Commitment Is Not Belief

Commitment and belief are objectively distinct stances towards certain ideas, yet they are often incorrectly equated with each other, particularly where matters of theology are concerned.  Since a right understanding of commitment and belief is vital for a rationalistic epistemology, the consequences for misidentifying one or the other are severe.  In all things, verification and consistency are necessary prerequisites for knowledge of a worldview's veracity, and one cannot hold to an unsound foundation for theology and be a rational person simultaneously.  Christians and non-Christians alike generally mistake faith for some sort of epistemic necessity on some level while also claiming that the Bible requires belief in at least several unproven ideas.  However, there is no faith required to have a sound epistemology, though this leads to some highly nuanced positions.

One such nuance is that Yahweh might not be the actual uncaused cause, though there is great evidence supporting the idea that he is.  I believe that it seems likely that Yahweh is the uncaused cause, due to a variety of evidences, without believing that the two are certainly identical.  According to some, I cannot even legitimately call myself a Christian without, in effect, presupposing that Christianity is true.  I am committed to living out Christian values because Christianity is evidentially fortified, but this does not mean that it is impossible for many aspects of Christianity to ultimately be false, and this does not mean that my commitment to Christianity would not vanish if Christianity was falsified.

Allow me to use an analogous example: I am committed to my relationship with my closest friend, Gabi, but I do not actually believe that she exists, given the non sequitur fallacies involved in doing so.  My senses and memories cannot prove that she exists as a distinct being.  However, there is significant sensory and memory evidence in favor of her existence, and thus I act as if she exists, despite neither believing nor knowing if this is the case.  Faithfulness to a person, whether in the sense of a friendship, work relationship, or romantic/sexual relationship, does not entail believing that the person to whom one is faithful necessarily exists.  It only entails a commitment to that person.  Sound commitment does not require belief in anything more than that there is evidence for a conclusion.

Suppose that a person is forced to choose between two courses of action, with standard epistemic limitations preventing them from knowing the outcome of either choice.  As long as the person does not believe that he or she knows the outcome without proof, no faith has been exercised.  It is entirely possible, contrary to the claims of the ignorant, to live and formulate a verifiable worldview without the presence of any faith.  By faith I am referring to belief in an unproven thing [1], not to commitment; I use the words distinctly in my everyday life to help others avoid conceptual confusion.  The Bible's own use of the word "faith" is completely consistent with the rationalistic form of commitment--it has nothing to do with belief in the unproven, and therefore nothing to do with either secular or evangelical understanding of the word.  There is no need to use the word faith when referring to commitment despite this, as what matters is conceptual accuracy.  After all, language is inherently arbitrary, so there is no intrinsic conceptual meaning attached to any word at all.  It is the interaction between the laws of logic and concepts that is of high priority, not necessarily the use of certain words.

Commitment is the meaning of the Greek word the Bible uses for faith; thus, the idea that God expects people to believe in unproven claims is nonsense--there might be a great deal of historical evidence for Christianity, and some portions of it are true by necessity [2], but evidence can never prove anything more than that evidence exists.  Just as no amount of scientific testing can prove that neurons exist and just as no number of vivid memories can prove that particular past events occurred, no amount of independent historical references to Jesus can prove that Jesus existed, because history, like science, is only an approximation of fallible evidences at best.  I do not believe that my memories of events actually correspond to real events, because I cannot verify this.  What I do believe is that my memories exist, that the past has existed for at least a moment, and that there is no evidence that my memories are false, for I can prove these facts to myself.  My stance towards the existence and identity of Jesus is perfectly analogous.

If the Biblical God demanded that humans believe in things that cannot be completely verified, then he would be demanding irrationality of us.  Belief in an unproven thing, no matter how much evidence seems to support it, is inherently irrational: it can never be rational to believe something that logic cannot establish in full.  If the Bible did prescribe faith in the sense of believing in something short of absolute logical proof, the Bible would be in error, not rationalism.  There is an inherent contradiction in defining faith (as in faithfulness) as anything other than mere situational commitment based on available evidence and then treating it as consistent with rationality.  Faithfulness is not about belief.  It is about commitment.  Only a belief that can be logically proven is justified; all contrary claims are, to varying degrees, fallacious assumptions.


[1].  While there are degrees of what most people mean by the word faith, even many prominent Christian apologists, arguing from fallacious and assumed grounds, admit that their definition of faith involves belief in unproven premises and conclusions.

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/01christianity-and-skepticism.html