C.S. Lewis addressed the issue of faith in Mere Christianity as follows:
In one sense Faith means simply Belief—accepting or regarding as true the doctrines of Christianity. That is fairly simple. But what does puzzle people—at least it used to puzzle me—is the fact that Christians regard faith in this sense as a virtue, I used to ask how on earth it can be a virtue—what is there moral or immoral about believing or not believing a set of statements? Obviously, I used to say, a sane man accepts or rejects any statement, not because he wants or does not want to, but because the evidence seems to him good or bad.
Well, I think I still take that view. But what I did not see then— and a good many people do not see still—was this. I was assuming that if the human mind once accepts a thing as true it will automatically go on regarding it as true, until some real reason for reconsidering it turns up. In fact, I was assuming that the human mind is completely ruled by reason. But that is not so.
For example, my reason is perfectly convinced by good evidence that anaesthetics do not smother me and that properly trained surgeons do not start operating until I am unconscious. But that does not alter the fact that when they have me down on the table and clap their horrible mask over my face, a mere childish panic begins inside me. In other words, I lose my faith in anaesthetics. It is not reason that is taking away my faith: on the contrary, my faith is based on reason. It is my imagination and emotions. The battle is between faith and reason on one side and emotion and imagination on the other.
When you think of it you will see lots of instances of this. A man knows, on perfectly good evidence, that a pretty girl of his acquaintance is a liar and cannot keep a secret and ought not to be trusted; but when he finds himself with her his mind loses its faith in that bit of knowledge and he starts thinking, “Perhaps she’ll be different this time,” and once more makes a fool of himself and tells her something he ought not to have told her. His senses and emotions have destroyed his faith in what he really knows to be true.
Or take a boy learning to swim. His reason knows perfectly well that an unsupported human body will not necessarily sink in water: he has seen dozens of people float and swim. But the whole question is whether he will be able to go on believing this when the instructor takes away his hand and leaves him unsupported in the water—or whether he will suddenly cease to believe it and get in a fright and go down.
Now just the same thing happens about Christianity. I am not asking anyone to accept Christianity if his best reasoning tells him that the weight of the evidence is against it. That is not the point at which Faith comes in. Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods.
Although many religious people use the word differently, this is how I use Faith, and I propose that it would be an acceptable one to facilitate this discussion: a determination to hold on to what you have already established a high confidence level in, despite signals you may have received from less rational sources (i.e. emotions).
Honestly the CSL definition is I think one of the best for faith. I think though that the lived definition of faith is as trust in God. Because most Christians, me included, would not say that hey believe in God without any evidence at all. The evidence is experiential, feeling forgiven, feeling loved, or some other deeply personal moment. Those moments may not be proof that you can take to a wider society or really anyone who has not had them but they are very real to those who experience them.
Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods.
So Bayes update on intellectual arguments, but not on your emotions when you consider them likely to change in the immediate future? That seems like a good virtue if one desires accurate beliefs.
It is, and I think “faith” in this sense is indeed an intellectual virtue. But it seems to me that
many, many uses of the word “faith” by believers are describing something quite different and are in fact endorsing belief in the absence of evidence or in the teeth of contrary evidence;
even when the meaning is broadly in line with CSL’s here, most applications of it refer not to holding on to belief merely “in spite of your changing moods” but advocate much firmer persistence than that. A Christian who after lengthy consideration is beginning to think that the problem of evil is insoluble is likely to be enjoined to exercise “faith”.
The second of those is not necessarily unreasonable. E.g., if you know you are about to talk to someone supernaturally persuasive, able to come up with extremely convincing arguments for any position true or false, you might do well to precommit to not being moved by whatever arguments they might offer you. Christians might suggest (indeed, in another place Lewis does suggest) that the influence of the devil is like that. But the possibilities for abuse are very obvious.
[EDITED to add: I see that at least two people have downvoted this. Rereading it, it still looks perfectly reasonable to me. I don’t suppose anyone who dislikes it would do me the favour of saying why?]
C.S. Lewis addressed the issue of faith in Mere Christianity as follows:
In one sense Faith means simply Belief—accepting or regarding as true the doctrines of Christianity. That is fairly simple. But what does puzzle people—at least it used to puzzle me—is the fact that Christians regard faith in this sense as a virtue, I used to ask how on earth it can be a virtue—what is there moral or immoral about believing or not believing a set of statements? Obviously, I used to say, a sane man accepts or rejects any statement, not because he wants or does not want to, but because the evidence seems to him good or bad. Well, I think I still take that view. But what I did not see then— and a good many people do not see still—was this. I was assuming that if the human mind once accepts a thing as true it will automatically go on regarding it as true, until some real reason for reconsidering it turns up. In fact, I was assuming that the human mind is completely ruled by reason. But that is not so. For example, my reason is perfectly convinced by good evidence that anaesthetics do not smother me and that properly trained surgeons do not start operating until I am unconscious. But that does not alter the fact that when they have me down on the table and clap their horrible mask over my face, a mere childish panic begins inside me. In other words, I lose my faith in anaesthetics. It is not reason that is taking away my faith: on the contrary, my faith is based on reason. It is my imagination and emotions. The battle is between faith and reason on one side and emotion and imagination on the other. When you think of it you will see lots of instances of this. A man knows, on perfectly good evidence, that a pretty girl of his acquaintance is a liar and cannot keep a secret and ought not to be trusted; but when he finds himself with her his mind loses its faith in that bit of knowledge and he starts thinking, “Perhaps she’ll be different this time,” and once more makes a fool of himself and tells her something he ought not to have told her. His senses and emotions have destroyed his faith in what he really knows to be true. Or take a boy learning to swim. His reason knows perfectly well that an unsupported human body will not necessarily sink in water: he has seen dozens of people float and swim. But the whole question is whether he will be able to go on believing this when the instructor takes away his hand and leaves him unsupported in the water—or whether he will suddenly cease to believe it and get in a fright and go down. Now just the same thing happens about Christianity. I am not asking anyone to accept Christianity if his best reasoning tells him that the weight of the evidence is against it. That is not the point at which Faith comes in. Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods.
Although many religious people use the word differently, this is how I use Faith, and I propose that it would be an acceptable one to facilitate this discussion: a determination to hold on to what you have already established a high confidence level in, despite signals you may have received from less rational sources (i.e. emotions).
Honestly the CSL definition is I think one of the best for faith. I think though that the lived definition of faith is as trust in God. Because most Christians, me included, would not say that hey believe in God without any evidence at all. The evidence is experiential, feeling forgiven, feeling loved, or some other deeply personal moment. Those moments may not be proof that you can take to a wider society or really anyone who has not had them but they are very real to those who experience them.
So Bayes update on intellectual arguments, but not on your emotions when you consider them likely to change in the immediate future? That seems like a good virtue if one desires accurate beliefs.
It is, and I think “faith” in this sense is indeed an intellectual virtue. But it seems to me that
many, many uses of the word “faith” by believers are describing something quite different and are in fact endorsing belief in the absence of evidence or in the teeth of contrary evidence;
even when the meaning is broadly in line with CSL’s here, most applications of it refer not to holding on to belief merely “in spite of your changing moods” but advocate much firmer persistence than that. A Christian who after lengthy consideration is beginning to think that the problem of evil is insoluble is likely to be enjoined to exercise “faith”.
The second of those is not necessarily unreasonable. E.g., if you know you are about to talk to someone supernaturally persuasive, able to come up with extremely convincing arguments for any position true or false, you might do well to precommit to not being moved by whatever arguments they might offer you. Christians might suggest (indeed, in another place Lewis does suggest) that the influence of the devil is like that. But the possibilities for abuse are very obvious.
[EDITED to add: I see that at least two people have downvoted this. Rereading it, it still looks perfectly reasonable to me. I don’t suppose anyone who dislikes it would do me the favour of saying why?]