This paper advocates the view that there is a permanent interpenetration between the cultural constituents of human mental activity; and that, despite the unity of the mind, these constituents are not necessarily coherent for they are in permanent transformation. Indeed, mental activity gives birth to multiple competing and conflicting interpretations of events and attitudes; and, in every part of this activity, there is the intervention of belief. Science does not possess firm grounds to control faith, for its constructs change with time. Moreover, faith also manifests itself in different beliefs and no belief may be proven to be more fully and absolutely reliable than any other. Hence, all of the different beliefs can offer only partial images of divinity, owing to the diversity of cultures and historical conditions, but not a complete representation. It follows from this that the reasonable attitude consists in letting everyone experience faith in the way that he or she conceives it and in encouraging reflection and communication among the holders of competing world-views.

Introduction

Our fundamental claim is that no stable line of separation may be drawn between knowing and believing, basing this idea upon the postulate according to which human mental life constitutes an inextricable unity. There is a permanent interpenetration between the constituents of conceptual activity and belief patterns in every culture and in all historical stages. But the assertion of the principle of the unity of mind does not imply that all kinds of knowledge and conceptions of divinity rise to the surface as smooth coherent commensurable bodies and in full communication with one another. Indeed, mental activity takes place in complex historical situations; therefore, it witnesses the emergence of multiple competing world-views and conflicting interpretations of events and attitudes. So, as knowledge grows, beliefs combine with each other in different ways and are transformed as to their scope, penetration and relevance; but beliefs also stand in opposition and hostility to each other, following divergent social positions. It follows that, since scientific knowledge grows within this atmosphere of competition and conflict between social forces, it cannot constitute a completely neutral system of axioms and laws describing one given world; rather, it influences and is influenced by other constituents of intellectual activity and of the broader cultural environment in which it is embedded.

1. Classic conceptions of the relation of science to belief

1.1. Traditional rationalisms rooted in the thought of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries view science as emerging victorious against, and in opposition to, the assumed darkness of the Middle Ages. They take science as being one in its method and style, and set it in sharp contrast to what are perceived to be non-scientific beliefs. Many rationalist and empiricist thinkers have forged dichotomies: reason and emotion, thinking and feeling, as if these constitute two irreducible worlds of the human spirit. The world of science is portrayed as the field of logical standards, while the world of emotion and belief is depicted as being furnished with obstacles to rational thought. As a result, they hold that the two poles of mental life are in eternal opposition, with the rational pole taken as objective and independent of ever-changing circumstance and the emotional as subjective and irrational. One consequence of this view is the idea that the rise of modern science has provoked a retreat of belief from people’s lives. Actual cultural history provides scholars with many facts and arguments in support of these assertions, since some religious authorities and groups overtly opposed rational study and free thinking before the scientific renaissance.

1.2. Ramifications and varieties of rationalism, such as evolutionism and positivism, see culture as a linear progressive and historicist process in which true and efficient ideas necessarily emerge against weak and muddled beliefs. Moreover, because the materialists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries thought of faith as an enemy of intellectual emancipation that justified ignorance, alienation and despotism, these modern views approach beliefs as psychological attitudes belonging to the immature stage of humanity and dispensable in the face of modernity. Metaphysics and beliefs are said to be rooted in images that function through metaphors, whereas science applies logical deductions from firm axioms or induction from verifiable solid data. According to this narrow-minded scientistic position, civilizational progress and faith cannot coexist because all possible problems are viewed as treatable and solvable upon rational grounds, even questions related to consciousness and ethics.

1.3. In classic rationalist accounts, beliefs are conceived as illusions that depend upon psychological reactions to social developments. The positive study of society and culture during the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries may be considered as oriented against inherited traditions because it laid down a program of explaining individual behaviour and social relations upon purely and exaggeratedly secular-materialist grounds. But social study explains only the external face of faith, for it is very difficult to connect causally any belief with a particular practice, even though there may be a psychologically plausible association between them. This is not to say that the connection is a false one, merely that it is difficult to prove.1

In fact, the conflict between innovative knowledge and many firm beliefs has a long history that goes back to ancient elementary ways of human reasoning; sometimes the conflict heightens, at others it winds down, always in accordance with complex social and political conditions. That is why individual choices and collective tendencies are factors in the mutual misunderstanding and failed communication that occurs among cultural actors. Socrates was condemned because he defended ideals not in agreement with those reflecting Athenian values as conceived by his detractors. The Stoic philosopher, Cleanthes, accused the astronomer, Aristarchos, of defying accepted faith by positing that the earth was in motion. Many thinkers, from all periods of history and within all cultures, suffered cruel treatment because they expressed ideas that the guardians of order deemed capable of shaking the ‘immutable truth’ and threatening collective convictions.

1.4. Yet, these rationalist accounts are so bankrupt that they cannot explain the historical fact that beliefs are normally held prior to the arguments sustaining them and that beliefs can adapt to repeated conceptual transformations and can continue to tickle memory even if they have given rise to doubts. L. Ross and C. Anderson may be right in affirming that “it is clear that beliefs can survive . . . the total destruction of their original evidential bases.”2 Indeed, beliefs do not wholly depend upon changing circumstance, for they are undoubtedly manifestations of some deep primary feeling that is virtually innate in the human spirit. However, it cannot be verified that some particular faith is innate in all people in every culture; rather, beliefs spread by means of a deep disposition in humanity to accept and internalize cultural patterns transmitted through language and education. So the classic dichotomies cannot account for the flow of ideas and beliefs mixed together in the communication and circulation of images and concepts. Recent research shows that there are tacit components in knowledge that cannot be expressed either by standardized logic or by formal communication media. Certainly, there is a normative background to the implicit presuppositions of scientific discourse and no knowledge can be wholly free of value judgements.3 Hence, science is not necessarily in opposition to faith proper.

1.5. Conflicts may not only be observed between aspects of rational thinking and tenets of faith; there is also evidence of conflicts within scientific practice itself and among practicing scientists. For science progresses through competing hypotheses and competition is not always smooth, particularly if interest lies behind it. When we observe scientific practice within laboratories and among interest groups, the sharp dichotomies can seem overwhelming. Some rather recent approaches try to revise classic dichotomies by highlighting the relative and gradual character of every language of observation and every belief. W. V. Quine and J. S. Ullian classify beliefs as reasonable or unreasonable and distinguish between non-belief and disbelief4 as different epistemic attitudes toward systems of thought, arguing that some beliefs are more rooted in the human mind than others and that some are more reliable than others. But every classification is only occasional because non-belief and disbelief each imply belief in a different idea or ideal. It follows from the complexity of factors that enter into consideration that the beliefs are of different degrees of reasonableness and absurdity. Quine and Ullian note:

Absurdity is a matter of degree; some statements are more absurd than others. More important, the absurdity of a statement can vary in degree under the pressures and tensions of related beliefs. One cannot properly be said to believe anything that one considers absurd, but one can believe something that one previously considered absurd.5

Nevertheless, beliefs are connected with one another and cannot be clearly and definitively classified and compartmentalized as they do not lend themselves to quantifiable measurement and deduction. F. F. Schmitt also thinks that there are “degrees of confidence” in beliefs because there are “degrees of reliability” in them.6 But it must be added that confidence and reliability are not utterly stable and permanent epistemic values; rather, they depend upon the state of knowledge and upon the social positions of the actors.

2. A dynamic view of science

2.1. The neo-positivists and, in some measure, the rationalist, K. Popper, proposed rules and criteria to distinguish between statements made in science and those found in metaphysics and in everyday thought. It is said that the language of science functions according to logical standards, whereas most of the assertions of classical philosophy need revision because some of them are meaningless and others are ill-formed. Beliefs are approached by most positivists as the creations of a lazy imagination. Moreover, despite divergences in the criteria used to evaluate science and metaphysics, most epistemologists of the first half of the last century stressed the leading role of formal logic in scientific thought and considered beliefs to be neither scientific nor logical. For them, scientific theories had to be reconstructible in the language of formal logic in order to cleanse science of non-scientific elements that might find their way into scientific concepts during their gradual elaboration. Formal logic, then, is held to be the core of correct thinking: as B. Russell writes, “I hold that logic is what is fundamental in philosophy.”7 Certainly, logic is interesting for the detection of paradoxes and antinomies, but the use of logic in order to expose the unreliability of metaphysics and beliefs indicates a weak conception of knowledge generation.

2.2. Scientistic, materialist and positivist reductionisms fail to offer a fair account of scientific activity and its connections with belief systems because they take science to be the specific field of a universalist logic that works independently of cultural contexts. By contrast, most post-positivist philosophers view science itself as a system of beliefs whose constituents are not easily tested. As M. Polanyi points out:

Science is a system of beliefs to which we are committed. Such a system cannot be accounted for either from experience as seen within a different system, or by reason without any experience. . . . The logical analysis of science decisively reveals its own limitations and points beyond itself in the direction of a fiduciary formulation of science.8

Unlike proponents of reductionist conceptions of science, defenders of religious faith think of science and knowledge as linear extensions of revealed truths; however, they fail to grasp the dialectical interactions of beliefs and concepts within cultures and their historicity. The view advocated here tries to avoid both reductionisms and to underline the dynamic interaction of ideas pertaining to all horizons.

2.3. Undoubtedly, beliefs are part of scientific thinking and their components cannot be wholly explained by logical analysis and experimental test. For beliefs constitute essential parts of intimate mental attitudes, but they are not expressed in explicit information sentences susceptible of semantic analysis. This is why “fundamental beliefs are irrefutable as well as unprovable. The test of proof or disproof is in fact irrelevant for the acceptance or rejection of fundamental beliefs.”9 Furthermore, it is not difficult to notice that scientific knowledge is not merely the sum of immutable and eternal laws; rather, it is invariably transformed through continuous dialogue among scientists and in the light of experimental elaborations that change with developments in instrumentation and critique. Laws and theories are reconstituted with every test and controversy, and their presuppositions are constantly being revealed through epistemological analysis; hence, the hypothetical character of scientific knowledge may not be ignored. Therefore, science cannot be considered as the sole and ultimate court for the condemnation of the other components of cultural life.

2.4. Questions posed in scientific investigation have a specific character; they are attached to a particular field that cannot correspond to broader and more general domains. This is why science can be only selective, for it delimits its area and specifies its questions. Scientific answers, then, have a limited scope and lose their relevance when their reach exceeds their grasp. Of course, models can be transferred from one field to another, through analogies, but they have to be adapted to the requirements of the new domain. And it follows from this movement of ideas that no scientific laws can be totally corroborated, for uncontrolled elements always find their way into the core of scientific knowledge. Consequently, there is always room for value judgements in scientific knowledge because our beliefs intervene to fill the gaps left between scientific answers and these beliefs and values cannot be controlled by objective standards. No rational method hinders people from having extra-scientific beliefs and value preoccupations. Moreover, as Polanyi accurately observes: “Beliefs and valuations have accordingly functioned as joint premisses in the pursuit of scientific enquiries.”10 Evidently, neither logical analysis nor experimental test can so meticulously filter every piece of scientific discourse as to allow some elements and dismiss others because sentences, value judgements and images are organically connected.

2.5. Recent research shows us that science is a dynamic constitution and reconstitution of its concepts; and that it is not necessarily a threat to reasonable faith. On the other hand, rational analysis teaches us that dogmatic beliefs can hinder innovation in intellectual matters, but it is not true that every belief is necessarily dogmatic. For, in principle, each belief interacts with changing circumstance and is periodically interpreted in any one of an infinite number of ways in order to adapt and respond to new demands. Indeed, neither scientific thought nor belief is independent of the concepts and precepts that delimit our intellectual horizon. Furthermore, concepts develop within local cultural contexts so that every concept is laden with social attitudes and preoccupations. So, in their historicity, all of the varieties of knowledge are in permanent dialogue and internal transformation; sometimes hypotheses oppose each other, sometimes they combine to give birth to more fruitful ones. In addition to this, every idea is prone to reconstitution and revitalization in order to satisfy new theoretical and empirical requirements in a context of competition. “A reasonable conception of science,” says Polanyi, “must include conflicting views within science and admit of changes in the fundamental beliefs and values of scientists.”11 Certainly, conceptual transformations affect beliefs, but beliefs are not eradicated from mental attitudes since individuals do not live with knowledge free of beliefs. Reasoning, in science as well as in everyday life, is not independent of the normative judgements that condition all mental activity. A dynamic conception of science has to take this fundamental reality into account. In fact, the fiction concerning the eternal tension between science and faith is the product of a narrow-minded scientistic view.

3. A non-dogmatic view of faith

3.1. Most of the problems concerning faith are connected to the fact that it is often seen as dependent upon received religious texts made official through institutionalized tradition. But in order to have a non-dogmatic view, we must consider faith as human and not as restricted to religions that impose their judgements owing to their adoption, support and justification by some political authority. For example, it has been said, with the intention of dismissing such beliefs, that some communities worship fire, or light, or the dead, or some particular natural phenomena and construct idols to concretize their faith in local rituals. But why do we not take such practices and idols as simple, ordinary intermediary means to try to attain some remote transcendental divinity? Is plurality of divinity not merely a multiplicity of expressions to depict an abstract unity? Is monotheistic faith free of paganistic elements inherited from the past? What is the origin of the many names for divinity? Certainly, all of the possible answers to these jarring questions give only temporary and occasional, and not final, understanding. Faith cannot be measured according to objective standards; and there is a subjective coefficient in any attempt to understand the many-faceted components of beliefs. Indeed, every belief holder aims to find some psychological equilibrium and comfort; but, in periods of tension between communities, beliefs play catalytic roles to instil and deepen hatred among opponents belonging to different cultures and traditions.

3.2. It is in situations of conflict that the lines of distinction between beliefs are strengthened and hardened, and that questions about the essential elements of the ‘self’ and the ‘other’ become central. In this way, intense conflicts are given an unmistakably holy ‘flavour’ and no time is given over to rational reflection. In fact, the idea of the independence of beliefs from each other has always been imposed and emphasized in contexts of hostility, since every party to the conflict has to find―and invent―acceptable justification for its attitude and give meaning and rationality to its claims. Historically, all beliefs are connected, but political conflicts make beliefs into threatening and mutually exclusive enemies. Grant Allen writes:

[B]esides the difficulty of accurately distinguishing between the forms and functions of the different Semitic deities which even their votaries must have felt from the beginning, there was a superadded difficulty in the developed creed, due to the superposition of elemental mysticism and nature-worship upon the primitive cult of ancestral ghosts as gods and goddesses. . . . The consequence is that all the gods become in the end practically indistinguishable.12

There is historical evidence that all beliefs borrow maxims and elements of wisdom from each other, with or without the awareness of holders and worshippers. It is almost a certainty that all brands of ‘paganisms,’ of ‘polytheisms’ and of ‘monotheisms’ may not be clearly and sharply separated from each other and that every attempt at separation is merely forced and conventional. G. Santayana says of pantheism: “Pantheism, taken theoretically, is only naturalism poetically expressed. It therefore was a most legitimate and congenial interpretation of paganism for a rationalistic age.”13 Similarly, other expressions of belief endlessly interpret and comment upon earlier expressions and attitudes in different ways according to changing circumstance. Moreover, ideas of the unity or plurality of divinity are only a matter of interpretation, that is to say, of understanding conditioned by local historical and ideological occurences. As Allen remarks:

The progress of research tends to make us realise that numberless deities, once considered unique and individual, may be resolved into a whole host of local gods, afterwards identified with some powerful deity on the merest external resemblances of image, name, or attribute.14

For ideas and beliefs circulate between communities and it is difficult to prove that a distinct idea or ritual originally belonged to one particular culture and not to another. Furthermore, there are as many ways of conceiving divinity as there are individuals; and it is not easy to classify these conceptions clearly.

3.3. Human behaviour is an endless sequence of actions in which knowledge, habit, belief and aspiration interact and change with time. And various groups pretend to appropriate the same cultural legacy and values, but each one tries to give it a particular flavour to satisfy discrete social and ideological needs. Hence, when an individual is inclined to favour some idea or ideal, he or she depicts it in convincing ways, constructing a beautiful image of it that is very different from the one imagined by another person who is not so inclined. Necessarily, then, the evaluation of symbols and events differs greatly among human communities, depending upon innumerable factors. Differences give rise to distrust and even hatred between communities and, as these accumulate, each community perceives itself as the victim of others’ deeds, while ignoring the harm it may have caused to those others. To dissolve or, at least, loosen the bonds of accumulated hatred, we need a critical view of history that will permit us to discover the legacy of the ‘other’ in every cultural identity. For reading humanity’s past in the light of militant ideologies serves only to deepen hatred. A better understanding may need a scientific elaboration, coupled with a poetic reading, in order to subject hatred to reflection, instead of focusing upon appeals to holy war.

3.4. Historically, the idea of divinity manifested itself in ways that developed from simple forms to abstract ones. Every belief is a candidate for continuous transformation and revision, not complete disappearance, once and forever. Every reasonable attitude toward faith must take this inference as a maxim if penetrating reflection and constructive dialogue are to succeed. For, despite differences in the colour of human flesh, nothing hinders us from seeing humanity as one species; similarly, despite the multiplicity of religious beliefs, nothing hinders us from thinking of divinity as one. Assuming that there are no colourless humans, we can also assume that there are no humans without some faith. We do not attach to our beliefs because they have proven to be fully correct or sound, but rather because they afford us a deep feeling of psychological security and stability; and such feelings may not lend themselves to be assigned a testable truth value.

3.5. It follows that it is meaningless to attempt to connect science to a particular religious faith as some scholars have tried to do. Some say that modern science has arisen thanks to Christianity; others highlight the roles of Islam or Judaism as driving forces behind scientific advances.15 Following the argument laid out above, we advocate that science flourishes in an environment rich in dialogue and competition and does not spring instantaneously from religious texts. In fact, scientists belonging to different religions have contributed to the architecture of science in the past and continue to do so today; however, this does not mean that religions as such have been the source of their discoveries and innovations. Moreover, some of the fragments of knowledge found in religious texts reflect ideas shared by the followers of various traditions, but recorded only by one in specific and complex circumstances. So the juxtaposition of one faith with science or with other religious faiths leads to no fruitful conclusions. World-views are woven out of the interaction between knowledge and belief and it is difficult to draw clear-cut boundaries between their richly different constituents. Furthermore, constructed elements are indistinguishable from concrete facts and idealized elements in world-views.

3.6. We live in a world constructed through intellectual endeavour and it is clear that this world is the shared heritage of many communities. The same may be said of divinity, for it is difficult to judge if a faith is particular to this people or that. At some time or other during its historical constitution, every belief system has borrowed rituals and attitudes from other cultures; simultaneously, it has criticized the beliefs attached to these cultures and been criticized in turn. But no individual is free from belief: one might change one’s belief, but one cannot live without any belief whatsoever. This truism reveals that faith fulfils a psychological need and is essential to human existence. It is a necessary regulating principle for the multiplicity of human activities, correlating and harmonizing a wide range of interests. In this context, we suggest a re-reading of Kant on practical reason to aid in the perception and appreciation of the role of faith in the practical concerns of communities. Often, people talk about faith as life’s guiding light, an escape from darkness, and they act according to its teachings as if it were a natural light. But as Allen tells us, in the context of the origins of Christianity:

At the period when Christianity first begins to emerge from the primitive obscurity of its formative nisus . . . we find it practically compounded of . . . elements . . . which represent the common union of a younger god offered up to an older one with whom he is identified.16

Something similar may be said of the emergence of other beliefs and of faith in general. It is through faith, then, that people attach meaning to their acts and relationships and it is not easy to foresee what their lives would be if they lived without it or where they would find consolation and spiritual compensation.

4. A constructive approach

4.1. Every new fragment of knowledge augments previous ones or enters into a synthesis with an accumulation of judgements upon nature and society established by earlier generations or by neighbouring cultures. Combinations are made in accordance with different mechanisms and methods and in response to actual needs; new elements emerge through extensions, projections and revisions of earlier ones. Through this process of continual reconstitution, knowledge gains in strength, precision and efficiency. Science, therefore, must be seen as a dynamic process that may not be reduced to simplified schemata. In science, images and demonstrations intrude, enrich and transform each other, within an endless process of critical dialogue between actors. Hence, knowledge is a fruit of the rational use of mind and its most developed genre, the scientific, cannot represent a definitely constituted and well-established body because every step in development is only a stage that needs reconstitution. Science is necessarily piecemeal, selective and compartmentalizing; it does not offer answers to every question because it only addresses those posed within the context of some bound and restricted domain. Beliefs enter into play in order to remedy shortcomings in explanation and fill the gaps left between units of sound knowledge. Indeed, the mind is not comfortable with empty gaps in its world-view; it finds them unbearable and relies upon belief to offer answers that extend knowledge to areas unexplored by rational endeavour. In fact, when we urgently need to act, we do not wait to find a sound answer to the problem that we face, but act instead according to our assessment of the situation and beliefs.

4.2. Reason and debate lead to changes in view and revisions of judgement; because of this, innovation usually goes counter to dominant assumptions. Examples abound of the clashes and confrontations between critical thinkers and religions made historical through dominant institutions; it is difficult to say, however, if their criticism is directed against the idea of divinity itself or against the practices of religious men. Moreover, science is becoming modest and relative because it has learned in the past that its assertions are often revised and corrected in the course of dialogue with other claims and new facts. Occasionally, science may enter into conflict with some understanding or belief, but it will not necessarily do so with a reasonable conception of faith. Therefore, it is better to avoid contrasting science and faith as two totalities, either allies or enemies. Highly-developed, rational science refrains from contradicting acts of reasonable faith because the two domains do not ask the same questions, do not compete for the same goal and do not use the same language. Yet, the exercise of reason allows us to maintain some reasonable doubt concerning the details of some beliefs. This is why J. Ferreira suggests that Thomas Reid may be right to imply that

Nature forces us to believe without rational justification, but not unreasonably. [Reid’s stance] argues that the inevitability of lapses from the meta-philosophical position . . . indicates that we cannot sustain the view that the sceptical suspense is reasonable. It argues that it is not unreasonable to believe what we have no reasonable ground for doubting―no ground, that is, more sure than the belief to be doubted.17

So it is more reasonable to say that science does not put its constructs into the service of a specific religious faith; at the same time, however, it does not inevitably oppose every act of faith. Hence, no one is allowed to declare himself as the owner of the true faith.

4.3. All of our judgements are relative to some context because they are committed to our own culture; and we have to ask ourselves if we are entitled to unveil fully some of the naked truths about our own identities and beliefs. But even if we are theoretically aware of the relativity of our claims, we cannot find a neutral means to say how things are outside of our proper subjectivity. It follows from this that we cannot even be absolutely certain about matters pertaining to our identities, including our beliefs, and that no attempt to determine them has any chance of success. Moreover, even if we suppose that we might attain some fragment of truth, there is serious doubt as to whether we could communicate it appropriately. “As a result,” says S. Toulmin, “at some point or other in his work, every philosopher finds himself exclaiming in near-desperation, ‘If only I could tell the truth without having to use words!’”18 And this is the royal road to mysticism, for the mystical approach is founded upon the possibility of attaining truth through a psychological process transcending particular languages and cultures. Mystics usually choose to open up ways of cultural purification that consist of contemplation and progressive absorption into divinity. But does desperation end? Most philosophically-minded mystics know about the shortcomings of language to express the deeper stages of meditation and concentration. That is why mysticism highlights the living process of transcendental meditation, for what counts first here is not the majesty of divinity, but the sincere quest of the individual engaged in communication with cultures and belief systems without discrimination. And notwithstanding the fact that the individuals so engaged diverge in their understanding of what divinity might be, mystics effectively share similar deep existential experiences. So belief in divinity constitutes a driving inner force that disengages the individual from local conditions and leads him or her toward a humanist experience that transcends particularities. And science does not indicate any opposition to this existential quest, for science itself is a continuous process and, as it progresses, it moves away from ordinary language and becomes more rational than real.

4.4. The foregoing permits us to infer that there is no conflict between science and faith. Rather, conflicts are between identities, national positions and economic interests, which are all wrapped and embodied in beliefs and interpretations of divinity inherited from the past. And the past, too, is perceived through the lens of present preoccupations and anxieties about the future. So, in contexts of conflict, every belief holder pretends that his or her belief is the only true message for everyone, past, present and future, and takes the beliefs of the ‘other’ to be representative of evil and destruction. Whereas the reasonable attitude consists in recognizing the historicity, continuity and interpenetration of cultures, something that can only be done in an atmosphere of moderate, secular, mutual recognition. Science cannot offer a fully-developed explanation for everything in life; it leaves room to art, faith and further inquiry. But, at the same time, science helps us to look beneath our presuppositions in order to understand the historical roots of identities and beliefs.

4.5. To circulate in everyday life, men made maps; and each step taken by human civilization invites us to re-trace anew the maps at hand. Certainly, all maps are not equal, for the new must be better than the old. And every change in knowledge necessarily affects associated beliefs. Much as the types of knowledge differ as to their strength and relevance, so it is with beliefs: there are degrees in confidence in them and, when it is lost, they are superseded by intellectual endeavour. So, as knowledge progresses, beliefs also change and, as science becomes increasingly modest, beliefs must become increasingly tolerant. This leads us to assert that the particular world-view at a moment in human history cannot express the complex interwoven events of an historical period of longer duration. It follows that beliefs are, in some measure, conditioned by historical events and by the level of available historical knowledge. So why drown in dogmatism? Institutionalized religious faith is only a severed image representing some limited stage in the cultural development of humanity and it is only one representation among many possibilities. Of course, it is essential for men to try to conceive ideals, but we embark upon the path of dogmatism if we believe that our own ideals are the only valid ones; and, in so believing, we necessarily stand in conflict with the ideals of others. Consequently, overconfidence in one’s own beliefs and the oversimplification of others’ beliefs combine to stir up conflict between beliefs, while reasonable faith can only be charitable.

5. Reasons to charity

5.1. Faith is not a foreign element easily removed from human lives; rather, it is part of our existence and guides our actions at the most elementary level. In some way, faith is a psychological necessity that preserves equilibrium in mental and social life; it is a centre of gravity that permits us to bear the lives that we live. Special circumstances may cause us to adjust and vivify our attitudes but, without some faith, we cannot endure. Yet, each individual reconsiders his or her relationship to divinity and its symbolic representatives in response to changing needs and circumstances: in times of joy, divinity takes on a sympathetic form; in times of grief, it is perceived as strange and mysterious; and in times of war, every camp is convinced that divinity stands behind it. In this manner, every new consideration tends to revise some elements of the beliefs particular to the mind of the engaged person; and it is this that makes belief “a matter of degree.”19 Certainly, faith is not merely the sum of those mutable beliefs that follow changes in everyday life, for it somehow transcends its particular constituents; however, it is affected somewhat by changes in a person’s intentions and hopes. And because of the relative instability of our desires and needs, it is difficult to judge whether beliefs are coherent or not. Since the elements of knowledge are organized, the constituents of belief are as well; but interconnectedness does not mean that these constituents are totally coherent. As Schmitt writes: “Judging whether a belief coheres with other beliefs requires judging the (rough) consistency of, and explanatory and inferential relations among, a vast array of beliefs, and that is bound to be difficult.”20 Concepts are interrelated and systematized in order to constitute whole bodies expressing a worked piece of the world with relative fidelity; and every bit of knowledge is embodied in a complex network of value judgements that take their meaning from the web of belief that is embraced.

5.2. Therefore, in order to engage in sincere reflection, we need transcendental ideals capable of activating reason and imagination simultaneously. In this way, rational thinking can offer pertinent assistance in clarifying the historical interpenetration between belief patterns and conceptual transformations and, in so doing, point, at the same time, to reasonable means to dialogue between cultures and human communities. In the words of Toulmin:

There must be some beliefs whose basis is more secure and unchanging than the linguistic conventions of a particular community―beliefs that are intelligible, equally, to men of all cultures and in all historical epochs.21

But the question is: How do we admit the necessity of a shared faith, if faith is closely associated with, or committed to, a particular culture? So the problem does not lie in the principle of recognition itself, but in the means that permit this recognition to become equally admissible and communicable to all human communities. Questions of belief are connected to questions of meaning and communication, and there is no way to understand utterances and intentions without taking into account the beliefs of the persons and groups involved in the communication process. This is because no one can live without desires and wishes, and these are determined by beliefs; for all intentions, desires, regrets, wishes and endorsements have a “belief component.”22 If we are to learn from the way that science works, we must engage in a fair dialogue founded upon reasonable maxims, with a view to present needs. And, in order to improve dialogue, it is necessary to connect it to demands for justice and reciprocal respect.

5.3. With the aim of making the understanding of other cultures more relevant, philosophers and anthropologists shaped a principle that they named the ‘principle of charity.’ According to this principle, the researcher is invited, when investigating other cultures, to evaluate positively the judgements of local inhabitants by considering them as fundamentally non-contradictory. As D. Davidson explains:

Making sense of the utterances and behaviour of others, even their most aberrant behaviour, requires us to find a great deal of reason and truth in them. To see too much unreason on the part of others is simply to undermine our ability to understand what it is they are so unreasonable about.23

In this context, the principle of charity is given an epistemological value that acts as a counterpoise to scholarly prejudice against other cultures and is taken as a necessary tool in rationally interpreting, translating and assigning a truth value to the utterances of others. The principle is expressed in similar ways in other contexts. M. Hollis, for example, highlights the role of the principle of charity when he writes that

anthropologists often come across beliefs that seem false, incoherent and unconnected. These beliefs are rendered harmonious by appealing to theoretical options. . . . If my argument has been sound, the only way to produce justifiable accounts of other cultures is to make the natives as rational as possible.24

The principle of charity may be found in a philosophical form in the context of assigning meaning and truth value to ordinary assertions. For example, in discussing the utterances of one individual, Charles, on the subject of Caesar, N. L. Wilson notes:

We select as designatum that individual which will make the largest possible number of Charles’ statements true. In this case it is the individual, Julius Caesar. We might say the designatum is that individual which satisfies more of the asserted matrices containing the word ‘Caesar’ than does any other individual.25

Nevertheless, our approach advocates that the principle of charity may be unnecessary in rational investigation, but rather useful and reasonable in evaluating attitudes toward belief. We hold that the principle of charity does not constitute a necessary premise for science, even if it is imposed upon us in serious theoretical study; however, in the realm of values and moral responsibility, it must be considered a necessary maxim in order to establish an atmosphere of mutual respect among communities.

5.4. Dialogue and communication among the holders of different beliefs requires that they submit themselves to the principle of charity. Accordingly, we must highlight the aesthetic dimension of beliefs rather than the conflictual one. For it is at least as worthwhile to have beauty in one’s beliefs as it is to possess a sound understanding of them. Therefore, one has to learn from the mystics when assessing other beliefs. Expressions of faith are like pictures and no picture expresses all of the details of the reality of existence. Ibn `Arabi remarks that each believer defends his own faith while erroneously holding that the beliefs of others are wrong and he reminds us that truth may be manifested in a multiplicity of images.26 He is aware of the conflicts between beliefs but, even so, still emphasizes their commonalities. Indeed, mystics take beliefs to be existential discourses having as their goal sincere communication between different representatives of the human condition.

5.5. Ibn `Arabi recognizes the right to faith and underlines the duty of holding the faith of others in high esteem. In addition, he invites his readers to see every particular faith as merely a partial expression of divinity; because of this, he advises believers to avoid restricting their belief to a single faith. Then, he warns his readers, saying:

Do not lock yourself into a particular belief and do not be unfaithful to other beliefs, otherwise you will lose many good things; furthermore, you will lose knowledge of reality. So, be, in yourself, a hyle [a formless material] to all the forms of belief; for God is so majestic and great that he does not lend himself to be bound up in merely one belief, rather than in another.27

He further claims that no particular faith unveils the complete divinity, which is, in principle, more beautiful than any image of it. For faith is like a mirror and the mirror cannot reflect divinity perfectly. There can and must be room in the individual heart for more than one faith, if one acts charitably. And, in fact, the admission that different mirrors reflect only fragments of divinity―and not the whole of it―opens the way to integrity and responsibility when evaluating other beliefs. So adherence to the ethics of justice and equity requires the postulation of transcendental ethical imperatives. Only then may we say that faith is to humanity as beliefs are to humans; since humans are diverse, beliefs can only be plural.

Conclusion

Science is not in possession of firm grounds either to prove or refute faith; but faith cannot determine that some belief is more completely reliable than another. It may be reasonable to conclude that all of the different beliefs can generate approximate manifestations of the same deep faith rooted in the human mind. And that, notwithstanding the unity of the source, faith has multiple faces following the diversity of cultures, historical circumstances and intellectual levels. The rational lesson to be drawn from this is that each person must be allowed to experience the particular faith that he or she finds convenient and that possibilities must be provided for the communication of his or her personal experience and the translation of others’ experiences into his or her own words and images. Since all knowledge is relative and every belief is only partial, no one can consider him or herself as the spokesperson for divinity.

Notes

1 Eric Carlton, Patterns of Belief, vol. 2: Religions in Society (London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1973), 31.

2 Lee Ross and C. Anderson; quoted in Gilbert Harman, Change in View: Principles of Reasoning (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986), 37.

3 I am referring to the research of T. S. Kuhn, M. Polanyi, N. R. Hanson, S. E. Toulmin and their extensions during the last three decades of the twentieth century.

4 W. V. Quine and J. S. Ullian, The Web of Belief (New York: Random House, 1978; originally published 1970), 8 and 12.

5 Ibid., 62.

6 Frederick F. Schmitt, Knowledge and Belief (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), 215-220.

7 Bertrand Russell, “Logical Atomism,” in his Logic and Knowledge (New York: Putnam’s Sons, 1971; originally published 1924), 323. But it is Rudolf Carnap who went against metaphysics and beliefs relying upon the language of modern logic, especially in his Der Logische Aufbau der Welt (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1928).

8 Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983; originally published 1958), 171.

9 Ibid., 271.

10 Ibid., 161.

11 Ibid., 164. Polanyi writes in Science, Faith, and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964; originally published 1946), 42, that “[t]he premises underlying a major intellectual process are never formulated and transmitted in the form of definite precepts.”

12 Grant Allen, The Evolution of the Idea of God (London: Watts & Co., 1931), 144.

13 George Santayana, Reason in Religion (New York: Collier Books, 1962), 97.

14 Allen, The Evolution of the Idea of God, 60. Concerning Hebrew monotheism, he writes (142): “We have seen that Hebrews were originally polytheists, and their ethnical god Jahweh seems to have been worshipped by them in early times under the material form of a cylindrical stone pillar”; and “Hebrew monotheism was to some extent the result of a syncretic treatment of all the gods, in the course of which the attributes and characters of each became merged in the other, only the names remaining distinct.”

15 Some scholars give a confused image of the ways in which science works by pretending that some particular faith encourages scientific endeavour. See, for example, Alexandre Kojève, “L’origine chrétienne de la science moderne,” in Mélanges Alexandre Koyré, vol. 2 : L’aventure de l’esprit, introduced by Fernand Braudel (Paris: Hermann, 1964), 295-306; and Ziauddin Sardar, Explorations in Islamic Science (London and New York: Mansell, 1989).

16 Allen, The Evolution of the Idea of God, 283.

17 M. Jamie Ferreira, Scepticism and Reasonable Doubt: The British Naturalist Tradition in Wilkins, Hume, Reid, and Newman (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 240-241.

18 Stephen Edelson Toulmin, Knowing and Acting: An Invitation to Philosophy (London: Collier Macmillan and New York: Macmillan, 1976), 206.

19 Gilbert Harman, Change in View (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986), 22, 113.

20 Schmitt, Knowledge and Belief, 220.

21 Toulmin, Knowing and Acting, 197.

22 Donald Davidson, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), 143. For Davidson, understanding somebody’s words depends upon understanding his or her beliefs and intentions.

23 Ibid., 153.

24 Martin Hollis, “The Limits of Irrationality,” in Rationality, ed. B. R. Wilson (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991; originally published 1970), 219.

25 N. L. Wilson, “Substances without Substrata,” Review of Metaphysics 12 (1959) : 532.

26 Muhyi al-Din ibn `Arabi, Fusus al-hikam, ed. with a commentary by Abu al-`Ala’ `Afifi (Beirut: Dar al-kitab al-`Arabi, n.d.), 122. He also refers to the mystic, al-Junayd, who said that water takes the colour of the vessel that holds it, arguing that this is why it is reasonable to recognize the multiplicity of forms; see Ibid., 226.

27 Ibid., 113.

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