How or why do we believe? How do some of us, all apparently reasonable people, some even raised in the same household, come to hold diametrically or otherwise incompatible beliefs?

These two questions get at the difficulty with an assumption that many take for granted. We come to believe that which makes sense, that which is reasonable, that for which we have concrete, hard evidence. Does it work that way? In every instance? For every key decision we make in life? For everything we hold dear?

One person’s common sense is another person’s nonsense

I remember being hit with that pearl of wisdom sometime along my engineering career, right around the time when someone was trying to indoctrinate me with the need for process and standards while I objected all one needs is common sense. Whose common sense? Is anyone’s common sense complete enough to provide sufficient basis for making critical decisions or forming a belief system?

Even if we throw education into the mix, call it educated sense, we run into problems. Not all of what we learn intellectually makes sense. Quantum Physics, for instance. Super interesting. Saw a lot of equations, even cranked through some of them in some pretty scary college finals. But do I fully understand it? Does it make sense? Not so much. Do I believe it?

Be reasonable, do it my way

The problem with basing belief on reason more or less dovetails with going with what makes sense, so I won’t dwell much on that aspect of it. But I do want to touch on how we reason, and how our ability to “come and reason together” varies from one person to the next. As has been said, two reasonable people can disagree. Sometimes they do it rather vehemently. But why?

Having observed the human animal now for a while, I’ve come to believe much of what we call reason intertwines a great deal with rationalization. For the sake of convenience or self-fulfillment, we can “reason” ourselves into much that will seem over-the-top unreasonable to others. As one of my characters, Jane McMurtry (Tracking Jane series, episode 2) puts it:

The human mind excels at convenient rationalization, and hitched to a dark soul, it twits truth beyond recognition.

We often come to believe that which we want to believe, or more to the point, that which will let us go on believing in the correctness and wholesomeness of the way we have already chosen to live our lives. Reason also misleads us. How can we trust it to inform or validate our belief system?

Evidence rarely provides belief’s full foundation

He who waits for hard evidence before he believes must prepare to exercise great patience or experience immense disappointment. Usually both.

In an era of amazing scientific discovery and technological advances we’ve come to presume evidence, especially of the scientific kind help us form or bolster our beliefs. But who really has full (and fool) proof evidence for everything he comes to believe? Even if in possession of evidence, who has time and knowledge to sort through it all and fully understand it?

For the sake of argument, take any scientific principle you hold to be true. Do you believe it because you have full command of the evidence, because you’ve reasoned through all the data, because it makes complete sense to you? Or did you at some point have to cross the threshold between understanding and trust? By that I mean, plainly, did you have to take someone else’s word for it?

We are not calculators, and our beliefs don’t materialize at the right hand side of a formula’s equal sign

So how then do we come to believe, whether in God, or the goodness of man, or in the purity of Nature, or whatever else holds you up through the day? I’m not going to tell you what the answer is or ought to be for you. I will tell you that for me, at some point I need to trust. At some point, I must believe by faith.

Now comes the next set of questions, starting with, faith on what and how do you know the object of your faith is worthy of devotion?