As I have been thinking recently about reason and logic, I have found myself bumping up against the concept of faith and have deepened my appreciation for the role that faith plays in the lives of humans. Now, I’m not talking only about religious faith, although I think that the religious impulse informs–in a twisted form–these other expressions of faith. I’m talking about faith in political agendas and personalities and faith in ideas of conspiracies. I’m thinking about the many ways in which people believe passionately and fiercely in propositions and images and concepts that are not supportable by the facts as they stand or knowledge as it can be known.
People routinely confuse believing with knowing. We’re all prone to it and indulge in it constantly. Perhaps you don’t like somebody else’s looks and draw a series of conclusion about that person based on only that flimsiest of evidence. Perhaps you believe that Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington were the same person because you’ve decided that Napoleon was such an outstanding general that only he could have beaten himself. Perhaps you read a book that postulated that UFO aliens from outer space are floating among us disguised as dandelion fronds, and the notion just tickled your fancy and became an obsession. It doesn’t matter. We have all indulged in this gambit in either small or great ways. And belief, in and of itself, is not a terrible thing. However, whenever belief in something becomes an obsession, then things begin to go awry. Perspective is lost and reason’s tenuous grasp is loosened.
The thought occurred to me yesterday that belief in a conspiracy theory is not unlike religious belief. Both beliefs are predicated on the existence of something vast, ubiquitous, and invisible. Now, I’m not here to run down religion. I think there are many kinds of spiritual search, and since we are then talking about the search for something that transcends space and time, it becomes difficult to apply the same standards as can be applied to the idea that man never landed on the moon. The first can be neither proved nor disproved, although it can be discussed right into the ground. The second can be disproved by looking at the moon through a sufficiently powered telescope in order to view the junk we left behind after landing.
I think that one of the most glaring examples of this will to believe in recent history was the childlike belief that the Bush Administration had in Saddam Hussein possessing weapons of mass destruction. It would be almost touching if they hadn’t used that belief to unleash an extraordinary amount of suffering and privation. It’s easy, I think, to look at these clowns cynically and to conclude that they sat down in a rational fashion and said, “Let’s just cherrypick the information that helps us, no matter how tenuous, and ignore everything that doesn’t.” However, I would posit that they were just being true believers.
They indulged in every tactic of the conspiracy theorist. They claimed to have a knowledge greater than orthodox sources, and denigrated those orthodox sources at every turn. Rather than producing proof of their claims, they demanded refutation and refutation of every detail of their claims. As refutations accumulated, they constructed a series of rationalizations rather than offering reasoned responses. They sifted through the evidence available only for those bits that they could use to bolster their own case and never considered anything that challenged their assumptions. Opposing ideas were attributed to vested interests rather than being accepted as thoughtful contributions from experts in the field in question. They twisted facts so that they would better fit their conclusions. And they did all this in absolute certainty of the rightness of their conclusions and never once allowed doubt to enter their minds.
I’ll bet there is still the occasional NeoCon who expects Saddam’s secret cache of horrible weapons to be discovered soon, such as Douglas Feith or Dick Cheney.
Faith is a powerful thing that can sweep through us like a storm, which is why it is important that belief be tempered with rationality. Faith and rationality are not in opposition. They are two tools of the same set. Faith can set inquiry in action, and rationality tells us when to apply the brakes, when to alter our beliefs, and when to set a new course when the old one proves fruitless.
