V
VeritasLuxMea
Guest
By no means do I consider myself an expert. Rather, all I can say is that I have spent much of my short life investigating this issue.
I’m often stuck wondering whether people who say, “I believe in God” are suffering from category confusion. I theorize that this may go back to the phrases “faith” or “faith in God,” which I think must have meant something far different to the Bible writers than it does in our vernacular. When the Bible writers use words equivalent to “faith” or “faith in God,” the best I can tell is that they’re coming from a baseline assumption A) God of Abraham exists to a conclusion B) I will TRUST that the God of Abraham is just and righteous, though I may not understand its ways.
But the mainstream Catholic, it would seem, is using the words “I believe in God” to imply meaning M) I accept upon evidence the truth claim that the God of Abraham exists.
How it could be possible for these people to have come to this conclusion, I don’t know, since the average Catholic I’ve met: 1) can’t even give a rough approximation of the meaning of the trinity (meaning they haven’t gotten the slightest grasp on Christian philosophy. I had a Catholic friend who accused me of being a heretic and the most they could tell me about the trinity was: ‘well, it’s uh… Father, Son and uh… Holy Ghost?’), 2) hasn’t opened a Bible on their own in their entire life. Which is just plain sad.
(Note: this is not a jab at my fellow Catholics, but rather, what I find to be the case by way of experience. My interactions may not be representative of the entire community, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all.)
Therefore, if the typical Catholic does mean “I accept truth claim M based upon evidence,” by saying the words “I believe in God,” then they are either lying or woefully ignorant.
It is difficult enough to support truth claim M with 50 years of hardworking research and dedication, let alone X amount of years of religious ed (which is fine, but fundamentally you cannot grasp the secrets of the universe in your spare time once a week. Let’s be honest.)
The second source of support for the truth claim “God of Abraham exists” would be an ignorance of evidence, but reliance on the experts of the Church. Ok, this is not a support so much as it is an assumption that support exists somewhere and is inaccessible to the average Catholic.
On it’s face, this sounds perfectly acceptable. We do this all the time: we defer to doctors, mechanics and others on their field of expertise. Plus. the scholars of the Church, past and present, are some of the more brilliant minds in human history, so certainly they belong in that category and more.
Now the problem that we face here, however, is that whereas there is nearly universal agreement in the fields of medicine and automotive repair, there is nowhere even near as much agreement in religious and spiritual fields. The best we have is perhaps a majority of those in the field being monotheistic (with Hindus, Buddhists, Confuscists, animists and others representing the minority conclusion of polytheism/non-theism/etc.)
Therefore, the average Catholic is left without epistemic justification (or something approximating it) here as well, because there is no expert consensus.
Next we can move on to the evidence of spiritual experience. Here we are presented with the following problems. First, that such experiences should never lead us to a conclusion, no matter what spiritual claim we are making. We know that the brain performs psychological tricks like this (see: placebo effect.) So this is not going to provide epistemic justification. Second, there are thousands of other belief structures claiming spiritual experiences. That doesn’t mean that one cannot be “true” and all others “false.” However, while we can all believe that the spiritual experiences of other faiths are invalid, in this case we cannot merely dismiss them out of hand, since to do so would be to dismiss Catholic experiences at the same time.
Therefore, I almost wonder whether the category confusion isn’t mistaking, “I have evidence to support truth claim M” for “There is a paradigm which I have accepted, pending evidence.”
The solution? It’s not about abandoning Catholicism:
I’m often stuck wondering whether people who say, “I believe in God” are suffering from category confusion. I theorize that this may go back to the phrases “faith” or “faith in God,” which I think must have meant something far different to the Bible writers than it does in our vernacular. When the Bible writers use words equivalent to “faith” or “faith in God,” the best I can tell is that they’re coming from a baseline assumption A) God of Abraham exists to a conclusion B) I will TRUST that the God of Abraham is just and righteous, though I may not understand its ways.
But the mainstream Catholic, it would seem, is using the words “I believe in God” to imply meaning M) I accept upon evidence the truth claim that the God of Abraham exists.
How it could be possible for these people to have come to this conclusion, I don’t know, since the average Catholic I’ve met: 1) can’t even give a rough approximation of the meaning of the trinity (meaning they haven’t gotten the slightest grasp on Christian philosophy. I had a Catholic friend who accused me of being a heretic and the most they could tell me about the trinity was: ‘well, it’s uh… Father, Son and uh… Holy Ghost?’), 2) hasn’t opened a Bible on their own in their entire life. Which is just plain sad.
(Note: this is not a jab at my fellow Catholics, but rather, what I find to be the case by way of experience. My interactions may not be representative of the entire community, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all.)
Therefore, if the typical Catholic does mean “I accept truth claim M based upon evidence,” by saying the words “I believe in God,” then they are either lying or woefully ignorant.
It is difficult enough to support truth claim M with 50 years of hardworking research and dedication, let alone X amount of years of religious ed (which is fine, but fundamentally you cannot grasp the secrets of the universe in your spare time once a week. Let’s be honest.)
The second source of support for the truth claim “God of Abraham exists” would be an ignorance of evidence, but reliance on the experts of the Church. Ok, this is not a support so much as it is an assumption that support exists somewhere and is inaccessible to the average Catholic.
On it’s face, this sounds perfectly acceptable. We do this all the time: we defer to doctors, mechanics and others on their field of expertise. Plus. the scholars of the Church, past and present, are some of the more brilliant minds in human history, so certainly they belong in that category and more.
Now the problem that we face here, however, is that whereas there is nearly universal agreement in the fields of medicine and automotive repair, there is nowhere even near as much agreement in religious and spiritual fields. The best we have is perhaps a majority of those in the field being monotheistic (with Hindus, Buddhists, Confuscists, animists and others representing the minority conclusion of polytheism/non-theism/etc.)
Therefore, the average Catholic is left without epistemic justification (or something approximating it) here as well, because there is no expert consensus.
Next we can move on to the evidence of spiritual experience. Here we are presented with the following problems. First, that such experiences should never lead us to a conclusion, no matter what spiritual claim we are making. We know that the brain performs psychological tricks like this (see: placebo effect.) So this is not going to provide epistemic justification. Second, there are thousands of other belief structures claiming spiritual experiences. That doesn’t mean that one cannot be “true” and all others “false.” However, while we can all believe that the spiritual experiences of other faiths are invalid, in this case we cannot merely dismiss them out of hand, since to do so would be to dismiss Catholic experiences at the same time.
Therefore, I almost wonder whether the category confusion isn’t mistaking, “I have evidence to support truth claim M” for “There is a paradigm which I have accepted, pending evidence.”
The solution? It’s not about abandoning Catholicism:
- It’s about, if you, like me, “feel” Catholicism is justified then go out and actually do the justification!
- It’s about validating the truth, and if the truth is Catholicism, then it’s about validating Catholicism.
- It’s about integrity. If you consider the creation of the universe, the nature of man, good and evil, etc. to be important elements of reality to study then DO IT! If that is the kind of person you are, then don’t be a hypocrite by falling back on unjustified beliefs! To do otherwise when that is the type of person that God made you into is, using a word incorrectly, “blasphemous” IMO.
- It’s about having a MEANINGFUL faith that you’ve discovered, rather than a possibly valid, possibly invalid one you’ve accidentally inherited.
