The Elements of Belief

I read the following on a blog* recently, and I must say it has me thinking:

Things That Cease To Exist Without Belief In Them:
Homeopathy
Gods (anyone want to make the case for existence of Thor, Zeus, Hera, or Kali?)
Truth
Vampires (Bram Stoker-style, not the clinical pathology of drinking blood)
Hope, Love, Hate, Jealousy…emotions in general, really
Astrology
Spell-casting, Prayer, Divining, and other summons of supernatural powers
Obviously, these examples would anger, annoy, offend, or otherwise put off the majority of people out there. The good reader would question why I would put Vampires and Spell-Casting with Love, Truth, and God.

Well, would not all of the above examples cease to be without someone believing in them? I can go down the list and show that each of these points simply are not “real” in the same way mathematics, gravity, and aloe vera are.

Things That Exist Regardless of Belief:

The wet qualities of water
The elliptical motion of the earth as it orbits around the sun
The Macro- and Micro-evolution of organisms on planet earth.
The efficacy of aloe vera in soothing sunburns
Human Intelligence (and lack thereof, in some individuals)
The dramatic change in the earth’s climate caused by man’s pollution and neglect of their place in nature
Mathematics and all disciplines that stem from it

Now, the idea here is simple (if you haven’t caught on already): the above examples exist whether or not one believes them to exist. I can stop believing in evolution and global climate change, but they still most definitely exist. I can proclaim that I do not believe that pi does not equal 3.14, but it still will. Water is wet, the sky is blue, oceans are deep, etc. These things do not require belief; not believing will not cause water to be like sandpaper, the earth to rotate around the sun in a rectangular pattern, etc.

I think the fundamental problem with this kind of logic is how it requires us to break life apart and segment it into manageable elements. The parts cannot fully describe the whole. To use the water analogy: Water coming out of my sink may be just as wet as the waves crashing down on the beach during a hurricane, but their metaphysical properties are dramatically different. In other words, the wetness of water says nothing about its power for good or destruction. And even as those aspects are “real”–we can see the videos New Orleans post-Katrina or of a barren land and recognize its power–the way the wetness of water gets played out in our lives is best spoken to through our stories of pain, abandonment, terror, fear, love, compassion and heroism.

Love, pain, vision, inspiration, despair (to name a few aspects) may all require “belief” but they also are the required elements of any kind of art form or relationship. If we can only assign value to a “whole” based on assigning scientific proof to its individual parts, what meaning can the whole possibly have? We utilize story, poetry, painting, photography, design, sculpture, music, etc. to capture what is fundamentally important to us as individuals, as groups or as a whole. Where we screw up when we assign “factual value” to these parts in such a way as to empower our ability to harm one another. We do this because we disagree on said value, and when we feel someone else does not posses “right belief,” i.e. agree with us. The illogical loop then begins.

Christianity makes this mistake all the time. The Church Fathers fought with one another from the Book of Acts onward to distill their belief into manageable “facts” on which to hang their faith. Once they agreed, by vote no less, “The Church Proper” became more formed, hierarchical and political. Being able to describe Jesus’ ontology with a creed–The Nicene Creed especially–allowed The Church Proper to mandate “right belief.” If you are a Christian, then you must believe these things to be true in order to meet your membership requirements. In fact, I got a comment at the end of “The Ground Floor” saying…”I thought Christianity was about…” In other words, what I wrote was so counter to the accepted “right belief” the only way to challenge what I said was to point out the contradiction. In essence, the elements of belief have become so dogmatic and static they now stand in for “facts” instead of “personal truth.”

I do not think it is a fluke this guy sets up his argument with math and science in one corner and the religious aspects in another. He is only speaking to the systemic dichotomy The Church Proper has not only worked hard at creating, but also at institutionalizing across the boundaries of church and state, regardless of creed or country. ** Also, as fans of logic know, The Church Proper makes for a perfect target since the elements of right belief include a virgin birth, resurrection from the dead, and young earth creationism. So silly and simplistic to the logical mind, they would be disregarded all together if The Church Proper had not wielded its power for so much evil, then and now. In a world where revelation comes at the hands of scientific discovery and not tablets coming down the mountain, those of us who are not willing to buy into The Church Proper’s insistent decrying of Evolution, let’s say, are outside of “right belief” regardless of whether or not one self identifies as Atheist or Jesus Follower.

The problem in the argument–one he alludes to on his post–is that science may in-fact prove the biological existence of our existential selves…feelings and emotions being his example. Of course this leaves “real” and “provable” as being not only synonyms but exact replicas of one another. I disagree.

I have two schools of thought here: The first is a brief nostalgic ping about the children’s book “The Velveteen Rabbit.” In the end, what made the rabbit real was love. When he was well-worn, shabby, falling apart, stitched back together then he was real. Maybe love is not “real” in a Periodic Table of Elements kind of way, but then again maybe it is what makes us real as human beings. In the same way, I do not model my own life after Jesus because of the virgin birth, but because over time being Jesus’ Disciple and following his example of radical love and acceptance has given my life more meaning and made my own capacity to love and forgive greater. I have become “more real” in the way of the Velveteen Rabbit, if not in the way of my cells existing in time and space to any greater or lesser degree.

The second thought centers on the relationship between mathematics and music. Music is fundamentally math. You can use math to distill the elements of a musical piece, and the more complicated the piece the more complicated the math. But you cannot ever use music to describe a theorem. The whole is real in a way beyond the capacity of the elements to describe. For you Trekkie’s, I offer the way Data could learn to play the violin with utter perfection (He is an android, for you non-Trekkie’s.), but he never could capture any one’s imagination and heart with his playing because precision in the elements did not make for breath taking music.

I do not want to live in a world full of “right belief” because it confuses–dangerously–personal experience and truth with facts. But I also do not want to distill the experiences of my life, and the truths they represent to me, into categorical facts. Those facts cannot give meaning to my life, in the same way they have no real power over my spirituality and faith. James William McClendon, the theologian, names these facts “numerical data.” I like his wording here because he supposes that any kind of doctrinal agreement is only about this numerical data and tells us nothing of what it means to experience the love of God or be Jesus’ disciple.***

In the same way, knowing I was born February 28, 1971 at 7:30pm to Audrey and Jack Derby, or that I graduated from Duke Divinity School, or that I was molested as a child, cannot tell you the full story of who I am or what it means to know me and be loved by me. I am my own song, and you must hear it, experience it, let it wash over you, in order to say that you do in fact know the real me. And each listener always has a different take, but these differences cannot take away from who I am or my real existence in the world. The elements of belief may be informed by facts, truths, wishes, desires, but our individual perspective ultimately dictates the picture we experience, in the same way portraits of me by Modigliani, Picasso, Rembrandt or Botticelli would also differ. I am sure I would feel they all captured me, and that they did not.

*blog link

**Note: Christianity is not the only religion good at this, but given it is my own historical tradition, I feel I can only speak to it properly. One of my own personal litmus tests about any spiritual path and its veracity is: Does it allow for plurality and encourage it? If not, I deem it to be “sinful,” i.e. breaking fellowship between persons, self and God.

***I could not find the exact quote, but I am pretty sure it is from his Systematic Theology book.