7 - Religious Beliefs and Thinking

Summary

Having looked at religious experience and practice, we turn now to religious thinking and belief. It is not an area of the psychology of religion that has been explored systematically, so we will have to draw threads together from various sources.

Belief and Nonbelief

A long-standing tradition in philosophical theology provides rational arguments to support belief in God. The “five ways” set out by Aquinas provide a classic statement of that approach, though it is worth noting that they were intended to provide rational support for faith that people already held, not to provide a path to faith for nonbelievers.

These arguments took a new turn during the Enlightenment when they were brought into conjunction with empirical considerations and were used in a new way to argue for belief in God. That happened both through those such as William Paley who looked for evidence of design in nature and through those such as Friedrich Schleiermacher who looked for a foundation for faith in human feelings. It is not the role of psychology to evaluate the effectiveness of those arguments, though it is perhaps fair comment that they do not have a good track record of convincing those who do not already hold the conclusions to which they are intended to lead.

What is interesting about these arguments from a psychological point of view is that they challenge us to understand better the cognitive processes by which people actually arrive at belief. I suggest that this process is not as compelling as the kind of evidence-based or logical argument that would convince anyone. However, I also suggest that the path to faith is not wholly lacking in rationality, or lacking in an empirical basis. Religious belief is, after all, a matter of faith, but it is nevertheless rationally motivated. I suggest that cognitive psychology may, in principle, be able to tell us more about how the path to religious belief works than a philosophical approach that simply looks at whether the arguments are logically compelling.

There is nothing unique to religion about people holding views or beliefs with some rational basis, but no compelling argument. Indeed, the comment I would make from a psychological perspective is that this is the norm in human cognition, not the exception; it is not specific to religion.