In the last two posts, I looked at an alternate explanation of some statements in the Bible. As the feedback showed, some Christians believe these statements literally, others figuratively. And they are all happy holding onto their very different beliefs, even though all of them are inspired by the same passage in Genesis. That is great!
People ‘hold on’ to their ‘profound beliefs’, regardless of what others think of them or anything else – and I would not want it to be any other way. This is called ‘faith’. I have learned about this phenomenon. I do not comprehend it, but I am ready to accept that some people are capable of it.
Yet, people often ‘hold on’ to ‘beliefs’ or ‘opinions’ on trivial or non-profound points which are demonstrably unsupportable. I have tried, but I really don’t understand this aspect of human nature. Personally, I have a hard time with this 100% one way, or 100% the other way mode of thought…..perhaps because I’m not ‘wired just right’…but I don’t think there is anything I’ve invested a 100%, non-conditional ‘belief’ in.
No, I’m not talking about everyday life things, like knowing I love my kids and so on….emotional investment is NOT what I am talking about. Nor am I talking about the ‘ought to’ kind of belief, as in “I belive all humans ought to be treated as equals in the eyes of the law.”
I mean ‘factual’ stuff: like physics, chemistry, history…that ‘stuff’…. and global warming, political implications, someone’s culpability in something, superstitions, trust in actual physical institutions …that ‘stuff’, too. For example, when driving over a bridge, I am reasonably convinced that the probability that the bridge will collapse under me is so low as to be negligible – or I would not have driven onto it. Yet, I do not believe that it will not collapse….there is a difference!
OK, I ‘know’ gravity is a ‘force’ – yet, if someone presented me with substantiated evidence that it wasn’t a force, but rather an aspect of, say, space, I would be sceptical, yet I’d want to know what they based their claim on. They’d need solid evidence, but….I could be convinced by it. Knowledge, conclusions, opinions – these are all subject to change as more information comes in. I get that! I understand that process, and have experienced it many times. What I don’t get is ‘belief’ or ‘faith’.
Perhaps this is a characteristic of us Aspergers’ people: I recall some friends cutting out a comic strip in which a teacher is handing back a math test. She reads one of the answers out loud: “provided both trains are travelling in straight line, with no hills or curves, provided there are no accidents that slow them down along the way, provided we neglect to account for the curvature of the Earth, provided the clocks in both stations are synchronized, and that the whole path is along same height above sea-level and so no time diallation occurs, the trains’ average speed is XXX. ” She hands the test to a boy, and he wonders: “How did she know this was my paper? I forgot to put my name on it!”
For some reason, my friends thought this was hillarious and wanted to show it to me….something about the comic basing a character on me…
It seems many people have as much problems with ‘my’ processing of information into conditional conclusions as I do with ‘faith’. This truly shocked me….after all, does not EVERYONE state the obvious limits under which any conclusion is valid? Why do many people percieve such qualifications as ‘waffling’? It certainly is not so! Would not presuming such things be an oversimplification, to the point of error?
Yet ‘belief’ and ‘faith’ seemed more natural to many people than my ‘conditional conclusions’!
What is it that allows one person to ‘believe’ or ‘have faith’, while another cannot even commit to a math-problem answer without stating all the assumptions and limitations? Which one is the ‘normal’ one, and which the ‘anomaly’? Or is this like a spectrum, where there are no discrete breaks, just a continuum….with my ilk falling squarely at one extreme?
These questions have haunted me, ever since I can recall formulating their cognitive pre-cursors in nursery shool. Even back then, I simply could not understand the motivations and expected goals behind other children’s games – and when I asked, I got blank stares or the old ‘index-finger-making-circular-motion-by-the-temple’ gestures in return. I can understand both the process and the motivation/expected goals behind a calcualted risk, problem analysis, conditional conclusion, that sort of thing…. But, for the life of me, I cannot understand either the process nor the motivation/expected goals behind ‘belief’ and faith’ – both profound and mundane.
Is this just another aspect of my ‘faulty wiring’, one that makes me so very Aspergers? Or, are ‘belief’ and ‘faith’ simply a label for ‘I don’t understand and am not worthy/willing to think about’? Or is there something entirely different at play here?
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 