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1.  Introduction<\/a><\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Despite a Christian family background, I have never managed\nto be a Christian in the way defined by most churches. I am not a \u2018believer\u2019,\nand could recite no creed without a sense of hypocrisy and conflict. But after\nmany years of engagement with other traditions \u2013 Buddhist, philosophical and\npsychological \u2013 it has become increasingly clear to me that \u2018belief\u2019 is not\nwhat Christianity is most importantly about. It is quite possible to drink\ndeeply of what Christianity has to offer, indeed to be \u2018Christian\u2019 in all the\nways that matter \u2013 morally, spiritually and intellectually \u2013 without\n\u2018believing\u2019 such absolute propositions as that God exists, or that Jesus is the\nSon of God, or that Jesus saves believers from sin. Indeed, I will go further.\nSuch beliefs have no positive practical effects on the lives of Christians,\nbeyond being shortcuts to group conformity which may also have many negative\neffects. That is the conclusion of an argument that will be unpacked as this\nbook progresses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But this book is not merely about the disavowal of Christian\n\u2018belief\u2019. It is also about something much more positive: the value of the meaning\nand faith that people find in their experience of the Christian tradition.\nLater I will go into the question of exactly what I mean by terms like\n\u2018meaning\u2019 and \u2018faith\u2019, but for the moment let us just mark them out as the\nbearers of all that is good in Christianity. It is God, or Christ, who inspires\nChristians to campaigns of justice and acts of love: not because they have\ncommitted themselves to abstract propositions about God, but because they\nexperience the inspiration of God, who fills them with positivity and\nconfidence. Belief is in no way necessary to inspiration and faith. In the\nmeantime, the \u2018belief in\u2019 God and his revelations tends to inspire only inner\nrepression, narrow partisan defensiveness, and even holy war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For myself, I am at least culturally Christian, and I find\nthe symbols and insights of Christianity much more deeply etched into my psyche\nthan those of any other religion, despite an early rejection of my Christian\nheritage and about twenty years of engagement with Buddhism. Recently I found\nthis reinforced for me by the words of Jung\u2019s Red Book:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can certainly leave Christianity but it does not leave you. Your\nliberation from it is delusion. Christ is the way. You can certainly run away,\nbut then you are no longer on the way.[1]<\/strong><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I take Jung to mean by this is that Christ, as an\narchetype, fulfils a certain function in the psyche, and for those who are\nculturally Christian, that function is not easily fulfilled in any other way.\n\u2018The way\u2019 for each individual leads from their starting point to their\ndestination, and if one denies the full conditioning effect of one\u2019s starting\npoint, one\u2019s way may be lost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have dedicated this book to my late father (a Baptist\nminister) \u2013 not because I would expect him to necessarily agree with everything\nin it, but because he provided me with an early experiential sense of the\npotential value of Christianity which I am only now beginning to recognise has\nsustained me throughout my life. My father observed the Christian conventions:\nbut it was always clear, when you asked him about what was most valuable to\nhim, that in his experience God is love. Love is an experience, not a belief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have returned to the re-engagement with Christianity\nmarked by this book after the development of a practical philosophy that I\nbelieve to be applicable in the context of any tradition: Middle Way Philosophy.\nDespite its name, Middle Way Philosophy only owes some aspects of its\ninspiration to the Buddhist tradition, and is not dependent on that tradition.\nInstead, it understands the Middle Way universally, as a principle of human\nnavigation. Given our embodied nature and our uncertainty, we can have no\njustification for choosing absolute beliefs that lie beyond that experience.\nHowever, what is distinctive about the Middle Way approach is the equal\nrecognition that we have no justification for denying<\/em> absolute beliefs. This creates a radical agnostic\nalternative that also steers us well clear of relativism, postmodernism,\natheism or any other positions that are widely interpreted as being based\n(explicitly or implicitly) on such denials. If we don\u2019t know, we need to follow\nthrough the implications of not knowing<\/em>\neven-handedly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Agnosticism has been very unfairly treated by a popular\ntradition \u2013 both religious and atheist \u2013 that has failed to understand its\npotential. There is nothing wishy-washy, indecisive or necessarily vague about\nthe agnosticism I will be recommending in this book. Indeed, it takes\nconsiderable resolve to avoid the magnetic pull of absolute affirmation or\ndenial, together with the social institutions that entrench that duality. These\nopposed social institutions could most obviously be the institutions of the\nchurch versus secular humanist movements, but might just as easily be illustrated\nby the entrenched opposed sides arguing about abortion, or about whether Islam\nis or is not an intrinsic threat to liberal democracy. Nor is agnosticism only\nabout God: wherever there are absolute beliefs on either side (for example,\nabout freewill and determinism, mind and body, or any kind of absolute\ncategorisation or boundary) agnosticism offers a challenge, in the form of a\nbrave flag of peaceful resistance raised in between the lines of the warring\narmies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has taken me a long time to realise what a profound part\nagnosticism plays in Christianity, and helps to explain all that is best and\nmost inspiring about it. No, \u2018Christian agnostic\u2019 is not a contradiction in\nterms, and I will be exploring some of the many ways that Christianity is and can\nbe agnostic in this book. These begin with the basic recognition that we, as\nhumans, are not God: that God is infinite and beyond us, an object of holiness\nand awe. They can continue with the responsibility for our own lives indicated\nin the story of the expulsion from Eden. Since we live in a post-Eden world, we\nlive in an experience of uncertainty in which meaning is not written on the\nheavens \u2013 rather it is found in our bodies and brains. The intense pain and\nconflict created by that state is symbolised by Christ\u2019s crucifixion: an event\nthat could hardly have the same sting for us if it was merely the unfolding of\na set of pre-determined events, part of a story staged by a heavenly father. It\nis perhaps only if we feel the abandonment that Christ himself expressed on the\ncross, being prepared to let go of all reassuring \u2018belief\u2019, that we can find\nthe resurging hope symbolised by the resurrection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Middle Way in Buddhism and in Christianity takes an\napparently very different form, but an underlying similarity can also be found.\nIn Buddhism the Middle Way is exemplified by the investigatory process that the\nBuddha (a man who lived in India about 500 BCE) went through: first going forth\nfrom a privileged life of merely conventional morality to a homeless life of\nspiritual searching. He is there said to have encountered spiritual teachers\nand ascetic practitioners from whom he learnt much, but whose absolute beliefs\nhe eventually found inadequate and moved beyond. It was only after experiencing\nthese two extremes that the Buddha is said to have discovered the Middle Way,\nrelying instead on his own experience to find a more balanced and adequate path\nof spiritual progress that avoids both absolute and relative assumptions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christianity, on the other hand, does not primarily represent\nthe Middle Way through a quest, apart from Jesus\u2019 more limited withdrawal to\nthe wilderness, which does have some resemblances to the Buddha\u2019s quest that I\nwill be discussing. The main way Christianity represents the Middle Way,\ninstead, is through the symbolism of the incarnation. Instead of finding<\/em> the Middle Way, Christ is<\/em> the Middle Way. In the Nicene Creed\nhe is described as both wholly divine and wholly human, a categorisation that\nshows the Early Church apparently struggling to confine a living experience into\nthe box of a conceptual certainty. Instead of going through a process of\ndiscovery, what Jesus does is to constantly challenge our pretended certainties\nand their associated positions of power. He challenges the rich and powerful,\nchallenges the complacent, challenges legalism and challenges our failures of\nlove. Instead of a long career of carefully balancing different interests, such\nas the Buddha seems to have had, Jesus had a short and explosive career\nculminating in dramatic demonstrations of his ambiguous nature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christianity is primarily a faith. \u2018Faith\u2019 has often come to\nbe a euphemism for absolute belief, but on the contrary, I want to suggest,\nfaith can involve the positive avoidance of absolute belief and the positive\nembrace of uncertainty. One does not have faith because one expects certainty\nin the future, but rather because one recognises that the human state is one of\nuncertainty. Faith by its very nature needs to be provisional: a recognition of\naspirations whose meaning may be infinite and vastly significant for us, but\nnevertheless cannot result in absolute belief, because any such belief is\nrecognised to undermine rather than to support that faith. In a state of faith,\nwe are orientated towards a meaningful God whom we experience: a God who offers\nan archetypal foretaste of an integrated self and an integrated world. But such\na God could only be meaningful to us in such a way if we remain uncertain even\nabout his very existence, let alone about such claims as that he created the\nworld or sent Jesus as his son.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such faith, then, I want to argue, excludes belief in\nrevelation. To believe that God sends us messages requires an absolute\npresupposition that God exists and is of a particular nature: a presupposition\nthat in our uncertain and embodied state we are not entitled to make. In a\npost-Eden existence, we are also required to take responsibility for our own\ninterpretation of whatever texts or other sources of information we encounter,\nand the granting of absolute authority to any such text, or even to a\nbelieved-in historical figure, involves an avoidance of that responsibility. It\nis us that give authority to the Bible or to any other source through the\nvalues we attribute to it. Scriptures may offer us inspiration, but do not,\nabove all, licence us to give absolute authority to words that have actually\nbeen interpreted by us, and thus by stealthy bad faith claim absolute authority\nfor ourselves. It is that kind of bad faith that, above all, has led me to keep\nmy distance from Christianity for many years, and I do not think any better of\nit now. But I do not think such bad faith is essential to Christianity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are thus no arguments from the authority of scripture,\nor from the authority of historical events, in this book. Rather, there is\nacknowledgement of inspiration<\/em> from\nscripture or historical events, and of our responsibility for interpreting them\nand justifying our view of them. To appeal\nto<\/em> a source of this kind, we assume that claims that we interpret them as\nmaking must be true because of that source, rather than subjecting any such\nclaims to critical investigation. In the process, we probably confuse the\nmeaning and inspiration of the source for us with an appeal to its authority:\nbut it can be deeply meaningful to us without being appealed to. There will be\nmuch discussion, for example, of the gospels in this book, but not an appeal to<\/em> them. There can be no\njustified authority that is not earned, directly or indirectly, through the\nexperience of those who heed it. No matter how reliable a source is, it also\nnever becomes absolute. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This book, not being based on them, is thus also not\namenable to criticism on the grounds of the authority of scripture or of historical\nevents. If a scholar or cleric tells you that Jesus did not actually say this\nor that, or that a particular stance is not \u2018Biblical\u2019 or not \u2018Christian\u2019\n(according to his or her definition of \u2018Christian\u2019), then I do not care, and I\nsuggest that you should not care either. The importance of Jesus in our lives\ndoes not depend on who he actually was, whether he actually existed, whether he\nwas actually the son of God, or whether the stories told about him are true \u2013\nrather, it depends on how we choose to interpret those stories, interpret his\nadvice, and interpret his traditional status as the son of God. It depends on\nthe way Jesus\u2019 teachings and example actually affect our lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My sole justificatory criterion in this book is the Middle\nWay: that is, based on what moves people helpfully towards positions that can\nbe recognised, justified, applied and practised in experience \u2013 and thus what\navoids the dogmas that interfere with that process. If you need more detail on\nthat approach than I can provide in this book, then I must refer you to my\n\u2018Middle Way Philosophy\u2019 series, in which it is presented in considerable detail\nwith reference to philosophy, ethics, psychology, neuroscience, and spiritual\npractice. The approaches here are genuinely open to criticism, but in relation\nto that framework. If, rather than appealing to authority, you can show me that\nI am not helping people to engage with what is most meaningful and genuinely\nhelpful to them, once it has been understood in that wider context, then I hope\nI will reconsider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Christian tradition of the last two hundred years or so\nhas proved to be a remarkably fragile tradition. So na\u00efve was the faith of many\nChristians that it has been decimated by scientific progress in astronomy,\ngeology, biology and psychology, with this damage then compounded by the even\nmore profound effects of consumerism in distracting people from the religious\nlife itself. But the fragility that made that damage possible is caused by\nabsolute belief: belief that must discontinuously either be held fast or\nbroken. In many cases belief in Christian \u2018truths\u2019 has been broken. In others\nit has been retrenched into a fundamentalist version that is no less fragile,\nbut maintains itself by actively ignoring and repressing alternatives: relying\non the vacuum left by a religious education that, where it exists at all, often\neither inculcates or impotently compares absolute beliefs. That the \u2018new\natheists\u2019 can often get away with their assumptions that Christianity as a\nwhole must be rejected because it must be defined by absolute beliefs, is a\nfurther indication of this fragility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Christianity offers a lot more than these fragile\n\u2018beliefs\u2019. The more I consider and re-read the most inspiring Christian figures\nfrom the past, the more it seems that they offer. Of course, much of what is\nwritten by or about them makes regular reference to Christian belief. Amongst\nthose who stress it most, one is more likely to find those who are often\nlabelled as narrow-minded oppressors, inquisitors, crusaders and bigots. But\nalongside this there is a whole culture of Christian meaning. That culture is\none in which loving, creative and courageous action is inspired by the\nintegrative spirit of God and of Christ, engaged in the resolution of conflicts\nboth within and beyond ourselves. I see it especially in the mystical saints of\nthe medieval period, in the artistic tradition that peaked in the Renaissance,\nand in the more mystical but socially active tradition of the Quakers. But\nthere are countless other Christians in whom one can find it to varying degrees:\nsaints, churchmen, social reformers, missionaries, and lay people in every walk\nof life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major thinkers to point out and develop an\nalternative to fragile Christian belief has been psychologist Carl Jung. Jung\nfamously said that he knew<\/em> God but\ndid not believe in him: which I take to be his way of saying that he found God\noverwhelmingly meaningful but this meaning did not imply belief. The recent and\nlong-delayed publication of Jung\u2019s \u2018Red Book\u2019, in which Jung recorded his\nvisionary experiences around the time of the First World War, offers an\nextraordinary resource for those who want to support a more robust, more\nadequate, agnostic Christianity. Jung offers us an approach to God as an\narchetype representing aspects of our own experience. However, most importantly\nin the Red Book, he makes it clear how the archetypal explanation is not just\nan intellectualisation or \u2018explaining away\u2019 of God. On the contrary, it is the\ngateway to a fuller and more awe-inspiring experience of him. In the Red Book,\nJung constantly wrestles with God and his nature much as the earlier Christian\nmystics did, not despite but because of his recognition that God is an\nexpression of his own inner experience. In experiential terms, an archetypal\nGod is not an inch \u2018unreal\u2019, but rather \u2018more real\u2019 than any projected external\nversion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There have been many attempts to reform and renew\nChristianity, from Martin Luther to the Iona Community. These all in some way\nprotest, as Jesus did, against rigidity, formalism and the abuse of power \u2013\noffering instead a community of the living God or living Christ as they\nexperience it, often linked to ecclesiastical, social or political reform. If\nthese reforming movements wish to succeed in the longer term, however, my\nargument is that they need to find the Middle Way. It is by consciously\navoiding the negative absolute (where absolute beliefs are taken to be false)\nas well as the positive absolute (where they\u2019re taken to be true) that cycles\nof reaction, rigidification, and polarisation can be avoided.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another important reason why Christians need the Middle Way\ndepends on its universality. Christianity as mere belief, as appeal to\nrevelation, is as divisive as any other absolute belief. It does not matter if\nthat absolute belief is a belief to which the idea of \u2018peace\u2019 is attached: the\nresult will nevertheless in some respect be conflict, if there is no possible\nway for experience to intercede between those who hold those beliefs and those\nwho deny them. As long as Christians cling to absolutes, their message of peace\nand love will also transmit the virus of absolutism which will directly\nundermine that message. Whatever denials are made, the Crusades, the\nInquisition, the division of communities in Northern Ireland, the Catholic\nclerical abuse scandals, and many other abuses will remain on the Christian\nconscience, because the underlying cause of them in narrow-minded\nover-confidence will still be harboured in the Christian tradition. But on the\nother hand, an interpretation of Christianity in harmony with the Middle Way\nwill allow them to join with those of many other traditions, each of which can\nalso be interpreted in terms of the Middle Way, for a shared and genuine\nengagement with the roots of conflict. It is not that all religions are already\none, but rather that the unnecessary barriers between them can indeed be\nremoved, if they are prepared to go through a balanced process of experiential\nself-scrutiny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christianity is above all a religion of divine love. As St\nPaul wrote, \u201cI may have faith enough to move mountains, but if I have no love,\nI am nothing.[2]<\/a>\u201d\nBut love is also seemingly the quality that most quickly becomes forgotten or\nformalised in Christian practice. I want to argue that love is inextricable\nfrom wisdom, just as emotion is inextricable from reason. We genuinely love\nothers, not when we merely aspire to feel goodwill towards them, but when our\nbeliefs about them are open and provisional enough to recognise good qualities\nalongside bad, a friend in every enemy. The avoidance of absolute belief is not\njust about doctrine, but about people too. All those who want to practise the\nreligion of divine love, I would argue, should practise the Middle Way in the\nway they interpret that religion.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.  Faith\nwithout belief<\/a><\/h1>\n\n\n\n

a.   \nBelief and meaning<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

My case is against Christian belief<\/em> but in favour of Christian faith<\/em>. The two are, of course, not synonymous in the way I am using\nthem here. To make this case clear I will need to begin by exploring these\nterms and their meanings, in the process including psychological and brain\nperspectives as well as philosophical ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is belief? I will define it as any representation of\nthe world or of ourselves, implicit or explicit, that we hold firmly enough to\naffirm or enact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though there is a widespread association of the word\n\u2018belief\u2019 only with religious belief, beliefs are much more varied than that. I\nbelieve that it will rain tomorrow. I believe that London is the capital of the\nUK. Such beliefs are explicit<\/em> when we\nconsciously refer to them or reflect on them, but a lot of the time they are\nimplicit, merely being assumed in the background as the basis of our actions.\nThe Prime Minister of the UK doubtless continues to believe that London is her\ncapital, but I\u2019d be rather surprised if she explicitly reflects on this point\nvery often, even though a great many of her actions take it for granted. She\nhas other things to think about. The same goes for many of our other beliefs in\neveryday life. I believe that the chair will support me and not collapse when I\nsit on it, but am unlikely to explicitly reflect on this point unless it shows\nsigns of breaking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My perspective on belief here is developed from embodied\nmeaning, an approach to meaning developed on the basis of substantial linguistic\nand psychological evidence since the 1980\u2019s (by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson[3]<\/a>), which\nclearly up-ends many of the traditional assumptions about belief as well as\nmeaning. Under embodied meaning theory, the meaning of words (as well as other\nsymbols such as visual art and music) is most basically formed by the\ndevelopment of synaptic links which at least mildly re-enact our active,\nembodied experience when stimulated by symbols that become associated with\nthose experiences. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to embodied meaning theory, at the basic, initial\nlevel there is a direct association between an experience (let\u2019s say that of\nseeing, touching or climbing a tree) and a word (\u2018tree\u2019), or a more schematic\nexperience (say of one thing going inside another) with a word like \u2018in\u2019. As we\ngo on, though, our vocabulary expands through metaphorical extension of these\nbasic categories and schemas, so that we can categorise more generally or specifically\n(\u2018oak\u2019, \u2018plant\u2019) and talk in more abstract terms that implicitly relate other\nsituations back to this basic one (\u2018dendritic drainage\u2019 dependent on \u2018tree\u2019,\n\u2018field of study\u2019 dependent on \u2018in\u2019). Our metaphors can become the basis of\nwhole cognitive models<\/em>, in which a set\nof inter-related ideas are all dependent on the same metaphorical structure:\ne.g. the metaphor of medicine as warfare inspires \u2018bodily defence mechanisms\u2019,\n\u2019attack of fever\u2019 etc, and in this way the meaning of even the most abstract terms\ncan be recognised as dependent on associations with bodily experience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Contrary to this approach, analytic philosophers (along with\ntheir theological and scientific allies) tend to define belief in purely\nexplicit terms, and meaning in terms of the conditions for true belief. For\nthem, meaning is subsidiary to belief: a position that starts from a basically\ndisembodied perspective in which a rational observer makes claims about the\nworld without any particular role for the body in which that observer is placed[4]<\/a>. There\nis also a Wittgensteinian variant on this view of meaning that reduces it,\ninstead, to socially-mediated use: but such an account only tells us about the\nsocial origins of linguistic conventions, not why those conventions are\nmeaningful to us[5]<\/a>.\nMeaning in this deeper sense is a matter of experience, not either of social\nusage or of truth-conditions. These disembodied ways of thinking about meaning\nare well entrenched in Western thinking, but I would argue that that they have\na basic incompatibility with the Christian recognition of the human body as a\npositive thing in the image of God (see 4b below). Instead, if meaning is\ndependent on bodily experience, belief must be understood in turn as formed out\nof that meaning. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meaning and belief are thus distinct only in their degree of\nentrenchment and their practical importance, the boundary between them being\nvague. Meanings can be associated with individual words or symbols as well as\nwith sentences that make claims (propositions), but it is only when the\nmeanings attached to claims are strong enough for us to act on them (whether we\nactually do so or not) that we can start to call them beliefs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One important implication of this new approach to meaning\nand belief is that art and music can be recognised as fully meaningful in the\nsame way that words and sentences are. No absolute distinction needs to be made\nbetween \u2018cognitive meaning\u2019 (the meaning of words as you look them up in a\ndictionary) and \u2018emotive meaning\u2019 (the \u2018emotional\u2019 associations of words), and\nboth art and music can be credited with a degree of cognitive meaning as well\nas emotive \u2013 for a musical phrase (for instance) can be associated with\nparticular bodily experiences just as the word \u2018tree\u2019 can. For Christians, this\nmeans that Bach\u2019s cantatas or Michelangelo\u2019s paintings in the Sistine Chapel\ncan speak of God as directly as any theologian, if not more directly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It also implies that stories (whether or not the stories are\n\u2018true\u2019) can be strongly meaningful to us without that meaning being dependent\non belief. Philosophers trying to account for our relationship to stories on\nthe basis of the traditional account of meaning and belief have to introduce\nclumsy mechanisms like \u2018suspension of disbelief\u2019, which are really not\nnecessary when we recognise meaning as prior to belief. Instead, we find\nstories acutely meaningful because of the strong associations they evoke for\nus. Our reading of the situation of characters in a story evokes similar bodily\nsensations in us as those we would expect them to be experiencing. At the same\ntime, that imaginative meaningfulness falls short of what would be required for\nus to act as though the story were \u2018true\u2019 in the way that we take our everyday\nenvironment to be. For example, if I read from Tolkien\u2019s fantasy Lord of the Rings<\/em> that Gandalf rode to\nEdoras on the noble horse Shadowfax, I can fully imagine the character of\nGandalf, the environment of Edoras and the appearance of Shadowfax, thanks to\nTolkien\u2019s vivid accounts of them elsewhere. The embodied meaning of these\nthings creates an imaginative experience, so that I can, in a limited way,\nexperience the associations involved in riding across the plains of Rohan\ntowards the ancestral halls of King Theoden. But I do not believe<\/em> in them in the sense that I could expect to meet Gandalf in\nperson, to ride Shadowfax, or book a holiday to Edoras. Nor do I disbelieve\nthem in the sense that I would write to the publisher protesting at the \u2018lies\u2019\nI read in Lord of the Rings<\/em>. I find\nthe story highly meaningful \u2013 meaningful enough to re-live it through my\nsynapses, but I neither believe it nor disbelieve it. No \u2018suspension of\ndisbelief\u2019 is necessary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This, again, has massive implications for religion. We live\nin a society where the topsy-turvy view of belief as prior to meaning has\nbecome so engrained that the word \u2018myth\u2019, once a highly significant archetypal\nstory embedded in a cultural tradition, has often come to mean \u2018falsehood\u2019. To\nremark that the Bible is full of myth and story, I must emphasise, is not<\/em> to say that those stories are\nnecessarily untrue. Rather it is to point out that their truth or falsity is\nnot and should not be the main way in which we relate to them. I read of\nGandalf riding across the plains of Rohan, and this is neither to be believed\nor disbelieved, just highly significant. When I read of the expulsion of Adam\nand Eve from the Garden of Eden, or the trial and crucifixion of Jesus, these\nstories are likewise highly meaningful. But just as I do not expect to meet\nGandalf or book a holiday to Edoras, and thus do not \u2018believe\u2019 in Rohan, I\nlikewise do not expect any archaeologist to find the graves of Adam and Eve or\nthe site of Eden. Perhaps the chances of finding more historical confirmation\nof Jesus\u2019 crucifixion are greater, but this would be a side-issue from the fact\nthat its significance to Christians does not depend on any such historicity.\nThey don\u2019t find the crucifixion meaningful because they believe in it: they\nbelieve in it (if they do) because they find it meaningful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what does happen when Christians adopt a \u2018belief\u2019 in\nfacts or events which do not have immediate practical application: a belief\nthat say, Jesus is the Son of God, as opposed to a belief that their chair will\nnot collapse when they sit on it? Obviously such Christians feel just as\nstrongly about such a belief, if not more so, than they would about an everyday\nmatter. They might be offended if you tell them that their house does not\n\u2018really exist\u2019, just as if you tell them that their god does not \u2018really\nexist\u2019. But such a belief would have no force for them if it did not in fact have\na practical application that constantly reinforces it, even though this\npractical application is less direct than is the case with everyday beliefs.\nInstead of an immediate direct practical application, I want to suggest, such\nbeliefs have practical importance as verbal formulae shared in the Christian\ngroup. It is important to be able to say \u201cI believe in God\u2019s saving grace sent\nthrough Christ\u201d, for example, because the sharing of that belief is a badge of\ngroup-membership, and often a perceived condition of acceptance and status in\nthe group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These kinds of beliefs are special, and marked out for that\nspecific purpose in group membership, because they are absolute. Absolute\nbeliefs are distinguishable from provisional ones in a variety of ways. They\nassume the traditional account of meaning I mentioned above in which belief is\nprior to meaning (which I call representationalism<\/em>).\nThey can only be true or false rather than justified to a degree. They are\nconstantly opposed to the opposite belief \u2013 that which declares what they\nbelieve as true to be false or what they take to be false as true. They are\nclosely associated with a group that constantly reinforces those beliefs as the\nprice of acceptance, as already mentioned. Absolute beliefs also repress all\nalternatives apart from the opposites that they recognise and oppose. Such\nalternatives tend to be denied or ignored, or perhaps ridiculed or dismissed if\nthey insist on making themselves known. Because no alternatives can be\nconsidered, absolute beliefs are not capable of modification in the light of\nnew experience: as long as they remain absolute they are fragile, allowing only\na dramatic conversion to the opposite.[6]<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The belief that \u2018God exists\u2019, or that \u2018Jesus is the Saviour\u2019\nis a classic Christian example of this type of absolute belief. These beliefs\nare absolute, firstly, because they assume a view of meaning whereby such\nstatements gain their meaning by lining up with reality rather than having an\nimpression on our wider bodily experience. Indeed, their meaning is assumed to\nbe independent and eternal regardless of us or our bodies: God, it is assumed,\nwould exist quite independently of us. These beliefs can only be absolutely\ntrue or false: God cannot partially exist and Jesus cannot be a saviour to a\ndegree. They are opposed to opposites who deny them: for example, atheists who\ndeny the first or Muslims and other religionists who deny the second. They are\nclosely associated with the Church, which provides full acceptance and status\nas Christians only to those who accept these, together with the other absolute\nbeliefs expressed in the Creed. Finally, these beliefs repress all\nalternatives, as can be seen by their treatment of agnosticism, which is\nconsistently misunderstood, ignored or even ridiculed (a good sign that\nagnosticism is a far bigger threat to the rigidities of Christian orthodoxy\nthan atheism has ever been).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The relationship between absolute beliefs and groups can be\nreadily seen in the series of cognitive biases that psychologists have\nidentified through experiment as identifiable features of groups. These are\nsocial proof, ingroup bias, groupthink and false consensus. Social proof is the\ntendency to believe that a claim is true merely on the basis of it being\naccepted by others in the group[7]<\/a>. A\nbelief that is emphasised by the group but has no other justification beyond it\n(an absolute belief) is clearly subject to social proof. This is compounded by\ningroup bias, which makes us judge those beyond the group by different\nstandards from those within it (thus enabling agnostics to be dismissed)[8]<\/a>.\nGroupthink means that judgements in the group are made on the basis of peer\npressure[9]<\/a>.\nFalse consensus, makes us overestimate the consistency of both favoured beliefs\nwithin the group and opposed ones beyond the group[10]<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such biases, constantly reinforcing the relationship between\nabsolute beliefs and group conformity, do not necessarily mean that we are\ndoomed only to act unreflectively as a herd, nor that group association itself\ncannot take them into account and avoid them. Human beings are social animals,\nand even the most solitary of us needs the support and solidarity of others.\nThe approaches and methods of how we can more broadly avoid absolutisation as a\nresponse to cognitive bias is one I have discussed in more detail in my Middle\nWay Philosophy writings. It is practice of various sorts, formed on the basis\nof anticipatory awareness of our likely errors, that can gradually help us turn\na conformist group into a relatively critical one: but prime amongst these is\nincrementality of acceptance, that we do not set up acceptance of absolute\nbeliefs as a discontinuous hurdle to acceptance into a group. Rather we need to\nbase our group solidarity on experience of each other \u2013 on mutual trust which\nis always to some degree conditional rather than unconditional. Only God\u2019s love\ncan be unconditional, and we are fooling ourselves if we pretend to have it in\nhuman relationships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nor, if we hold absolute beliefs, does that necessarily make\nall <\/em>our judgement inadequate. As\nalready noted, the vast majority of our beliefs are practical ones involving\ndirect interaction with our environment. Because I believe God exists and say,\nhold fast to a fundamentalist group, does not mean that I cannot have adequate\nbeliefs about, say, geography, or car mechanics. The problems arise only when\nthe group\u2019s beliefs become the basis of judgement, and because of the need to\nremain accepted by the group, we absolutely oppose the opposite, or repress any\nalternatives that may actually be more adequate. If the absolute beliefs of the\ngroup required me to believe that the earth was flat, I would make sure to\ninterpret all the evidence in those terms, and if I ever had cause to fly\naround the earth would make sure there was a rationalisation handy that would\nnot imperil my group membership[11]<\/a>.\nAlso, of course, if these beliefs were threatened by someone claiming that the\nearth was round, I would oppose them. But most of the time, a belief that the\nearth is flat need not impact on my relationships with neighbours, my conduct\nof my job, or my upbringing of my children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless, absolute beliefs are unhelpful, and there\nalways remains a likelihood that their rigidity and inadequacy will start to\nhave a direct practical effect on my actions. When the environment changes, as\nwe saw with the impact of nineteenth century science on contemporary\nChristianity, the fragility of absolute beliefs prevents us from adapting. The\ncore problem is not just \u2018absolutism\u2019 or \u2018extremism\u2019 \u2013 token words which are\nwidely used to differentiate ordinary religionists from unacceptable ones\nwithout further investigation of what they mean. Instead, fundamentalists are\nmerely those who are most obviously dominated by absolute beliefs that we all\nhave. Nor, on the other hand, are absolute beliefs only a problem for\nChristians or other religious believers, but they can rather be found in many\nother contexts, such as politics, science, ethics, health, views of ourselves,\nviews of others and so on. The new atheists constantly neglect this point in\nsingling out \u2018religion\u2019 for special censure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless, the vast majority of Christians still tend to\nthink of their religion in terms of absolute belief. As I shall argue\nthroughout this book, this is both unnecessary and unhelpful. So far, perhaps,\nI have offered some initial indications as to why it is unhelpful, but the\nevidence for this will continue to mount as I go on. As to why it is\nunnecessary as an interpretation of Christianity and what it offers the world,\nthis will be my focus from chapter 3 onwards.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

[1]<\/a>\nJung (2009) p.331<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2]<\/a>\n1Cor 13:2<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[3]<\/a>\nSee, inter alia, Lakoff (1987), Johnson (2007), Lakoff and Johnson (1980). I\nalso discuss this in more detail in Ellis (2013b) section 1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[4]<\/a>\nSee Ellis (2013b) section 3 for more detailed discussion<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[5]<\/a>\nSee Ellis (2001) 4e for a critique of Wittgenstein\u2019s arguments<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[6]<\/a>\nSee Ellis (2015) section 3 for extensive evidence of these features of absolute\nbelief, surveyed in relation to cognitive biases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[7]<\/a>\nTaylor & Doria (1981)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[8]<\/a>\nAsch (1956)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[9]<\/a>\nJanis (1982)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[10]<\/a>\nRoss, Greene & House (1977)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[11]<\/a> Many of these are on display at www.theflatearthsociety.org <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Go to main page for this book<\/a>
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