“As a disciple of Christ, I cannot approach the question of proper assumption budgeting from an unbiased perspective. Of course, the proper assumption budget is sufficient to purchase the belief in Christ, his church, and his prophets. Rather than simply assert the only true conclusion ad nauseum, I will explore the idea of assumption budgeting and what it puts at stake.”
The skeptical inclination climaxed in Descartes’ Meditations: “Cogito ergo sum”; I think therefore I am. This statement is sufficiently famous to overwhelm any and all philosophasters before they have the temptation to believe something. Modernity ushered in what Søren Kierkegaard refers to as a “flash sale” of belief, where the value of any proposition is so low that no one is willing to buy. I will extend this analogy of belief for sale in order to discuss Assumption Budgeting.
A belief, owned, demands personal attachment. It is possible to entertain ideas without adopting them, but once it is adopted, the idea becomes belief. For pride, there is a double-bind: an intellectual should strive to have as many true beliefs as possible while having as few false beliefs as possible. However, not every belief has an equal price.
Basic arithmetic contains self-evident truths which are cheap to buy and rather expensive to sell. No one praises you for believing that “2+2=4,” and you are actively degraded for believing otherwise. This is the status of every uncontroversial belief, and it is in this realm that everyone is bought in. If there is a case for universal knowledge, the content of that knowledge is found in uncontroversial belief.
Scientific claims, on the other hand, tend to have high prices. The scientific method, pioneered by thinkers like Descartes and Bacon, is process of negation; naturally, the price of some novel scientific theory is high. People who believe something on the cutting edge can profit greatly by convincing the uninformed, and if they are of a pioneering mind, they will sell quickly because they know that the next discovery will make the old one worthless. In this way, old scientific beliefs either lose all value or become uncontroversial.
Philosophical beliefs tend to hold value over time much better than scientific beliefs. Value is the essence that a price attempts to signal; people can be duped easier into paying a price for something that has evidence or popularity before knowing the value underneath. Natural Law theory may be 800 years old, but it has many modern apologists. Soft Empiricism is the natural disposition of most people, and it is not hard to sell most people on it either. Rational ideas, which require good faculties of judgment, are among the most valuable beliefs to hold.
However, there is one sort of belief that is much more expensive than any other.
Religious belief, in its sincere and comprehensive form, is prohibitively expensive. Just to afford a belief in a nondescript God requires that you sell a few scientific and philosophical beliefs. Then, to characterize that being? That requires a loan—an assumption on faith.
This process has been satirized in the idea of the Flying Spaghetti Monster; though Natural Theology philosophers have made valiant efforts to prove God’s existence, there is no natural way to inform the character he has. Only a witness of faith is sufficient to bridge the gap between “There is a God,” to “This is my God.” Of course, if rationality is insufficient to prove the existence of a particular God, one that we can worship, is it necessary to purchase any of the steps towards that belief through reason?
Assumptions of faith, unlike loans, do not need to be repaid. However, we can be mistaken in our faith. There are many well-meaning Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, Buddhists, etc. that each agree that all others are at fault in their faiths, and each is incorrigible in the value of his own belief. Since these beliefs are mutually exclusive, only one party among the many has the actual value, while the rest simply pay the price with faith and receive counterfeit in return.
We seek truth. That is our value. The greater the truth, the greater the value; the greatest truth is to know the will of God, and for us, we must first try to believe in a certain doctrine in order to know if it was worth believing. Consider the analogy given by Alma, that the evidence of the gospel can only be seen by planting the seed. Man is caught in a state of dread prior to knowing any of this; he must cast his seed, trusting that it may bear fruit. Any further beliefs are borne on that tree. Dread precedes belief, and faith conquers dread.
As a disciple of Christ, I cannot approach the question of proper assumption budgeting from an unbiased perspective. Of course, the proper assumption budget is sufficient to purchase the belief in Christ, his church, and his prophets. Rather than simply assert the only true conclusion ad nauseum, I will explore the idea of assumption budgeting and what it puts at stake.
“Reason is an essential characteristic of man, but this does not entail that reason is trustworthy. Our trust in reason can only be sustained by the first trust in our Creator, that He did not set us up to stumble about incoherently. Reasoning past the marks of faith is a dangerous game; remember the friends of Job, who, in kindness, supposed that he was guilty of horrendous sins because his pains are fruits of sin.
Managing an assumption budget requires the same conservative instinct manifested in the pride of an intellectual: we do not want to believe false things, and we want to believe true things. The value of avoiding falsehoods depends on whatever epistemological and ethical system you buy, of course. Herein lies the meat. If an assumption’s potential cost is contingent upon the another belief, then we can assume an epistemology which does not cost us anything for belief on faith. In fact, there is no belief which we cannot purchase on faith, nor is there any necessary order in which we must purchase a belief on faith. Furthermore, even the acquisition of trust in reason requires the first loan of faith.
There is no real priority of reason or faith, so:
Seek ye first the Kingdom of God.
I am not an honest interlocutor, looking to earnestly investigate the truth of all rival claims to my religion. I am a disciple first. As for who I was when I gained my testimony, that man died in baptism. There is no point at which I would sell out my belief in Christ. However, if I am willing to believe in such an expensive belief against any possible counter-offer, what limits do I tolerate to belief on faith?
Consistency
Having a belief in God is totally contradictory to not having a belief in God, and therefore, I cannot extend faith to that belief without sacrificing the first belief. Faith does not harm the law of noncontradiction. Therefore, for any belief, I cannot believe it on faith for the faith that I have first.
Coherence
Furthermore, when a belief is held, there are certain beliefs which connect to that belief which are easy to accept. For instance, if I believe that the scriptures are the word of God, intended for mankind to read and understand, I can believe that I ought to read them. Baked into these beliefs is the assumption of teleology and etymology (true meaning). All beliefs that are coherent with a belief purchased on faith can be extended with the same purchase of faith, with the agency of the believer as the only touchstone.
Because certain beliefs are incompatible, and some rely on others in order to make sense, it seems impossible to purchase all beliefs on faith alone. I choose only to believe on faith the truth of metaphysical and epistemological claims, and I allow reason to extend my domain of knowledge into the ethical, the aesthetical, and the particular. If my core assumptions of faith are held in common, I am an exceptionally reasonable person, for I have no faithful commitment to any of these extensions until they have been argued.
Notably missing from my criteria is the explanatory power, or parsimony, of a belief. I have no commitment whatsoever to holding beliefs that are less complicated in favor of beliefs that are more complicated and exceptional. Galileo’s argument, for instance, has no purchase with me. Certainly, it seems exceptional and odd that God would hold the Sun in the sky, but that does not stop me from believing it. I would first disregard the consistency and automation of nature than suppose that God had lied or that God is not capable of manipulating nature. Certainly, an argument could be made that the story is told for our understanding, but I will not accept any retelling of the story that degrades the glory of my God.
Reason is an essential characteristic of man, but this does not entail that reason is trustworthy. Our trust in reason can only be sustained by the first trust in our Creator, that He did not set us up to stumble about incoherently. Reasoning past the marks of faith is a dangerous game; remember the friends of Job, who, in kindness, supposed that he was guilty of horrendous sins because his pains are fruits of sin. We are to take every word of the Lord in fear and trembling, and when he does not deliver a direct answer, we advance in cold trepidation, awaiting correction. Nevertheless, we reason, it is what we do, and you enrich your life by doing so. Reason allows us to make sense of our faith, increase in devotion, and act autonomously growing in kind as a child of God. Do not forget your station, though. You are a child who knows nothing and speaks nonsense. If God commands you to do something contrary to your understanding, if, like Nephi, you are told to kill a man for his purposes, your conscience is in the wrong and you ought to execute his word.
Critics may regard this disposition as pure incorrigibility. That is a fair critique. I am not open to changing my fundamental beliefs or any natural second steps from those beliefs. I believe that God is. Anything which could challenge that belief is D.O.A. However, in return, I ask that critics acknowledge that their disposition is equally incorrigible and maybe more incoherent, for it is not possible to prove by reason that reason should be the only measure of a belief. I readily admit that all of my beliefs are a product of my choice to believe something without any appeal to reason; no critic of my position would accept any criticism of their commitment to reason, and this is because they have faith in reason, their senses, or whatever other delusion they fancy.
Written by: Jake Andersen
Guest Contributor at the Cougar Chronicle
The opinions in this article are those of the author.
The Cougar Chronicle is an independent student-run newspaper and is not affiliated with Brigham Young University or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
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