The other day I discussed an NPR “cosmos & culture” website post by Tania Lombrozo. The title was “Can faith ever be rational?“, and her answer was “yes.”

This conclusion, of course, gives immense solace to the liberal listeners of National Public radio. In drawing her conclusion, Lombrozo, a psychologist at the University of California Berkeley,  leaned heavily on the work of Lara Buchak, a philosophy professor at the same University, “Can it be rational to have faith?” (reference below, free download).

Yesterday Dr. Buchak wrote me a cordial email about my post, clarifying some things and disagreeing with others, but also noting that our disagreement may rest partly on a lack of clarity in what she wrote. Her email is a model of cordial discourse (contrast it with the responses of, say, Henry Gee or Peter Hichens!), and she gave me permission to post it. I promised that I would do so without editing it.

Her defense below indicates why she thinks it can be rational to have faith, and, controversially, why it can be rational to have religious faith. I’ll add a few responses after the email:

Dear Professor Coyne,

I was pointed to your blog post yesterday.  First of all, thanks for reading and engaging with my work!  I appreciate the time you took to read the paper and engage with it.  Second, I wouldn’t mind clarifying my paper a bit, so I’ve written a few points below.  You could feel free to post it to your readers if you would like:

– Philosophers sometimes concern themselves with analyzing a concept – roughly, coming up with a definition that covers some set of cases.  For example, philosophers ask “what is knowledge?” and then consider scenarios in which we would want to ascribe knowledge to an individual and scenarios in which we wouldn’t, and try to come up with a definition that includes the cases in which a knowledge ascription would be apt and leaves out the cases in which a knowledge ascription would be inapt.  (Of course, it’s slightly more complicated than this, but that’s the general idea.)  So, I am interested in analyzing faith: in coming up with a definition that includes cases we’d describe as cases of faith but not cases we wouldn’t describe as cases of faith.  This is orthogonal to the question of whether all cases of faith are rational, some are, or none are: we first just want to figure out what the concept is.  And part of my worry is that the current cultural conversation hasn’t taken on this project.

– So, the examples in the beginning of my paper are just examples of data we are trying to capture with our analysis of what faith is.  I take on the assumption that “faith” is the same attitude in mundane and religious cases – that it should be given the same analysis.  Thus, faith will be subject to the same rationality standards in both religious and mundane cases.  Whether faith meets these standards is a separate question.  (I think you might actually be on board with these claims so far.)

– Then, the analysis comes in, and I think that you do a very good expository job (thanks!), with one exception I’ll mention next.  As an aside, if someone wants to argue for the alternative analyses you mention in the post, I’d encourage them to take up the project.  The data is: apt and inapt uses of “he has faith,” and practices and phenomenology surrounding cases of faith (in, e.g., religious or interpersonal contexts).  Show that some alternative hypothesis fits the data!  It seems to me that the Kaufman analysis is too narrow (it is apt to say that I have faith in my spouse even if every reasonable person would also assent) and the other analysis you mention too wide (I have confidence, based on evidence, that Obama is president, but it seems inapt to say that I have faith that Obama is president).  But these are genuine philosophical disagreements, so hey, let’s do some philosophy!

– On the part where you say: “This is where Buchak’s argument goes wonky.”  Here is where you misunderstand my argument.  I do see where the misunderstanding comes from, given the italicized contrast and my use of the technical term “credence” as opposed to “belief,” and I wish I had been clearer.  So just to be clear: I didn’t mean to imply that it’s rational to have faith without sufficiently high credence.  One shouldn’t manufacture high credences when the evidence doesn’t yield them (contra a modern-day version of a William James point), but you should have faith when the evidence does yield sufficiently high credence, when the available evidence is not highly correlated with the truth of the proposition in question, and when there are postponement costs and/or risk-attitudes of a certain sort.  So, to be clear: the rationality standards for religious faith are just the same as the rationality standards for other cases of faith.

– Where you and I disagree – and where Professor Lombrozo and I disagree, too – is in whether the conditions are ever satisfied in the case of religious faith.  I think they are (though I don’t think they are for everyone – so I wouldn’t want someone who thinks they don’t have evidence for God’s existence to have faith that God exists).  I think some people do have evidence of the required sort.  You (and Professor Lombrozo) think the conditions are never satisfied, that no one (or no one nowadays, or who has thought about it) has evidence of the required sort.

– Also, as for the “postponement costs” question.  We are talking about having faith in God as expressed by particular religious actions – actions that would have an effect right now in how you live – not the question of whether you should believe in God per se.  That’s a minor point, but the relevant upshot is that we shouldn’t be evaluating the postponement costs of believing, but rather the postponement costs of these actions.  And, in general, I don’t think “the goods” to be had in, say, the Christian life (I will speak from my own tradition) primarily have to do with the afterlife, but rather with our time on earth.  So in that sense, refraining from committing to the “Christian life” does have costs.

– So, to summarize, you have mostly correctly interpreted my view, except that I don’t think that the standards are different for religious faith and more mundane cases of faith.  I think they are the same.  (You and I then disagree about whether these standards are met.)

– Finally, my main motivation for writing the paper was because of the prevalence of statements like this in the “science vs. religion” debates:

Naïve atheist: “Religious beliefs are based on faith, so they are irrational!”

Naïve theist: “I don’t have evidence, but I don’t need any, because I have faith!”

I think that both of these attitudes are wrong, and harmful.  And I think a helpful way to move forward is to figure out how to correctly characterize what it is to have faith.  (If you already think these attitudes are wrong, that’s great, but it seems to me that these attitudes are prevalent in the public sphere, so I’d like to fight against them.)

Thank you for taking the time to read this, and for hosting a spirited debate.

All best,

Lara Buchak

******

I have three brief responses, which I’ll convey to Dr. Buchak.

1. Re the claim:

So just to be clear: I didn’t mean to imply that it’s rational to have faith without sufficiently high credence.  One shouldn’t manufacture high credences when the evidence doesn’t yield them (contra a modern-day version of a William James point), but you should have faith when the evidence does yield sufficiently high credence, when the available evidence is not highly correlated with the truth of the proposition in question, and when there are postponement costs and/or risk-attitudes of a certain sort.  So, to be clear: the rationality standards for religious faith are just the same as the rationality standards for other cases of faith.

This clearly implies that it’s rational to have religious faith—and for Buchak, “faith” means “acting on a prior evidenced belief without seeking further evidence”—when there is “sufficiently high credence.” That is, there must be fairly strong evidence buttressing your faith before you begin to act on it. (The “fairly strong evidence” part is from her argument.)

I don’t see that kind of evidence for religious belief, especially since Buchak claims that such evidence must be as strong for religious “faith” as for nonreligious “faith.” Would you to go to Catholic church for the rest of your life if the evidence you had was as thin as the evidence that Jodie Foster really loved you, or that UFOs have abducted people from Earth?

2. Re the claim:

Where you and I disagree – and where Professor Lombrozo and I disagree, too – is in whether the conditions are ever satisfied in the case of religious faith.  I think they are (though I don’t think they are for everyone – so I wouldn’t want someone who thinks they don’t have evidence for God’s existence to have faith that God exists).  I think some people do have evidence of the required sort.  You (and Professor Lombrozo) think the conditions are never satisfied, that no one (or no one nowadays, or who has thought about it) has evidence of the required sort.

I’d like to ask Buchak exactly what the evidence is that can support a rational faith in God, and why it would differ among people. This is a crucial question that bears on my claim that faith really is irrational, for I see no evidence of even a moderately convincing sort. Remember, the evidence has to be sufficiently strong to motivate pretty strong actions: religious “belief” and actions predicated on that.

Now scientists do differ on what it takes to convince them of the provisional truth of a proposition, but the evidence is empirical, available to everyone, and doesn’t differ among scientists. There may be some people who didn’t believe in continental drift, for example, until we were actually able to measure that drift using satellites, but the evidence was there for everyone to see.

In contrast, religious “evidence” is based solely on revelation and the propositions of ancient, man-made books.  And it differs among people—far more than it differs among scientists. Why is it rational for a Muslim to have faith in the claims of the Qur’an and, at the same time, rational for a Christian to have faith in the claims of the Bible?

Note that Buchak says that Lombrozo doesn’t think that it can ever be rational to rationally have faith in religion.  If that’s the case, Lombrozo didn’t mention that in her NPR piece. In fact, at the end Lombrozo argues that the rationality of religious belief provides some common ground for a fruitful dialogue between believers and nonbelievers.

3. Finally, re the claim:

Also, as for the “postponement costs” question.  We are talking about having faith in God as expressed by particular religious actions – actions that would have an effect right now in how you live – not the question of whether you should believe in God per se.  That’s a minor point, but the relevant upshot is that we shouldn’t be evaluating the postponement costs of believing, but rather the postponement costs of these actions.  And, in general, I don’t think “the goods” to be had in, say, the Christian life (I will speak from my own tradition) primarily have to do with the afterlife, but rather with our time on earth.  So in that sense, refraining from committing to the “Christian life” does have costs.

This mystifies me for two reasons. First I don’t see the point of acting on a belief if you don’t really hold that belief.  Buchak implies that the question of taking action based on a belief in God is somehow independent of actually believing in God. That is, you can take the action (predicated on a belief) without having good reasons for that belief.  Maybe I’m misunderstanding her here, but that’s what it sounds like.

Second, I don’t know what the real-life “goods” are for the Christian faith, and Buchak doesn’t specify them. (I gather from this email that she is a Christian.) If it’s a motivation to do good, well, there are plenty of more rational reasons to do good than simply accepting the reported words of Jesus.

I’m not a philosopher, so I may be missing the subtleties of Buchak’s arguments. But her piece was written to be accessible to the average person, and I’m one of those people.

I’ve called Buchak’s attention to this post and my responses, so maybe she’ll reply either separately or in the comments below.

______________

Buchak, L  2013. Can it be rational to have faith? In Louis P. Pojman & Michael Rea (eds.), Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, 7th edition (forthcoming)