For a belief to survive, it does not have to be true or factual; it only has to be useful.

The above is a paraphrased thought culled from Stumbling on Happiness by Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert.

(It would be a mistake to read the following as anything other than a conversation between two beings, who, though separated by undeniable differences in theology, age, and space, remain friends of the heart.)

A few days ago …

“You can choose to believe God’s word,” the 83-year old voice from a 1000 miles distant insisted. “Belief is a choice.”

“No,” I contended. “Belief is not like that. I can’t choose to believe something I think is false or contrary to what I know. No matter what the reward for trying to believe in herds of pink flying elephants as something real, I don’t think I could ever muster it. I just can’t see them like some folk claim to. So if belief or a forced attempt to believe (via faith) in flying pink elephants is critically important, then I’m just out of luck.”

“Belief is a choice.” The telephone handset quacked the words as it always does when held away from the ear. Moving the handset closer, the voice returned to normalcy. “I made the right choice. I chose to believe a long time ago. I could turn away and choose not to believe if I’m not careful. The hope of heaven I have that comes from that choice to believe and follow God. I’m so thankful for the peace that hope brings.”

“Hmmm.” I sighed. “I’m glad you’ve found something that works for you. It doesn’t work for me, but I’m glad you have something that brings peace and contentment to your life. I really am. I’m glad you have that.”

Why do people believe the things they do, in the face of all sorts of contradictory evidence and even deep inconsistency among the things they think they believe. This has always puzzled me a bit, and frustrated me. I’ve found nothing so outrageous that somebody in the world won’t believe it.

There are degrees of belief.

Descartes believed he had discovered the ground floor of belief with “I think, therefore I am.” How can consciousness deny itself? When I go to sleep at night, I believe I’ll wake up to a new day. I can’t assert this with 100% confidence. There might not be another physical dawn, but science pretty much says there will be. I believe I’ll see it, but I’m not as confident in that as I am in the sunrise. All the experience I have to date is on my side, though; I’ve never missed a day of waking up yet. I believe Senator Snort will get re-elected this fall, but I know that I could be wrong. There’s a whole gradation of confidence that crawls under the umbrella of belief.

I think, though, the quote at the beginning makes a different point – one that’s not based on an unstated uncertainty that implicitly accompanies the words, “I believe …” In each of the cases above, the belief is still sourced in an honest attempt to distill information into a calculation or an educated guess about reality. If experience shows a need to shift beliefs, there is usually little reluctance to do so.

The quote at the beginning of the post, though, asserts a much different basis for belief – a basis built on need and utility. For beliefs built on this foundation, the question to ask is “What purpose does this belief serve?” If you ask that question honestly, you begin to find a lot of beliefs that simply serve a very useful purpose. Whether or not they are true is not very important as long as they are useful. They will persist as long as they are useful.

What is the basis for a belief in the justice of the universe, be it karma, heaven or hell, or any number of other systems that promise that in the end justice will be done? Fact or the utility of easing the hopelessness of inequity and violence one sees in the world?

What is the basis for beliefs about some life after this one? Fact or the utility of easing the minds anxiety about its own temporal nature and eventual insignificance?

What is the basis for belief in racial or religious hatred? Fact or the adoption of beliefs to gain solidarity and community in the face of loneliness or helplessness?

The conversion experience of the elderly Christian I was talking to is a case in point. In his his own words, the fear of hell with its fire and brimstone, and the fear of eternal isolation from God induced by preaching he heard in his early childhood led to his conversion. Belief replaced those fears with hope, provided him with relatively clear answers about how he should conduct his life, and now eases his mind as he stands in the dying years. The actual truth behind the accompanying set of beliefs hasn’t been nearly as important as its efficacy in easing his mind and providing stable answers to the questions that govern meaning and purpose. Why would anyone want to ditch beliefs that did all that?

I looked at politics from this vantage point. The utilitarian aspect of belief applies to politics as well. It’s discouraging, but most people are not budged from their political beliefs by facts. In the contest between beliefs and facts, it’s usually the facts that get bent to close the gap.

The more I looked around, the more I saw how the utility of beliefs dwarfed their truth. In science and engineering, truth and utility are strongly linked because economics has harshly winnowed out wishful thinking. Outside of those items, the connection between truth and utility is often happenstance.

I’ve started looking at my own beliefs. To be sure, some are based on fact, at least as I experience it. And some too comfortably meet a need, even if it’s only to ease an anxiety I have about life, or to take care of some unpleasantness I’d otherwise have to face. Some exist because there is a vacuum of knowledge – at least scientific type knowledge; there are some things we mortals just can’t know that way. It’s often harder to face the bleak unstructured “I don’t know” day after day than to choose to live within a belief offering helpful structure, although the belief may be faulty or riddled with uncertainty. The key, I think, is to be aware of when one is believing for a purpose, and when one is convinced based on facts or experience. That awareness makes a huge difference, because it prevents the mind from lumping the two together in the common word bucket of “belief.” You can’t hold as tightly to a belief when you see your complicity in adopting it. If you need to believe in pink flying elephants, then you’re probably still sane as long as you understand they may not really exist. But under those circumstances, you probably won’t be one to crucify the people that can’t see them with you either.

In the end, Buddhism states that even the dharma is empty; all beliefs have to go in the radical acceptance of nonconceptual reality that constitutes liberation. But until then, I believe … I will believe … I won’t believe … Specifically, though, in a follow-on article sometime, I’ll revisit karma in the light of the above; in that light, I can begin to see why this particular Buddhist teaching has sometimes been problematic for me.