In my most recent post, I confessed that the longer I have lived, the more I have become aware of all that I don’t know, and how my “certainties” have lessened alongside that great repository of the unknown and, perhaps, of the not-to-be-known. After briefly outlining my own acceptance of experiential knowledge, my confidence in the human mind’s power of reason in ordering the experiences we have reflected upon, as well as its intuitive capacity to grasp patterns in “aha” moments of insight, I spoke about the possibility of moving beyond what I may claim to “know” to what I might “believe.” I promised then that, at some point, I would walk through that door with you to an exploration of “knowing” and “believing.” And, so, here we are.

I would start by saying that I accept the notion—consistent with my experience—that human beings are meaning-and-pattern-seeking creatures; that it is crucial to our survival and definitive of our existence that we make some “sense of things;” that we will look for order in our experience and where order is not evident, we will create it or at least try to do so.  Knowing and believing are an inevitable part of that process.

Given my own grappling with these issues, I was heartened when I recently ran across this quote from Alistair McGrath, a Professor of Science & Religion at Oxford:

“Like everyone else, I long to know and embrace what is true and trustworthy. Yet as I get older, I have reluctantly come to the view that I know less and believe more – not because I have lapsed into some form of credulity, but rather because much of what I once thought was knowledge now seems to be opinion or belief. It leaves us with the awkward question, which we need to confront honestly: how can we be sure that what we think we now know is not in fact simply a belief?” (Between Knowing and Believing, iai News website)

So what is the difference between “knowing” and “believing?” I could give you a dozen definitions from as many sources and from far brighter minds than mine, but based on what I think, what I have reflected upon, and what I have explored in the thoughts of others, let me just offer some basic definitions that make sense to me.

• Knowing is the result of first-hand awareness of something we have personally experienced–primarily through our five senses–reflected upon, and which our rational mind has processed, ordered, and confirmed. Such knowledge, while dependable and evidentiary, is, along with and like science, not absolute, undeniable, unchanging truth.
• Believing in something is a choice we make because, even though we cannot verify it by the same processes as what we claim to know, we have come to accept it either by inference from our experiences, by a rational argument from some assumption, an intuitive conclusion, acceptance based on an authority we trust, or even a hope that it is true.

So what does this mean and why does it matter? 

• One thing it means is that, based on the way of knowing—the epistemology—that I accept and the definition of believing I have posited, neither of them provides absolute certainty.
• However, that does not stop me from thinking, feeling, acting, living on the basis of some things I claim to know and some that I choose to believe with far more certainty than they can legitimately provide.
• Does that mean that I may be accused of living my life perched on a “mountain of inconsistency”? One could say so.
• One could also say, as I do and have done on the Home page of this blog site as well as in a couple of my posts, that the concept of paradox—the notion that statements or ideas that seem to be self-exclusive, inconsistent, may, on reflection, come together to provide a glimpse into the truth of things—is a profound idea. And, I would argue, it is relevant here.
• It is certainly one that has been an integral part of my thinking for over five decades—as an unrepentant misfit, a “both-and” kind of guy in an increasingly “either-or” world, with the tendency to see apparently conflicting statements and then try to find some way to hold them together in “the ceaseless tension of opposites.”

All of that said—and perhaps enough for now—I will try in following posts to apply what I have said so far to a couple of issues that figure for most of us as important matters to our world of “knowing” and “believing.”

Stay tuned if you are so inclined!