Each time I start to write one of these posts, I have to pause when I realize that I haven’t yet introduced some fundamental concept. And I run the risk of leaving the station with passengers standing on the platform, confused by the timetables. I’m thinking of the first time I traveled in Europe and found that the departure board was listed chronologically. In the U.S., we show departures in alphabetical order, by city. So I stood there for quite some time, neurons firing incoherently.
Now imagine if the very word “departure” meant something subtly different in Frankfurt from what it means in Atlanta. Does the departure time refer to when the plane leaves the ground, when the plane pushes back from the gate, or when boarding of the jet is arbitrarily halted? Or does it mean something else altogether?
What is belief?
The political left, center, and right sometimes talk past one another because they often use the same words to mean different concepts. Some fundamental concepts are understood differently on the religious right and the far right. One key example is what it means to believe something. If you’re like me, you presume that belief has something to do with the evaluation of a proposition, in which you use evidence and logic to decide whether something is true. In classes on religion, we’re taught that in certain circumstances evidence and logic sometimes aren’t enough, so we have to take a “leap of faith.” Sometimes, belief needs a kick in the pants.
But first, at the very least, we have a proposition that could be true, and then — perhaps provisionally — we say, “Well, if this is true, then such and such, which depend on that proposition, may also be true.” Sometimes you’ll hear people say they don’t “believe” the theory of evolution; they simply accept it as provisionally true, since all scientific theories are subject to revision. Or, to put it another way, a theory is a model of the real world that we can use as a framework or a set of tools. If some other model comes along that does a better job, we may accept it instead.
Unfortunately, in the U.S. we still generally teach kids from K through 12 in a fact-based way. Facts are received from people in authority. We memorize those facts and are rewarded for doing so. Because of this teaching method, I didn’t enjoy history as it was taught in my public schools. I never had a problem remembering things and regurgitating them at exam time, but learning history as a set of facts and dates never interested me very much. Oddly enough, in my spare time, I’ve always read a lot of history books. Still, it wasn’t until I was a junior in college that I realized this was the subject that interested me the most.
Belief as received facts
Receiving facts from authority figures fits in well with the conservative mindset, especially with those on the right who see hierarchy as both natural and good. For these people, figures in authority should be respected and followed unless they reached those positions by illegitimate means. These “illegitimate means” need not have any evidence to back them up. For example, many remain absolutely certain that Barack Obama was not born in the U.S. They also believe that Joe Biden lost in 2020. The lack of evidence for these claims only increases the intensity of the belief. “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” (John 20:29, KJV)
What is the nature of this sort of belief? I’m sure many of you reading this have frequently wondered, “Do they really believe this crap?” It depends, of course, on what we mean by “believe.”
Performative belief
In this case, belief is less an internal state, than a performative act. Consider Romans 10:9 (KJV): “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” There is more here than at first meets the eye. Yes, belief precedes salvation. I learned that much in Protestant Evangelical Sunday school.
But notice that confession precedes belief. I would argue that Paul is providing an ideal description of performative belief. Confession sustains and strengthens belief. Believers affirm their faithfulness and loyalty through public recitation. In practice, external confession and internal belief become inseparable. Further, the act changes a person’s identity: he or she is now a believer.
If you’re confused as to whether somebody really believes that climate change is a hoax, you’re probably thinking that belief for them means what you think it means: the acceptance of a proposition guided by evidence and logic. Unless you’ve spent a lot of time with people on the right, reading their stuff, listening closely to what they say, you probably haven’t considered the phenomenon of belief as an act of piety and a way to establish a desired identity within a particular group.
When somebody on the right asks you if you believe in evolution, do you notice the word “in”? What’s that about? I think it shows how they fundamentally understand belief. And here’s an example of how we talk past one another. My identity does not depend on a belief in the theory of natural selection or in Darwin as some sort of fact-dispensing authority. The observed evidence shows conclusively that species evolve. The current synthesis of genetics plus selection does a pretty good job of explaining that observed evidence.
Attacking the other side’s authority figures
Both sides fundamentally misunderstand each other. We assume they believe they way we do, and they assume we believe the way they do. This assumption helps explain why they denigrate supposed authority figures rather than argue about logic and evidence. I used to see all kinds of nasty memes about Greta Thunberg on social media, most of them derisive, some, obscene. The right even invented their own anti-Greta, a teen girl who denies climate science. They don’t understand that Greta is just an activist trying to draw public attention to the science, not an authority figure dispensing facts to “believe in.” No amount of character assassination can change reality.
In this post, we looked at the nature of performative belief and how psychologically, many people (especially on the right) need to express beliefs in order to maintain group status. With this in mind, we can see that changing people’s beliefs becomes a nearly impossible task. And we can further understand why books and films dedicated to debunking crazy lies and conspiracy theories don’t work. In the next post, I plan to look at right’s love of hierarchy and how it often expresses itself in acts of white rage.
Tim Widowfield
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There are beliefs and then there are beliefs! Ordinary beliefs are based upon evidence. I believe the Sun will come up tomorrow because, well, it always has, at least for a great many days in a row. Ordinary beliefs like that one are contrasted with religious beliefs which are described as being in the absence of evidence. (I believe it because it is absurd, and so on.) Religious excusigists often conflate the two kinds of beliefs to muddy the waters and end up with atheists being “believers” when we are, in fact, disbelievers.