Deciding To Believe

     I distinguish belief from knowledge by the criterion of personal, objective verification. That is: if I verify a statement with my own senses, it then constitutes an item of knowledge. If I haven’t done so, it’s an item of belief. If we use that criterion, then for most of us the amount we know is dwarfed by the amount we believe.

     That makes How do we decide what to believe? a question of vital importance.

     I’m still struggling to complete Dreams of Days Forsaken. Its combination of political, religious, and technological ideas makes for a turbulent marriage. Yet the effort has rewarded me in unexpected ways. One of the rewards is the question above.

     I’m told that in the state of Ohio, which I know exists because I’ve been there, there’s a city called Cincinnati. I don’t know that Cincinnati exists. I believe it because I’ve been assured, by credible testimony from persons in whom I trust, that it exists and has certain properties. Yet they, and every reference work that supports their statements, could all be lying. No, it’s not likely, but it’s possible.

     I might never go to Cincinnati. But the aforementioned statements from credible sources are enough for me to believe in it. It helps that I can’t imagine a reason why anyone would fabricate an American city. It might be a severe limitation, but that’s the case.

     With some decisions to believe or disbelieve, the strongest incentive is played by desire: “Do I want to believe / disbelieve this?” Many men are desperate to believe that their wives love them, or that their bosses appreciate them, or that their neighbors will eventually return their chainsaws. Equally, many men of a criminal bent ardently desire to disbelieve in the afterlife, especially the Christian conception that conditions one’s subsequent happiness on one’s behavior while in the flesh. We tend to call the resulting decisions “wishful thinking,” though that has a dubious bearing on whether they’re eventually proved correct.

     Testimony plus the willingness to believe or disbelieve stand at the heart of all such decisions.

     Have a snippet from Dreams of Days Forsaken:

     “I have an unusual friend.” Ray sipped from his mug.
     “More unusual than a futa with a bio degree that runs an engineering shop?” Celia drained her mug in a single draught and set it down on the coffee table.
     “Oh, considerably. Let me show you something.” He stood, and led her by eye to follow him to the rectory’s small study. At the entrance of the room, he stepped aside and pointed at the tall, wide, heavily loaded bookcase that rested against the shorter inner wall. “How much would you say that thing weighs?”
     “With or without the books?”
     “With.”
     Celia moved closer to the bookcase. She ran her fingertips along its grain and peered at the great number of books Ray had crammed into it. “Particle board?”
     “Nope, solid oak.”
     “That makes the case alone about a hundred pounds. With the books?” She grimaced. “Could be four or five hundred pounds.”
     “It used to be over there.” He pointed at the wall adjacent to the study’s window.
     “Bad place for it. It blocked the light.”
     “Yep. So my friend moved it for me. Without taking the books out.”
     She looked over at him. “What is he, an Olympic weight lifter?”
     “She,” Ray murmured, “is about Juliette’s size and build. About a hundred twenty pounds. Hundred thirty at most. A very beautiful young woman.”
     He face was a living portrait of disbelief. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
     “Honest Injun, dear. I stood here and watched her do it. She stepped out of her heels, wrapped her arms around the case, lifted it about six inches, toted it to where it is, and set it down. Made it look easy.”
     She started to speak, checked herself. Ray waited.
     Presently she said “Priests aren’t allowed to lie, are they?”
     Ray shook his head. “It’s frowned on.”
     “Hm.” Celia was plainly unsettled. “I don’t know what to say. I suppose I have to believe you.”
     Ray smiled broadly. “No, dear. That’s my point. You don’t.”
     She peered at him, plainly confused. “Are you saying you made that up?”
     “Nope. It really happened, exactly that way. I didn’t exaggerate or embellish it in the slightest.”
     It stopped her again. He let a few seconds pass.
     “Celia, sometimes things happen that others can’t or won’t believe. They don’t always have clear reasons for their disbelief. Maybe it’s just that what’s been described to them is something that’s alien to their preconceptions. Or maybe it’s something that had never happened before. But belief has no power over reality. If it happened, it happened. Belief and disbelief can’t change it afterward.
     “I have to say that if I hadn’t been standing here to see what Christine did as she did it, I’d have had a hard time believing it. But if someone I had a good reason to trust were to tell me that it happened, and if he assured me that he wasn’t putting me on or setting me up for a joke, I’d accept it. Conditional on not receiving contrary evidence or testimony later on, at least. How does that compare to the way you decide what to believe?”
     Celia was completely motionless. She didn’t even blink. He couldn’t even tell if she was breathing.
     This has to do it. I have nothing else to give her.
     The wait seemed eternal, yet it was only a moment longer before she spoke.
     “That’s how I do it, too.”
     “Well,” Ray said, “that’s the crux of the thing. Either it happened or it didn’t. Either Jesus of Nazareth traveled around Judea preaching and performing miracles, or he didn’t. Either he was crucified and resurrected, or he wasn’t. Either he ascended into heaven in the sight of his apostles, or he didn’t. How would you decide whether or not to believe it?”
     “It’s incredible…” Celia shook herself. “But you’re right. Either it happened or it didn’t. So how do we decide?”
     “For me,” Ray said, “the capper was the apostles. They went through a lot of the known world preaching Christ’s message, at a time when traveling long distances was a great hardship. They converted a lot of people who’d never known Christ or heard him speak. And all but one of them died for their faith, at the hands of a government or an angry mob. So they believed it. Would they have done all that and suffered all that for a fairy tale?”
     “No… but all of that could have been made up, couldn’t it?”
     “Mmm… not all of it. Some of it was recorded by court historians. And there’s no way all those converts could be made up. That was the beginning of Christianity. It didn’t just spring into existence a few centuries ago. All the records we have say it began in Judea in 33 A.D., where Israel is today.
     “You could still say ‘well, there’s a chance it’s one huge lie.’ After all, there’s no way to prove it happened. It’s based on testimony and written records. It could be just fakery and fabrications, and I and every other man who’s chosen to wear his collar backwards”–he fingered his Roman collar–“could all be credulous fools.”
     Celia remained silent. Ray smiled.
     “Take it home and sleep on it, dear. No more coffee. Just get a night’s rest.” He stood. “If you want to talk more about it, you know where to find me.”
     “Yeah.” She rose and let Ray usher her out.

     Ray, a Catholic priest, is unusually candid about the nature of religious belief. His paradigm extends to all faiths, not just Christianity. Celia, a young genius, has been grappling with whether to believe the Gospel story. Her tendency is to “look for flaws,” which might persuade her to disbelieve… if she could find any. But she hasn’t, so she keeps asking questions, looking for contradictions and evasions. What Ray must tell her is that there aren’t any questions whose answers add up to “Therefore, it’s true and you must believe it.”

     That’s how mature adults must confront the decision to believe. Most who do never actually admit to themselves that they might be wrong, that those who convinced them might be wrong might have misled them. Yet absent personal, objective verification – which is impossible to a living man – all those possibilities are of non-zero probability.

     Minor children who undergo religious indoctrination haven’t got the advantages of adults. They haven’t yet learned enough about logic and evidence. They haven’t got the base of experience. And they haven’t yet plumbed the depths of human mendacity. For them – for the lucky ones, anyway – adults are always truthful and would never take undue advantage of a child’s naivety.

     But anyone old enough to drink will have those things. And the decision to believe or disbelieve becomes rationally defensible.

     (Wasn’t that fun? Maybe we’ll do politicians and political promises next!)