Faith & Facts

(Cross-posted at Notes from D.R.)

New York Times science reporter Nicholas Wade contends in his new book The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved and How It Endures that human beings are by their very nature inclined to believe in something greater than themselves, something that will bring about an improvement in their current conditions. This inclination acts as a psychological defense mechanism, a safeguard against extreme despair.

The Faith Instinct has been published at an ideal time, a time when sociopolitical circumstances in the United States require a certain amount of faith—blind or otherwise—that things will get better.

Faith comes in handy when facts don’t. Facts would naturally lead one to conclude that America may never be free from its heavy debt, may never be as economically vibrant as it once was, may in fact lose its superpower status at some point and become just another nation. Only faith—blind or otherwise—can lead us to the reassurance that things will not be as bad as they seem.

Viewed from a purely objective status, America is going downhill—its citizens becoming more ignorant and entertainment-obsessed, its politicians (from both parties) becoming more corrupt, its institutions becoming more untrustworthy, its future becoming more grim. You could not blame a parent who believes his child’s quality of life will be worse than his or her own.

Once faith is introduced, the dynamic changes. Wade notes that the Puritans held fast to the view that America was a nation uniquely blessed by God, and that this belief has been maintained by Americans of faith throughout the centuries. If one believes that God has placed special protection upon America, one will be disinclined to believe that God will remove such protection and allow America to spin into chaos.  (This presupposes, of course, that one is not a deist, or a Pat Robertson-style religious pessimist.)

 Strong faith is required for conservatives who saw their movement tremble in the 2000s. The demographic and cultural trends suggest decades of Democratic dominion in America, and the wholesale collapse of the once-vibrant right. Conservative figures such as Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh are considered icons by those who share their views, but the rest of the country doesn’t seem to share the same love, to put it mildly.

 Conservatives must hope that more and more Americans become disillusioned by President Obama, and that this disillusionment becomes so deep that the electorate forgets about its contempt for George W. Bush.  The combination of general anti-Obama sentiment and the emergence of a more coherent conservative message will result in future political victories for the right.  Conservatives have to believe that these two events will become reality.

Faith is not limited to conservatives; progressives also believe that things will ultimately turn out for their benefit. Progressive advocates of same-sex marriage, for example, must surely have faith that their recent political defeats are just a late-2000s backlash, and that over time enough Americans will come to the conclusion that gay and lesbian couples deserve to have their partnerships recognized by government. It would be quite natural to be disillusioned in light of these defeats, and the polling data indicating the problems many Americans still have with the concept of same-sex marriage; however, faith in the future compels these progressives to pay attention to data suggesting that younger Americans are welcoming of same-sex marital rights. At some point, the older Americans who strongly oppose the idea won’t be around, and their children and grandchildren will express equally strong support for the concept.

Faith—perhaps not necessarily in God, but faith in something—compels all of us. It allows us to look forward to tonight, tomorrow, next week, next month, next year. It allows us to work as hard as possible to achieve our political goals, because we have confidence that these goals will be achieved. 

Without such faith in a better day on the horizon, we would not have had a civil rights movement or a women’s suffrage movement. Without such faith, neither Ronald Reagan nor Barack Obama would have thrown their hats into the Presidential ring. Without such faith, this very country would not have been founded.

No matter where we are on the economic or political spectrum, we all have to believe in something. There is, indeed, a faith instinct—and that instinct is necessary for our survival.

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