This may not be new to anyone else, but I found Harvey Cox's distinction between belief and faith to be helpful (*The Future of Faith*, pg. 3): "Faith is about deep-seated confidence...Belief, on the other hand, is more like opinion...Beliefs can be held lightly or with emotional intensity, but they are more propositional than existential. We can *believe* something to be true without it making much difference to us, but we place our *faith* only in something that is vital for the way we live."
He goes on to talk about a short story by Miguel Unamuno. A man is at his mother's deathbed, in the presence of a priest, and she asks him to pray for her. He doesn't answer and he and the priest leave the room. The man tells the priest that he would like to pray for his mother but he can't because he doesn't believe in god. "That's nonsense," says the priest. "You don't have to believe in God to pray."
I'm not sure why, but that story has made quite an impression on me. I keep thinking about it. The point of the story, for Cox, is to illustrate the distinction between belief and faith that he's trying to make. I'm not sure if the distinction is real, but I'm somehow comforted by the idea that one doesn't have to believe in god to pray. From the perspective of an atheist who's primary devotion is to rationality, this would be just silly. And from the perspective of religious fundamentalism, this also is silly.
But. Still.
I'm not sure I'm okay with the use/interpretation of the Unamuno story. Is that how Unamuno meant it to be read? My limited amount of contact with him says no. (Instead, I would think he had in mind more of the Pascal-ian-type if-you-do-this-then-you-will-come-to-believe idea; in other words, you're still trying to believe, or you're behaving as though you do in the hope that you might achieve some (non-rational/material) end.)
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm not sure I'm okay with the idea that when one prays, one can do so without also believing. I guess it depends on what your definition of prayer is.
Sure sure. I doubt Unamuno was trying to make Cox's point, if he was trying to make any point at all (Cox claims that Unamuno "gets" this faith/belief distinction, but doesn't offer any reason for us to trust him). And really, in the book (or the first chapter anyway) Cox is entirely focused on the religious and their obsession with belief, not on the atheist or agnostic. But my take on this has been along the lines of, what am I still willing to do to participate in Christianity and what am I not willing to do? I'm an atheist, but my wife is a Christian and my family and (many) friends are too, so I go to church. Does this make any sense? I think it does, as long as I'm up front and honest with people, including myself. I don't take communion though. And I don't sing the songs, but there's a good example. Should I sing the songs? Would I be honest if I sang them? And prayer up until this point has seemed to be obviously something I shouldn't do. I mean, I can't *pray*, but can I close my eyes and bow my head when others are praying? Can I make a token prayer if I was ever asked to, as in the Unamuno story? I don't know.
ReplyDeleteYou can be a nonrealist about religion and still accept that there's a function of prayer. In that case, prayer would be another kind of "language game" that one can play. Prayer for the nonrealist would certain be different in many respects than the theist, but there's probably more disagreement about the definition of prayer among theists than there is is between theists and atheists. I grew up in a church that rejected petitionary prayer for certain theological reasons. Surely an atheist or nonrealist could embrace certain kinds of meditation. Regarding praying publicly, one might view this as a kind of performative speech act. That's how I'd view the son's prayer in the Unamuno story. So I agree with Unamuno's priest: It's nonsense to say that you have to believe in God to pray.
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