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Dec. 9th, 2011 08:17 amDeep thinky thoughts that were bumping around my skull this morning waiting for the bus:
Religious people, in particular Christians, often refer to themselves as believers. But the more I think about it, the more inappropriate that label seems to me.
For one things, believers claim that lots of people believe in God (the most common belief believers claim). This isn't an empirical claim, it's theology, at least Christian theology: "You believe that God is one. You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder." (James 2:19) Even Richard Dawkins said he's be more or less willing to accept the existence of what he calls an Einsteinian God. As I understand Dawkins, he was talking about a sort of impersonal force that allowed the universe to come into existence, something akin to Aquinas's Prime Mover without the connection to the Christian characterization of a God that hears prayers and mucks around with history. But I doubt most believers would say this makes Dawkins one of them. Belief is not enough.
Then there's that construction: "belief in God." I don't even know what that's supposed to mean. Philosophers typically say something along the lines of "I believe that X," where X is a whole other clause - subject and verb, and usually (since logical propositions tend to use "is") some more nouns after. So "I believe that the weather is sunny" is a well-formed statement. "I believe the weather" is not.
Unless, perhaps, the statement just means that God exists. That's typically what we mean by e.g. "I believe in magic." But that statement doesn't make a lot of sense, either. The most common way we define existence is the power to exclude. A desk exists because it occupies a specific place in space-time, so that nothing else can exist at tat space. But that's obviously not right for God, since God is not a specific part of space-time or even the whole of space-time, but something that transcends space-time. To be fair, general concepts like justice and redness don't work this way, but they're what philosophers call universals. Most people tend to think of God as a specific thing - in philosophical lingo, a particular. This is akin to the red ball, rather than the universal quality of redness.
But let's say there's some definition of existence that actually describes God. Fair enough. I still struggle to see how we can have a belief about God. Belief implies understanding, at least in part. But religious people are fond of saying God transcends, God does not fit into a box (including the box between my ears). So it seems like I can't really understand God in the same way I understand my other beliefs. That's what makes the label "believer" so odd. It has an element of the belief being defined, a sense that you have worked out some feature of reality that you think is true. That feature may not be true, but you at least know what you're talking about.
The more I think about it, the more I think that what we're really talking about is a sort of trust or faith rather than a belief. To be a believer is to say you are going to depend on God to assure some feature of reality - morality, an afterlife, a world without sharp corners, whatever. And it involves things like devotion and worship, the kind of actions that are supposed to flow naturally once you recognize this is the kind of thing that can provide those features. But to say you are a believer rather misses the point.
So I'd say the label believer is all wrong. We need something more along the line of faither, if there was such a word in the English language.
Btw, I don't see this as a fine point of philosophy. Too many people act as if they have God's will all figured out. Words matter, and when you talk about belief, I think that does have an effect on what comes to people's mind when they hear the word. So even a little thing like this could have practical consequences - like a little epistemological humility when it comes to the great unponderables of faith.
Religious people, in particular Christians, often refer to themselves as believers. But the more I think about it, the more inappropriate that label seems to me.
For one things, believers claim that lots of people believe in God (the most common belief believers claim). This isn't an empirical claim, it's theology, at least Christian theology: "You believe that God is one. You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder." (James 2:19) Even Richard Dawkins said he's be more or less willing to accept the existence of what he calls an Einsteinian God. As I understand Dawkins, he was talking about a sort of impersonal force that allowed the universe to come into existence, something akin to Aquinas's Prime Mover without the connection to the Christian characterization of a God that hears prayers and mucks around with history. But I doubt most believers would say this makes Dawkins one of them. Belief is not enough.
Then there's that construction: "belief in God." I don't even know what that's supposed to mean. Philosophers typically say something along the lines of "I believe that X," where X is a whole other clause - subject and verb, and usually (since logical propositions tend to use "is") some more nouns after. So "I believe that the weather is sunny" is a well-formed statement. "I believe the weather" is not.
Unless, perhaps, the statement just means that God exists. That's typically what we mean by e.g. "I believe in magic." But that statement doesn't make a lot of sense, either. The most common way we define existence is the power to exclude. A desk exists because it occupies a specific place in space-time, so that nothing else can exist at tat space. But that's obviously not right for God, since God is not a specific part of space-time or even the whole of space-time, but something that transcends space-time. To be fair, general concepts like justice and redness don't work this way, but they're what philosophers call universals. Most people tend to think of God as a specific thing - in philosophical lingo, a particular. This is akin to the red ball, rather than the universal quality of redness.
But let's say there's some definition of existence that actually describes God. Fair enough. I still struggle to see how we can have a belief about God. Belief implies understanding, at least in part. But religious people are fond of saying God transcends, God does not fit into a box (including the box between my ears). So it seems like I can't really understand God in the same way I understand my other beliefs. That's what makes the label "believer" so odd. It has an element of the belief being defined, a sense that you have worked out some feature of reality that you think is true. That feature may not be true, but you at least know what you're talking about.
The more I think about it, the more I think that what we're really talking about is a sort of trust or faith rather than a belief. To be a believer is to say you are going to depend on God to assure some feature of reality - morality, an afterlife, a world without sharp corners, whatever. And it involves things like devotion and worship, the kind of actions that are supposed to flow naturally once you recognize this is the kind of thing that can provide those features. But to say you are a believer rather misses the point.
So I'd say the label believer is all wrong. We need something more along the line of faither, if there was such a word in the English language.
Btw, I don't see this as a fine point of philosophy. Too many people act as if they have God's will all figured out. Words matter, and when you talk about belief, I think that does have an effect on what comes to people's mind when they hear the word. So even a little thing like this could have practical consequences - like a little epistemological humility when it comes to the great unponderables of faith.
