If some sense of the sacred is inevitable in society then faith is an inevitable, if often unnoticed, habit of people in living their lives. Ordinary faith in ourselves, in others and in the world we engage with helps us make sense of the reality we experience, sets out a direction of travel and enables us to avoid being stuck in endless decision-making, testing and reflection on every next step. Faith then can be considered a profound attitude of trust; it is a way of conceiving or imagining a
situation as it possibly could be without having all the facts to hand. This is not primarily an intellectual or philosophical exercise, nor is it simply a matter of choice: “It is more common to find oneself believing something than to make a conscious decision to do so – or at least to make such a conscious decision because you find yourself leaning that way
already.”39(p.137)
Faith has been succinctly described as the capacity to believe,40 and faith and belief, though simple enough terms, have complexities and nuances evident in how the terms are used linguistically, what they are intended to mean and what they refer to. For example Žižek argues that there is a difference between faith and belief: “one can believe (have faith in) X without believing in X…. we do not have to believe IN IT in order to believe IT, to feel bound by some symbolic commitment”.41(pp.109-110) These subtle philosophical distinctions may not be as sharp in the
medicine or democracy and live accordingly, but their beliefs in such institutions may not be as coherent or dependable. To be more specific, faith is not primarily a belief in a set of specific propositions and it need not involve facts, but it can alter the way we interpret facts. Midgley sites Marxism and Taoism as examples of faiths that do not involve extra factual beliefs:
Both call centrally for changes in attitude to the facts one already accepts – changes in connection, in emphasis, in attention, in selection, in the meaning and importance attached to particulars – in short, a changed world-picture. 42(p.16)
These secular faiths display many of the characteristics of religious or spiritual faith and may even be manifest in practices and habits similar to that of a religious faith community or group. Think for example of a dedicated environmentalist who belongs to national organisation, meets with members of a local group, accepts the teaching of authoritative writing by leaders in the field, holds particular beliefs about the
environment, and takes part in shared activities. It is the substance of a faith and its belief claims, even when they are not formalised, that can inspire and give purpose to life. However, although people can have faith in an all-encompassing worldview, there are also some necessary faiths that are more mundane and limited. Not all faiths serve the same purpose, and failing to distinguish between them can be problematic: “It is right to have faith in a car as a means of transport, but not as a divinity.” 43(p.23)
The focus of this study is spirituality and therefore a relevant question is whether there are forms of faith and belief related to spirituality that can be distinguished from other varieties of faith? It seems reasonable to expect that the former will involve normative claims about our world and
about what it means to be human, and this provides one approach to understanding the ways in which different faiths may operate. Another may be found by exploring distinctions in the particular paradigms that faiths occupy: for example between environmentalists and Buddhists. In simple terms science, as a form of faith, has some strong claims to make about the physical world, whereas a religion has strong claims to make about the meaning and value of existence. Audi has enumerated seven different forms of faith that appear in major literature in philosophy, religion and theology: propositional faith, attitudinal faith, creedal faith, global faith, doxastic faith, acceptant faith, and allegiant faith.44(pp.52-65) Whilst some of these hold for secular forms of faith, religious forms of faith are considered by Audi to be conditional on at least four of the forms of faith. Firstly, but not sequentially, a religious theistic faith implies belief in God (attitudinal) and, secondly, faith that God has particular attributes or dispositions (propositional). Thirdly religious people accept, or hold, particular tenets or doctrines (creedal), and fourthly people belong to religions as communities and social groups, and thus they are people of a specific form of (global) faith rather than an individualistic form of faith known to and practised by the person alone.
In Audi’s scheme formal religious faith provides sufficient content and specificity to be distinguished from other forms of faith. As the data from surveys suggests the real-world is more complex, and whilst there are evidently people who satisfy the necessary conditions for religious faith, society also contains people with very different faith commitments and expressions of faith, some of which have no theistic content but are similarly significant and entail cognitive and practical orientations. Beliefs, as part of what constitutes faith, may provide a further way of distinguishing varieties of faith and may indicate different characteristics
of spirituality, for example, the beliefs of those in the RAMP survey who identified themselves as “Spiritual not Religious” and whose main mode of belief was in a “Spirit/Life force” rather than a “Personal God”.
Beliefs, like faiths, whatever their content depend upon how the human mind functions, and this provides another line of enquiry. Psychologists propose that beliefs arise from mental processes that generate
assumptions about the world we experience. Barrett, for example, drawing upon cognitive studies of religion and the mental systems they use, concludes that, belief in God is nothing unusual (either statistically or psychologically) and arises “…from the operation of natural processes of the human mind in ordinary human environments. Belief in God does not amount to anything strange or peculiar; on the contrary, such belief is nearly inevitable.”45 He argues that belief in god-concepts and religious ideas can be distinguished from other forms of beliefs by a number of characteristics:
1. They have a small number of counterintuitive features which violate the category of the object we have determined by our senses or a property that the object is expected to have. 2. They are identified as having agency and attributed with
intentionality or motivation.
3. They possess strategic personal information, for example moral and social information, which relates typically to survival or reproduction.
4. They are capable of acting in the world (through objects or events) in detectable ways.
5. They motivate personal and corporate behaviours that
a mosque provide an explicit demonstration of belief and promote resilience to sceptical scrutiny.
To illustrate these characteristics Barrett provides a novel comparison of potential candidates for a god-concept but who fall short of the grade (Table 5).46 His prime candidate is Santa Claus, but portrayals of him in film and surveys often reveal him as an ordinary human being. He is clearly an intentional agent but possesses only limited strategic
information, however, it is believed that he acts in the real world by some people and he motivates their behaviour but in limited ways and only once a year. Mickey Mouse is a cartoon character and cannot act directly in our world. The Tooth Fairy is reactive to dental events and shows no concern for any other aspect of people and therefore fails to possess all but highly specific strategic information. Finally, George W. Bush served as the President of the United States of America between 2001 and 2009, and whilst not without merits his presidential legacy was typically
assessed by the British press as something of a disaster.47 He therefore did not contradict any of the properties of being a flawed human being, and so he along with the others fails to achieve any credibility as a god-like being. Counter- intuitive Intentional agent Possessing strategic information Acts in real world Motivates reinforcing behaviour
Santa Claus Inconsistent Yes Marginal Yes Marginal
Mickey
Mouse Yes Yes No No No
Tooth Fairy Yes Yes No Yes Yes
George
Bush No Yes Yes Yes Yes
Beliefs have been the subject of philosophers for centuries, and more recently psychologists, who have produced various theories about how beliefs ‘work’ such as the mental state theory and the disposition theory.48 Barrett is following a relatively new line of enquiry being developed in the interdisciplinary field of cognition studies and cognitive science that is interested in what the human mind must be like to have beliefs and the cognitive processes that enable beliefs to function. This is an attempt to understand how people conceive and experience spiritual and religious ‘objects’, and how the practices and behaviours associated with them impact upon cognition. More specifically cognitive science is interested in how the various and interrelated cognitive processes may function in relation to spirituality and religion, such as perception, conceptualisation, decision-making and imagination.49 One of the distinctive disciplines contributing to cognitive science is neuroscience whose neurobiological theories have benefitted from developments in neuro-imaging technology. A particular concern of such enquiries is to identify the neural correlates of spiritual and religious beliefs and experience,50, 51 and in particular what is going on in the brains of people who meditate.52 However there are serious methodological problems with this approach and Tallis, an atheist, is an eloquent critic of what he refers to as the “neutralization” of religion, which he considers, adds nothing to our understanding of
religion and not only diminishes belief but is an affront to this expression of humanity. He reserves his strongest criticism for when the reductive neuroscience of God is coupled with Darwinism: “Darwinizing the idea of God makes prayer and the holding of theological beliefs a mere organic function, a bit like secreting urine.”53(p.333)
Spirituality and religion need to be situated and contextualised in the bigger picture of humanity to be understood. This does not and cannot figure (for methodological reasons) in the neurosciences but it is central to sociological enquiries.54 The study of religion has been and remains a fruitful subject for sociology, and religion has advantages over spirituality in that it is generally organised and institutionalised which makes it easier to grasp and define. However, a nascent sociology of spirituality is
beginning to emerge in response to shifting patterns of belief and practices in society, and it is one in which there appears an inherent tension between interior and exterior expressions of spirituality that are associated with spirituality as part of religion and spirituality as distinct from religion. This results in two different but related agendas, firstly in relation to “…the individual, subjectivity, expressivism and responses to the rootlessness postmodernity expands”, and secondly in relation to organised religion and its “…tradition, ritual, symbol, external authority and communal practices within which the individual operates.”55(p.256) This distinction provides some clarity and explanation, but empirical studies are reporting problems with this conceptual logic. Bender, for example, following a recent study of mystics and spiritual practitioners in a town in America concludes that spirituality in this context is deeply entangled and embedded in religious and secular fields, structures and histories, rather than the assumed individualistic displaced and
disassociated forms of spirituality that are often assumed.56
The contemporary context of spirituality is one of multiplicity and
plurality and any study of spirituality therefore needs to remain sensitive to the variety of forms people inhabit and live. Despite these challenges, belief appears to be a helpful and useful lingua franca in the study of spirituality for people to describe and explain their spirituality, and as a
way for understanding what spirituality might mean and how it operates in people’s lives. The language of belief can therefore do far more than provide content to the object of a belief, and this more nuanced approach is illustrated by the work of Day in her study of belief based upon people aged between 14 and 83 living in towns and villages in northern
England.57 Day argues that belief arises from human interactions and reflections and is manifest in relationships, actions and activities, and this results in a multidimensional construct of belief: the content of beliefs and their source, how beliefs are practiced, the salience or importance of a belief, how beliefs function in people’s lives or what it enables them to do or be, and the relationship of belief to time and place.57(pp.158-173) These aspects expand the cognitive dimensions of belief and disclose something of the contextual and social nature of spirituality and religion.