"ANATOMY OF BELIEF"

A Sermon by the Rev. Bruce Clear

Sunday, September 29, 2002

All Souls Unitarian Church

Indianapolis, Indiana

I once knew a smart man, a very intelligent man in all the ways that count, who would not play card games. He hesitated when I asked him why he didn't play cards, but then finally he told me. "This is going to sound a little strange," he said, "but I can't help but feel that all of us are born with a specific and finite amount of luck in life, and I don't want to waste my store of luck on cards. I need whatever luck I have in other parts of my life!"

This was a weird belief, I thought. Even stranger was the fact that he knew it was a weird belief! When I thought about it a while, I realized I was more puzzled by the fact that he believed what he knew to be weird, rather than I was puzzled by the content of his belief.

I have long felt there are quite a few paradoxes around the subject of "belief," particularly religious belief. I first started thinking about this quite a few years ago when a friend of mine, who happened to be fundamentalist, tried to persuade me to believe what he believed. Why didn't I just try it? he said. Why couldn't I just try and believe?

The question struck me as rather strange, as I thought about it. Is it possible to "try out" a belief like you might try on a new coat and see how it feels? In fact, are a person's beliefs at all a matter of will? To what extent can we choose our beliefs? Try this experiment, for example. I don't like the fact that Martin Luther King was killed in the prime of his life. So I'm going to believe differently. I'm going to believe that Martin Luther King was never assassinated, but he suffered amnesia and is working as a social worker now in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida? If I really, really want to believe that this is a fact, can I actually will myself to believe it?

Or what if I wanted to believe that my lottery ticket won ten million dollars last night, and I am fully persuaded that it did? If I go to the Hoosier Lotto headquarters when they open tomorrow morning, and they tell me my numbers didn't win, I might be convinced, if I were true to my chosen beliefs, that they were the ones who were mistaken, not me, and demand my money anyway.

Let me try one more example on you. Many years ago I met a man who was convinced the CIA had implanted a monitoring device in his brain, and planes overhead were listening in on his thoughts. He at one time had been a fairly typical middle class professional working in a minor branch of the defense industry. When I met him he was sleeping on park benches and his only possessions were the one set of clothes he wore. He refused to get help when I suggested it, but he told me if I contacted this famous writer in New York who exposed a number of government conspiracies, the author would verify that the CIA is doing this. I agreed, with one condition. That if that author does not verify his claim, that he immediately check himself into the mental hospital. He agreed.

A couple of weeks after sending my inquiry, the author replied. It was a brief but very strong letter. He said the guy I'm talking to is nuts. He's probably schizophrenic, and definitely paranoid. The author, who had written several books supporting a number of conspiracy theories, said there are quite a few crazies around like this guy, and they're giving serious investigators a bad name.

So I was well prepared for the next time I saw my homeless friend. When we met, I showed him the letter. After reading it he said, "they got to him, too." And then he said, "they also got to you." He walked away and I never saw him again.

I tell this story for a number of reasons. This man's beliefs were as sincere and devout as anyone's could ever be. They were also plainly wrong. Yet left to his own devices, there is no way he could choose not to believe them. He was incapable of believing anything else.

Some beliefs, it seems, have this compelling quality. Either you have to believe them, or it isn't possible for you to believe them.

When my fundamentalist friend suggested long ago that I try and believe what he believed, I realized that in that context at least, my beliefs were not subject to an act of will. It wasn't that I didn't want to try out his beliefs, it was that I couldn't do so. I could entertain his ideas in my mind, thinking about "what if" they were true, but I couldn't embrace, as my own, ideas that I couldn't accept.

So one answer to the question, "why don't you believe" something leads to a strange conclusion - because I can't. The other side of the belief coin is also puzzling, though. The question "why do you believe" something takes us down some interesting roads. A person's belief journey can be quite perplexing.

When it comes to religious belief, for example, the largest number of people inherit their beliefs - that is, most Catholics, Methodists, Christian Scientists and so forth are in the religion of their parents. They believe what they believe by inheritance. But the opposite can also be true. People can choose their religious beliefs in large part because they differ from what their parents believed and their journey of rebellion pointed them away from the religion of their childhood - sort of a "reverse" inheritance, one might say.

Another obvious reason why people believe what they believe is cultural influence. Western religions and Eastern religions are largely culture-bound. That isn't to say that an American can't be a Buddhist or Hindu and a Tibetan can't be a Mormon or Greek Orthodox, but it does mean that cultures generally incline people toward particular religions.

In addition to inheriting beliefs or receiving them from the culture, there are dozens of acceptable answers to the question, "why do people believe what they believe?" Peer pressure is a strong influence. Education can direct people toward particular belief systems. Some personalities, such as what psychologists call "authoritarian personalities," may be more compatible with some specific beliefs rather than others. It would be interesting to know, as the genetic sciences unfold in the future, whether there may be a genetic predisposition for belief. For example, might there be a gene for believing in the supernatural or paranormal, or a gene for atheism? In any case, the question, "why do people believe what they believe," leads to very complex answers. The answer, "because it makes sense to me" is only one among many compelling explanations for belief.

Probably the most common question asked about Unitarians is, "what do Unitarians believe." Actually, it's the most common question you hear about any religion in this culture. We hear it over and over again. "Belief" is the way religion is defined here. That is probably because the most popular religion here is Christianity, and more than any other religion it is based on a belief system. For many world religions, belief is a secondary concern, and ethics or rituals or attitude comes first.

But in our culture religion and belief are nearly synonymous. Which is one reason the question, "What do Unitarians believe?" is so difficult to address. Unlike so many other religious movements in this culture, we do not have a creed, and we encourage diversity of ideas. In other words, it is not "belief" that defines us, and the question "What do Unitarians believe," is, quite simply, the wrong question if you want to know who we are. What we share is values, not beliefs.

Even if that were not the case, I still think the question feels frustrating. "What do Unitarians believe?" Sometimes I just want to say, "we believe, like everyone else, whatever it is we need to believe, whatever it is we're compelled by circumstances and life experiences to believe. That's what we believe."

I say, sometimes I want to say that, but I would say it mostly out of frustration. The fact is that the critique of belief I have laid out bothers me. It bothers me a lot. Among other things, it leaves me left wondering whether I have any choices at all about what I believe. Are we mere automatons who, rather than forming our own convictions, actually have convictions given to us without the opportunity of exercising our own personal judgment?

If I say to my friend I don't believe what he believes simply because I can't believe it, then does it also mean that I hold my beliefs because I am incapable of choosing to believe anything else? Does the person who won't play cards because he believes in finite cosmic luck have the capacity to believe otherwise? What are we to make of human choice, of freedom, of will?

We have reached, I think, a perplexing dilemma. Is it the case that what we don't believe, we can't believe, and what we do believe, we have to believe? It seems to me that this is sometimes, maybe even often, the case, but I also think there are many times when these are not our only choices.

There are many things I cannot believe, no matter how hard I may want to or how hard I try. Among the many things my original friend wanted me to believe was the traditional concept of God judging people and condemning them to everlasting torture - in a place called Hell. There is no conceivable way I would accept such an idea. It is completely alien to my mind and the way I think and who I am. I could no more believe in that concept that I could count my fingers and convince myself to believe I have twelve.

On the other hand, there are some concepts which, with the right persuasion, I might be able to convince myself to believe. My friend would also want me to believe that, if there is a God, that God is a God of love. That is something I feel I am capable of choosing to believe if I wanted to. Whether I make that choice or not, or whether I use some word or concept other than God, or whether I think there is a basic cosmic goodness than can be tapped into - all of these things are options for me, and I feel I can accept or reject them.

As I think this through, it turns out that beliefs fall into three categories, the content of belief categories shift from person to person. The first category involves things that a person finds impossible to believe. For some people, it is impossible to accept that God exists and to others it is impossible to accept that there is no God. For some people it is impossible to believe in communicating with spirits, and for other people it is impossible not to believe it. The point is that each of us have a category of beliefs that, no matter how hard we may try, we cannot accept them.

The second category is the opposite. There are some things a person feels compelled to believe, and cannot choose to believe differently. And again, the content of the compelling beliefs shifts from person to person. As before, there are some people who could never bring themselves to believe in anything other than the existence of God, and others who find it impossible to embrace the idea of God's existence. Nearly everyone is fully persuaded that the earth is round, and would not imagine an alternative belief, even though very few of us have directly observed the shape of the earth from space. Recall the belief of my friend about everyone having a specific and finite amount of luck in life. For him, and maybe for a few others, this is something he feels compelled to believe. He would like to discard that belief - he says he's not happy believing it - but for him it falls into the category of not having a choice of whether to believe it.

And then, I think there is a vast category in between those two extremes of beliefs about which we can make choices, ideas concerning which we are open to persuasion. In some ways, it seems to me, the size of this category determines the degree to which a person is open-minded or closed-minded. A person who will consider beliefs only if they are compelling or forced, and reject any beliefs that are not, is a closed-minded person. The fewer the number of things which are open for discussion or persuasion, the more narrow-minded or closed-minded we are.

In many ways, this is a good description of fundamentalism - whether conservative or liberal, religious or political, left wing or right wing. A fundamentalist is a person unwilling even to consider alternative beliefs - whether about atheism or theism, foreign policy or health care policy, you name it.

To be willing to consider alternative beliefs is the heart of open-mindedness, and the opposite of fundamentalism. Being open should not be confused with not holding beliefs. It means simply that the belief is the result of choice and will, rather than one that is compelled.

The anatomy of human belief works in some ways similar to human reason. Many people mistakenly think that reason compels us to accept only those things which are proven true by logic or by fact, and that to be irrational is to accept ideas that have not been proven true. That is not, I believe, how reason works. To be rational does not mean to believe things only by strong evidence or logic. Rather, to be rational means to be open to discussion, to permit your ideas to be tested, to be willing to be persuaded by reason. To be irrational means that you will not listen to reason, your mind is closed shut. To be rational means to be open to criticism and discussion.

It turns out, then, that there are many, many ideas that are available to us, and we have the capacity to choose or reject them as an act of will. The more open-minded we are, the more ideas are available for our choices. Being open-minded does not mean holding no opinion at all. Someone once said that the purpose of opening your mind is like the purpose of opening your mouth - so you can shut it on something that is solid and nourishing. Strong convictions can be held in an open mind as long as one is willing to consider alternatives.

I have often felt that one criteria frequently overlooked in understanding why we believe what we believe is as simple as aesthetics. We choose our religions, and we choose our beliefs in much the same manner as we choose how to furnish our houses: because - well, because we like it, it seems to fit us well.

I am a Unitarian because I like the idea of freedom much more than I like the idea of, say, security. Someone else may like the security of authority so much that they choose a religion with hierarchy. Some people find comfort in believing in re-incarnation. Others might feel encouraged by finding God in nature rather than in some heaven. Some are attracted to the concept of no divine presence in this universe. Aesthetics determine what fits and complements our character and soul.

One of the most popular areas of belief or non-belief is about God. Do you believe that God exists, or not? I normally don't make statements quite as strongly as I'm about to, but on this one I think it is safe: the answer is unknowable.

I spent a great deal of time going through the various so-called "proofs" of God's existence - ontological, cosmological, teleological, and so forth, and for every "proof" that is offered, there is an equally persuasive rebuttal for the proof. Trying to prove the non-existence of God is even tougher, since no one can prove a negative hypothesis.

In seminary, I once wrote a paper about all the various proofs and their rebuttals, and took it to a professor I knew that had a strong belief in God. After discussing the various arguments pro and con, he agreed with me that there is no valid way to prove God's existence or non-existence. So then I asked him directly, "if there is no proof of God's existence, then why do you believe in God?"

There was a long pause before he answered. He sat back in his chair, puffed on his pipe, stared out the window, and said, "because I like it." It was not an answer I anticipated. I asked for some clarification.

"I like it," he said. "The question of God's existence is entirely speculative - I don't know, you don't know, nobody knows. But I have found life makes better sense to me if I choose to believe in God. That belief doesn't help everyone, but I've found it helpful to me."

His answer was rather amazing to me. His precise answer didn't matter that much - whether he concluded he preferred to believe in God or not. The point was he felt the freedom to choose.

If there are areas in which we don't know the answer, there is no reason not to make a choice, as long as we remain open-minded. What impressed me most about his answer was the amazing display of human will, as if to say, "I am not compelled or even necessarily persuaded to believe this, or not to believe this. Therefore, it is entirely up to me to choose. I choose."

Or, to quote that insightful answer again in words of much broader relevance: "I like what I believe.... The question of why I believe what I do is entirely speculative - I don't know, you don't know, nobody knows. But I have found life makes better sense to me if I choose my belief. That may not help everyone, but it is helpful - maybe even crucial - to me."

A closer look at the anatomy of belief, encourages us, I think, to exercise, as much as possible, freedom in our choices - with open-mindedness to others' choices, celebrating the fact that we do have the right to choose what beliefs are best for us, in our own individual search. I believe that is what we Unitarian Universalists believe is most important about the anatomy of our own belief.

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READING: From "Truths" by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

The time is racked with birth-pangs; every hour

Brings forth some gasping truth, and truth new-born

Looks a misshapen and untimely growth,

That some would strangle, some would only starve;

But still it breathes, and passed from hand to hand,

Comes slowly to its stature and its form,

Changes to shining locks its snaky hair,

And moves transfigured into angel guise,

Welcomed by all that cursed its hour of birth,

And folded in the same encircling arms

That cast it like a serpent from their hold!

That same foundling truth, it grows

To unseemly favor, and at length has won

The smiles of hard-mouthed men and light-lipped dames;

Fold it in silk and give it food from gold;

So shalt thou share its glory when at last

It drops its mortal vesture, and revealed

In all the splendor of its heavenly form,

Spreads on the startled air its mighty wings!

Alas! how much that seemed immortal truth

That heroes died for, martyrs died to save,

Reveals its earth-born lineage, growing old

And limping in its march, its wings unplumed,

Its heavenly semblance faded like a dream!