Believing vs. Knowing

Religious believers often deride other religious believers for their beliefs. Most religious people hold their own beliefs to be "truth" while what other people believe is just "religion". I have heard people from a variety of religions insist vociferously that their religion is most definitely not a religion, but "the way of a father with his children", "a way of life" or "we don't believe, we know". People hold certain beliefs or follow certain religions for a variety of reasons: maybe it was the religion that they grew up with and saw no reason to change; maybe it was the religion of the community or culture and societal pressure made it impossible to even consider anything else, let alone change; maybe someone trusted and respected convinced you that their religion was the way to go; perhaps a traumatic or emotional event spurred belief in a specific path. Some view their religious faith as something private - nothing will convince them to discuss it; others cannot be convinced to shut up about it! What I have found to be a common thread among believers of all religions with whom I have encountered is the inability, or perhaps refusal, to discuss  or question the underlying premise of their belief. In other words - you believe in God, or fairies, or Scientology - why do you believe? What evidence has convinced you that what you believe rises above opinion and moves into the more solid realm of knowledge?

Some of the arguments for the existence of God rely on the supposition that there must have been a "first cause" or creator. There are many variations of this argument: that the complexity of the world/universe/living things indicates that it could not have happened by chance and therefore, logically, something or someone must have created it. Who would that be? Why, God, of course. Let's set aside, for a moment, all of the reasons why complexity could have resulted from mutations, random chance and billions of years of opportunities to evolve and grow. Let's stipulate, for the sake of argument, that the universe couldn't have come about by evolution, mutation or chance and that it necessarily is the product of a creator. Who or what is that creator? What are its (his, her?) attributes?

For those who accept the premise that their must have been a creator, the default identification is the dominant god of the culture. For most Americans, that would be the god of the bible, for many Hindus in India, it might be Vishnu or Shiva. Other cultures would identify different entities as the creator. For those within a given culture, it would not even occur to them that the creator might be different than the god (or goddess or pantheon for that matter) that they grew up believing in. This, when considered logically, adds another layer to the matter: assuming that there had to be a creator, which of the numerous religions and mythologies describes that creator? So, the argument from complexity or the argument from nature, if accepted, really only addresses whether or not a god or gods exist, but does not address the nature of deity.

Another argument for the existence of God is one of personal experience. This one varies widely: sometimes the experience is a miracle, sometimes it is an audible message, sometimes just a "personal relationship" or a feeling "in ones heart". Maybe it's got something to do with angels, or an "answer" to a prayer. Prayer results can actually be measured, so I will get back to that later, but feelings and messages are somewhat different. This one is a little fuzzier than the "need for a creator" argument, because generally, people are loathe to be specific about what they mean when they talk about God in their hearts, talking to God, or having a personal relationship with God. As with the "creator" premise, let's accept for the sake of the discussion that people who say that they are experiencing these things are really experiencing them. This is not the same as accepting that there is an objective, measurable phenomenon going on, but that those who are claiming to experience the presence of the divine are feeling or experiencing something that is real to them. Again, this is more difficult to address than the previous "evidence", since it is personal and subjective and those who claim it often get defensive about even being asked about it. But the question that the skeptic has is similar to the question asked of those who use  nature and its complexity as evidence: how do you know that what you are experiencing is God (or Allah, or Vishnu)? Like the previous argument for God's existence, cultural conditioning comes into play. You're going through a rough time, looking for answers, or maybe just comfort, and in your hour of deepest despair you feel like you are being enveloped in warm, unconditional love, maybe you even hear a voice confirming that you are being enveloped in warm, unconditional love. Like the previous scenario, if you are a Hindu in India, you may attribute this to Krishna, if you are a Wiccan, to the Earth Mother Goddess, if you are an American - it's probably God or Jesus. How do you know that the feeling or message that you are receiving is from the deity or entity that you think you are receiving it from? My opinion is that people have feelings or experiences that they have no scientific, rational, logical explanation for, and interpret them in light of what they already believe about the supernatural and the spiritual.

Then there are incidents where people walk away from horrific accidents, are barely missed by out of control cars, or recover from a life-threatening disease or injury. Like the other examples, believers will attribute these "miraculous" results to the god of their own upbringing or culture.

Finally, there's prayer. There's some disagreement about what prayer actually is. Some will define it as praise for God or talking to (or hearing from) God, but for the purposes of this essay, we'll define it as most people practice it: asking for something from God, whether it be healing, financial prosperity, finding lost objects or getting a good parking space. Granted, there are things that get prayed for where the result sure looks like an affirmative answer to the prayer - the resolution being so statistically unlikely that attributing it to the divine seems reasonable. The problem with saying that prayer works or using answered prayer as an indication of the existence of God is the sheer unreliability of the thing. Even people who are utterly convinced that prayer works will usually admit that sometimes they do not receive what they prayed for. Weasel words are then employed: sometimes the answer is "no", God works in mysterious ways, God gives us what we need, not necessarily what we want and on and on. If any of these rationales for non-answers to prayer are true, why bother to pray at all? The other issue is the confirmation bias of those who believe. Positive results are played up, while negative or non-results are ignored.

The bottom line for all of this is that sometimes things happen that we don't understand, that may be supernatural, but that we choose to interpret in light of what we already believe about the world. These unexplainable events may be the god of the bible, (or any other god or spirit) but objectively there's nothing to indicate that this is a surety, that our decision to believe in a certain interpretation of events indicates objective knowledge, but is anything but merely belief.