Belief and Behaviorism

“Do you believe in God?” is among the most common of questions. But the question itself raises another, perhaps more interesting question: what does it mean to believe in God? The answer rests in our understanding of what is meant by the word believe. Merriam-Webster defines belief as “a state or habit of mind in which trust or confidence is placed in some person or thing.” The key words here are “state… of mind”; belief is conceived as, sensu stricto, a mental state. One might say, “I hold the belief that ___”, and everyone would understand that one holds the belief in one’s mind.

We have deferred to the primacy of mental states at least as far back as Descartes, whose cogito, “I think therefore I am”, is the ultimate expression of our bias in favor of mental states, as through them we find the very bedrock of our existence. But it is this bias, one that plays out in our use of language, which confounds us in our understanding of what it is to believe. Our use of language separates belief as a mental state, the “state of mind” referred to by Merriam Webster, from actions, which are considered to be the result of these mental states. Our language provides the template for this understanding of belief, as one would explain a specific belief thusly: “I believe that fire burns, therefore I do not touch the flame.” Our use of language typically describes belief and action as a one-two punch combination.

Fortunately, the behaviorists have seen clearly through the fog created by our use of language and our Cartesian fondness for mental states. Within the tradition of behaviorism is the recognition that the separation of belief and behavior is a false divide. Using the example of the burning flame, it would make no sense for someone who claims to believe that fire burns, to proceed to touch the flame (unless the individual were a masochist, in which case her actions would still agree with her stated belief that fire burns). If I believe that the flame will harm me if I touch it, and if I don’t wish to be harmed, but then I go ahead and touch the flame anyway, then it can rightly be said that I did not really believe that the flame would harm me. The next step, made difficult by language and Descartes, is to recognize that belief does not exist as a mental state that informs actions, but instead resides in acts themselves. I only believe in the flame’s power to harm me through the act of not touching the flame; likewise, were I to touch the flame, just to see if it really will burn me, could I be said to believe? To be clear, I do not have a belief that the flame will harm me that exists apart from my action of not touching the flame. Not touching the flame is my belief that the flame will harm me. Since we can only be said to believe in something if our acts reflect that belief, the false divide collapses, uniting act and belief.

Sit in meditative observation of the mind and try to locate belief. It is nowhere to be found. Is it thinking the phrase, “I believe that fire burns”? But I could just as easily think the phrase “I don’t believe that fire burns”, yet there’s still no way that I am going to stick my hand inside my burning woodstove.

I often find myself wondering if I really believe in God or not. I have always claimed to believe, but never had the certainty of possessing a genuine belief. If belief is a mental state, then how am I to know if the mental state coexisting with my verbal assertion of belief is indeed the real thing? The emphasis of organized religions, particularly my faith tradition of Christianity, on belief as the sine qua non of spiritual life, combined with our linguistic and Cartesian misconception of belief itself, leaves us all thinking that the mental state of belief must include doubt; no lesser an authority than Kierkegaard expresses the mental gymnastics required to conceptualize belief as a mental state: “If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe.” Paraphrasing Wittgenstein, perhaps the best to be hoped for is to believe that I believe it. But all that changes if belief in God is no different than belief in other things, such as the power of the flame to burn me. Understood this way, belief in God resides in the acts of belief, the same way that belief in the burning power of the flame resides in not touching it. Of course, it is then necessary to catalogue a list of acts in which belief in God might reside, but reasonable people would certainly agree that, depending on your chosen religion, the list might include prayer, worship, meditation, keeping the Sabbath, and the spectrum of virtuous acts such as doing good to those who hate you (dangerous extremist behaviors are of course not ruled out by this conception of belief, but neither are they ruled out for atheists; dangerous extremism seems to be a human problem more so than a religious problem). Thus conceived, the belief in God resides in these acts, and nowhere else, even and especially the mind of the believer; the chains linking belief to our ever-shifting mental states, the home of doubt and fear, are cut. Believer is as believer does, forever and ever, amen.

Of course it might be argued that one is comparing apples and oranges by comparing belief in God with the belief in the power of fire to burn, as one can be proved and the other can not. But belief that resides in action has nothing to do with proof. You can’t prove that unicorns exist, but you can believe in them in an altogether serious fashion by spending your life searching for them. For a real life example see those individuals who devote their lives to finding the Loch Ness Monster or Big Foot. The bloke who looks for Nessy has a belief in the same category as my belief in fire’s power to burn because both of these beliefs reside in our actions. Whether acting as if God is real is any better or worse than looking for unicorns or avoiding contact with fire is, of course, at the individual’s discretion. But belief, in each case, resides in the act.

“And when he got into the boat, his disciples followed him. A gale arose on the lake, so great that the boat was being swamped by the waves; but he was asleep. And they went and woke him up, saying, ‘Lord, save us! We are perishing!’ And he said to them, ‘Why are you afraid, you of little faith?’ Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a dead calm. They were amazed saying, ‘What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?” (Matthew 8:23-27) In answer to the disciples’ question, he was one whose belief in God, as witnessed in his acts, was complete. Jesus’ critique, here, of his disciples’ degree of belief is accurate not because Jesus has some special ability to see into their mental states, but because the disciples’ belief is clearly not on display in the only place anyone, including Jesus, might find it – in the disciples’ actions. The difference between Jesus and his disciples, and the teaching for those who engage with this gospel story, becomes clear once belief is conceived of correctly. The only difference between Jesus and his disciples that day in the boat was that Jesus engaged in the act of belief, while his disciples engaged in the act of disbelief.

One enters the Kingdom of God when one’s belief in God resides in one’s actions to the same extent as does one’s respect for the power of fire to burn.