant that Catholics believe the same things as Jews but add some extra bits. As if believing more things was a bonus.

Skeptic podcaster Michael Shermer recently hosted a conversation with former Harper’s Magazine editor Christopher Beha. Beha calls himself a skeptic, but he believes in God and is a Catholic. This is a recurring theme on Shermer’s program: Self-proclaimed skeptics who believe unsupported religious claims.

Beliefs matter. People kill and go to war for beliefs. But sometimes a belief is really about tribal identity, not about actual belief.

Shermer gave the example of biologist Ken Miller who said he believed in the resurrection of Jesus. Shermer pressed him on this point and Miller said that he doesn’t “literally” believe it. But “I am a Catholic and that is what we believe.”

Sometimes it is a mix. Many Islamist Jihadi fighters believe that they will be rewarded in paradise with 72 virgins. This derives from a Hadith from Al-Tirmidhi, which states that a martyr is married to 72 houris (pure, intensely beautiful, and immortal companions).

They “believe” in Islam in the tribal sense of belief. But then they have a practical belief of reward. With no evidence.

My recent article “Why Save Others from Oppression?” mentioned the magic power of “because” that we use to justify our actions. We hold a belief and then look for a “because” to justify it. But some things do not require a because. We should save others from oppression because oppression causes suffering and suffering is unpleasant. No further reason needed.

One challenge for me as an environmentalist: Can I justify why it is good to save species from extinction? If an entire species goes extinct, individual members of that species no longer suffer. I have to admit this is an “unsupported belief” that I hold: We should not cause a species to go extinct. Most species in Earth’s history have gone extinct. But humans can choose not to be the cause of extinction.

In mathematics we can prove a theorem, but only when we start with acceptable axioms. Mathematics does not care if our axioms are nonsense when applied to the real world. But if we want the theorems to be true about the world, then our axioms must be based on what we know to be true about the world.

At some point, we get down to our core beliefs that cannot be proved. These are our axioms. Some are aspirational. Some are contradictory. I might believe in reducing suffering. I might believe in Justice. Freedom. Human dignity. Not starting wars. But what if a group is being oppressed? Perhaps sacrifice and suffering are needed to end that oppression? Perhaps it is even necessary to start a war to end that oppression?

There are no easy answers because some things cannot be known. Sometimes we take a leap and hope for the best. Going to war is a far more serious action than our supposed leaders seem to grasp. Current case: Iran.

In summary, I will note that there are at least three completely different meanings of belief: 1) Evidence-based belief. 2) Identity belief (as in the case of Ken Miller and the Jihadis). 3) Axiomatic belief.

When identity belief replaces evidence-based belief, societies can unravel. Perhaps we should at least be aware of what type of belief we hold?