Learning and faith

Learning and faith are powerfully connected. Learning increases faith, and faith is required for learning to take place. Faith and learning are a self-reinforcing pair that can form a virtuous cycle – leading the learner to ever greater light and knowledge of the truth. But the right conditions must be in place. This concept is very new to me and I have only begun to explore it, so this post is just a first stab at what seems to be an extremely important area of study.

While my exposure to the concept goes back further, I was most recently inspired by a passage in the Doctrine and Covenants (a book of revelations given by Jesus Christ to his prophet, Joseph Smith and considered scripture by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints), section 88, verse 118. Let me quote the passage here:

“And as all have not faith, seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith.”

I found it striking that the response to a lack of faith was to teach: “as all have not faith…teach one another…” Learning, in other words, begets faith. But also, at the end of the verse, we are commended to “seek learning…by faith.” So the reverse is also true: faith is essential to learning!

Now, the atheist or agnostic is probably rolling her eyes at this point, thinking “hey, I don’t need to believe in God to be able to learn. And learning doesn’t make me believe in God either.” Good point. But I never said one had to believe in God to be able to learn. What I said, was that faith was necessary for learning. Let me clarify: faith is belief. To have faith is to believe something with less than 100% certainty. Anytime you have less than absolute proof of something, but you believe it none the less, you have faith.

Faith is therefore a part of every human life, not just those with spiritual or religious inclinations. When scientists first propose a new theory or idea, they have little proof that they’re right. But they advance the idea anyway – believing it to be true before they know for sure. This is faith. Even after much evidence has been collected, there is still uncertainty in the result. In fact, scientists are required to quantify their uncertainty. For example, they might be able to say, “we are confident of this result to within one tenth of a percent.” But even then they can’t know for sure that their theory is correct. Further experimentation might overturn their theory, or reveal it to have been only partially true. So to believe the theory is correct still requires faith.

Another way to see it is that faith is confidence that something is true. The more faith you have in someone or something, the more confident you are in that person or thing. Under this definition, a scientist’s faith in a theory increases as more evidence is discovered that supports the theory. This may seem counter-intuitive, but faith is actually proportional to the degree of certainty, not inversely proportional – as many mistakenly think.

Now back to learning. My first claim was that learning increases faith. How is this so? If we use the concept of faith as confidence that something is true, then it becomes clearer. Say I have heard of a particular principle, idea, or concept (let’s go with ‘concept’ from here on out, for simplicity’s sake), but I’m not at all sure I believe it is true. Perhaps I have only heard it explained vaguely or briefly and my understanding of it is not very strong. At this stage, my lack of faith (or confidence) in the concept is justified: I cannot have faith in something I do not even understand. That would be foolish, and atheists and agnostics are right to criticize this behavior – what is often referred to as ‘blind faith.’ True faith is not blind: it is a well-founded confidence that something is true. To gain that confidence, I must first increase my understanding; in other words, I must learn.

There is, of course, no guarantee that the more I learn about a concept the more confident I will be in its truthfulness. On the contrary, I may discover that it is an unreliable or even completely false concept, and my faith in it will diminish. And rightfully so: since faith is confidence in the truthfulness of something, as you discover that it is not true, your faith in that thing should diminish.

From the preceding argument it should now be clear that as knowledge and understanding grow, so does faith. This is simply because you cannot have faith (or confidence) in something you do not understand. If, through learning and increased understanding, you discover a concept to be false, then you discard it and your faith is no greater than before. But if you discover it to be true (or that there is some truth to be found in it – perhaps it is only partly true), then your faith has grown in that thing – and your overall faith in the truth has therefore augmented. As you discard false notions and embrace those that are true, your knowledge expands to an ever-wider circle, encompassing a larger subset of all truth. And as it does, so does your faith in the truth.

So much for learning increasing faith. One final word, however. And this is so important that I feel bad adding it as an addendum, but this post is getting too long and I need more time to think about it. For this process to occur (for learning to increase faith), the teacher must also have faith in what she is teaching. Faith increases a teacher’s capacity to promote learning.

The key here is that the teacher must teach with her faith. In other words, she must communicate her faith in the concept to the student. A teacher who does not really believe what she is teaching – or who is incapable of communicating that faith to the student – is much less likely to be able to assist the student in increasing her own understanding and faith. In other words, she will be a less effective teacher.

This is because it is very possible to learn something by rote without really gaining confidence that it is true. Stated otherwise, it is possible to simply learn about something without really learning it. To truly understand something, you must find out for yourself if it is true. You must be confident about the matter. Only then have you truly learned it. Faith, therefore, is a strong barometer for learning.

Which brings us, of course, to my second claim: that faith is necessary to learning, and increases both its pace and quality. But this point will have to wait for a later post.