The Anatomy of Belief

We rightly give attention to scrutinizing a belief’s claim and its object, i.e., what it asserts (or claims) about something or other (its object). As a perspective on its object, we should be able to check reality for evidence to determine whether the object is well-grounded. Once confirmed, we can then move on to consider the claim it is making regarding the object.

That’s how things could go.

Oftentimes, however, we get caught up in the argument and forget to reality-check the claim our belief is making. This happens frequently in religion. For example, virtually the entire edifice of Christian orthodoxy is a construction of claims about objects whose existence cannot be checked against reality.

The obligation to “believe it anyway” is built into the construction project itself, since doubting or denying any part of it will bring down the whole assembly. It all hangs together in the air, as it were, and falls into a heap when any part of its suspension system is cut.

What we tend not to understand when it comes to belief is how much of its power in our lives is less about truth – evidence and reason – than in how it orients us in the world, connects or separates us from others, and gives us something to live and die for.

I’m not talking about a belief’s object and claim here, but something else. Well, not actually something else, but rather the intrinsic structure of belief itself, what I’ll call its anatomy. There’s what a belief asserts and the object of its assertion, but there’s also its essential design as a mechanism of conversion whereby human consciousness is filtered, focused, and directed into the concerns of daily life.

As far as we know, humans are the only animal species on Earth that has evolved beyond a reliance on sensory intelligence, inherited instincts, and the learned habits of our local group.

The subsequent weakening of these channels, concentrated as they are in the zone of urgency where our immediate circumstances and the concerns of daily living are dominant, made humans both existentially vulnerable and highly motivated to construct new shelters of security, orientation, identity and meaning – “worlds,” as we have come to know them.

Beliefs are the building blocks of worlds, and there are as many worlds as human egos who need them.

Following the scientific principle of “cómponence” – a word I coined for the idea that things are made up of other (smaller) things, and in turn join with more things to make up other (larger) things, with our Universe being the largest order of cómponence – we can see that the beliefs making up our worlds are themselves made of more elementary components.

In this post I will analyze these components with the purpose of “cracking the code” of how and why we humans hang on to our beliefs, even (maybe especially?) when they lack certain evidence, rational coherence, and practical application to our existential situation.

My illustration above depicts the internal building blocks of belief, itself a building block in the larger construction of a world (principle of cómponence). The vertical stack is not to suggest that each “block” in the “building” of belief is essentially identical to the others. In fact, what I aim to show is that each block in the anatomy of belief is unique unto itself and adds a distinct energy to the stack.

All together, they make belief the most influential force in human experience, across human cultures, and consequently on planet Earth.

While the impact of belief is most impressive in the way it makes humans behave, our analysis will begin at the other end of the stack – up “in the air,” as it were, in the busyness of thinking.

This is where most of the debate regarding the truth of belief, its focal object and claim, has been preoccupied and is frequently frustrated. In the activity of thinking is where ideas are formed or planted, fusing into schemas and stories that eventually spread across the mind like viral memes across the internet to form an enveloping perspective on reality – our worldview or simply our world.

Our storied world serves as a narrative context providing the security, orientation, identity, and meaning we humans need. As my earlier example of religion shows, it’s not so important that our world is grounded in reality or even that it’s all that rational, since its principal function is to envelop our vulnerability and satisfy those emergent human needs.

The endurance of evidence-free and irrational beliefs in many religious worldviews only reinforces the point that truth isn’t what ultimately matters.

Our thinking activity, its narrative products and the perspective they provide, has a “downward influence” in the way they affect how we feel and shape our more persistent attitudes in life. At this level in the anatomy of belief we have moved from what is often called “objective truth” (evident + rational) to “subjective truth,” in how it makes us feel.

Once the power of belief has taken root here, arguments seeking to expose its lack of grounding or logical coherence can actually have the opposite effect of strengthening its hold on believers.

A believer’s emotional commitment to the subjective truth of a belief is amplified to the same degree it is threatened.

By this time, the question of objective truth is a needless distraction and the “truth” in how it makes us feel takes over. Attitude is an emotional position we take with respect to something, real or imagined, and it links even deeper into the nervous system to engage our motivation toward, against, or away from the object at the center of our attention (i.e., what we’re thinking about).

Wanting is another word for desire, and desire is the motivational drive operating in our cells, our organs, and in the animal nature of our body itself.

Returning a final time to religion, it’s this anchoring of even the least provable and most irrational of beliefs to the believer’s desire for everlasting life that keeps them ever relevant – even if they have no practical application whatsoever to the concerns of daily life.

The drive in our cells, organs, and nervous system is compulsive and unconscious, and when belief finds roots here, it is almost guaranteed tenure.

Finally we arrive at the element in belief where it crosses the threshold from inside our psychophysiology and into the reality outside our skin. This is where our “talk” becomes our “walk,” where our faith gets to work.

If the question of objective truth (evidence + rationality) is about checking our belief against reality before we let it settle into our mind or keep residence there, this outgoing gate is where our behavior might be checked against the rights and interests of others, as well as by the ethical standards of communal and planetary wellbeing.

We might wish that everyone could just keep their beliefs to themselves, but then we wouldn’t really be dealing with belief. Regardless of what we think we believe or how we feel about it, our behavior is the most convincing evidence of what we actually believe.

Hypocrisy is the most glaring “sin” of our day and age.

How we live on the earth, how we treat one another, how we protect, cultivate, and advance the human aspirations that will continue to shape the worlds of our collective future – that is where belief really does its work.