There Is So Much For Us Of Little Faith

By Neil the Ethical Werewolf

Lee Siegel (yeah, that guy!) writes an LA Times op-ed attacking atheism:

When our anti-religionists attack the mechanism of religious faith by demanding that our beliefs be underpinned by science, statistics and cold logic, they are, in effect, attacking our right to believe in unseen, unprovable things at all. Their assault on religious faith amounts to an attack on the human imagination.

Belief and imagination are two very different states of mind, and the norms that apply to them differ dramatically.  To say that belief ought to be based on evidence isn't to say that imagination should be based on evidence.  As an atheist, I'm often happy to imagine that God exists (for example, when reading myths, daydreaming, or considering a philosophical argument).  I just don't think there's sufficient evidence to believe in God.  Lovers of the imagination have nothing to fear from atheism, since atheists are fine with you imagining whatever you want. 

The same confusion appears to be at work here:

You don't have to be a religious person to cherish the idea of faith in the absurd. When artists have an unverifiable, unprovable inspiration, and then seek to convey it in words or images, they take a leap of faith every bit as vertiginous as that of the religious person.

This is a rather odd way to describe the artistic process.  Being struck with an amazing idea that one wants to put into words or sounds or images is a very different state of mind than believing without evidence.  I don't have a worked-out theory of what artistic inspiration comes to, but I'd think that imagining the awesomeness of your future creation is a much bigger part of it than belief is.  (Of course, it's possible that someone who wrote at such length about taking care of his imaginary cat is confused about the nature of imagination and belief.)

Siegel continues:

The leap of faith is really a very ordinary operation. We take it every time we fall in love, expect kindness from someone, impulsively sacrifice some little piece of our self-interest. After all, you cannot prove the existence of truth, beauty, goodness and decency...

These things either aren't matters of belief, or are things for which we believe with good evidence.  Falling in love with someone is a matter of having one's emotions and desires attach to your beloved, not forming a belief.  (When we talk about 'true love', we mean love that's genuine, not love that correctly describes reality in the way that a true statement or a true belief does.)  Expecting kindness is a genuine belief -- namely, a belief that others will be kind -- but it's usually based on evidence.  That humans have a degree of sympathy and kindness is an empirically verifiable part of human nature, and we often have good evidence for believing that others will be kind to us in the right circumstances.  Sacrificing some of our self-interest, like falling in love, isn't a matter of false belief.  It's a matter of having the kinds of emotions and desires that motivate altruistic behavior. 

Contra Siegel, the existence of truth, beauty, goodness, and decency are easily established.  Open any well-researched book of mathematics or the sciences, and you'll find plenty of true statements right there in front of you.  Read about Gandhi, Martin Luther King, or anyone who strove to avert human suffering and help people live better lives, and you'll find evidence for the existence of goodness and decency.  And in a world with sunsets and mountains and so many lovely women, my senses are given ample evidence for the existence of beauty. 

I don't know for sure what motivates the view that all the best things that exist are located far beyond our ability to have knowledge based on evidence, and that faith the only way to encounter them.  But I'm struck by how prevalent it is, when so many wonderful things require no faith at all.