Many allegedly faithful people mistakenly consider faith and reason to be opposites. They will say things like “we just have to take it on faith” to explain something they do not understand. This isn’t faith at all!
One obstacle to understanding faith is our misunderstanding of certainty. No matter the domain, we are too prone to considering ideas as final. Ideas are estimates—mere snapshots of the continuum of understanding.
Too many regard faith as something that is rare and difficult to obtain because it seems difficult or inappropriate to act absolutely confident in the face of uncertainty. Disabusing ourselves of the myth of absolute confidence is necessary before understanding faith and reason’s role in it.
The truth is that everything you believe is uncertain. Uncertainty is inescapable. Everything you believe is either incorrect or incomplete. Confidence is a gradient without a positive absolute: you can have zero confidence in something, but you can never have perfect confidence in it.
Confidence is a question of the strength of your reasons for belief, not a question of whether you have discovered some final truth, of which there is no such thing. The only things that are final are those things that are past, and even then, our understanding of them can be infinitely incorrect or incomplete! Until something has happened, our beliefs regarding it can only be regarded as estimates, no matter how confident we may be about them. It is possible to be extremely confident and still be dead wrong.
As evidenced by the many things you are confident about, it is possible and fruitful to be confident about things in spite of uncertainty.
Spiritual matters and temporal matters alike share the same properties of certainty, though most don’t seem to realize it. It is rare to find anyone who invests the same effort of intentional reasoning in spiritual matters as they do in temporal ones. While most people are quite foolish in their assumed surety over temporal matters (assuming that their lives are as good as they can be, or that they are right about a great many things), some few are unusually humble, willing to assume that they are wrong and that there are others who know much more than they do about life. Yet, for some reason, even those unusually humble in temporal matters typically fail to exercise the same humility in spiritual matters. The difference between faith and knowledge isn’t in one’s effort in applying reason. The difference is that faith pertains to the future, and knowledge pertains to the past.
Doubt is a condition where what is right, or what benefits the most, is unclear. We are told that this is a condition that the faithful never need to endure:
For behold, my brethren, it is given unto you to judge, that ye may know good from evil; and the way to judge is as plain, that ye may know with a perfect knowledge, as the daylight is from the dark night. (Moroni 7:15)
Enumerating and quantifying the pros and cons of an idea and comparing it to alternatives is sufficient to make what benefits the most as clear as daylight is from night.
However, this comparison process is limited to both the degree of information you have and your interpretation of it. The existence of information and interpretation beyond what you are aware of creates a condition called uncertainty . Although most who consider themselves faithful would disagree, certainty is a position that is diametrically opposed to the faithful.
Certainty is a state of finality—an assurance that the thinking has been done. But those who have faith understand that there is always more information, and always a better interpretation of it. Most people who use the word “certainty” really mean “confidence.”
Confidence means to have conducted sufficient action, observation, and reasoning to conclude that a particular idea or relationship of cause and effect is true or a particular action is most beneficial.
The faithful possess the right to be supremely confident in all that they do, no matter how bold or courageous or unlikely or, frankly, crazy those actions may seem to those who do not possess the reasons or the interpretations they do.
Confidence can be small, such as when a theory has many plausible alternatives, and the supporting evidence for any one is not vastly superior than that in favor of another. Confidence can be great, such as when volumes of evidence exist to support a putative relationship of cause and effect, or when the net benefits of a course of action are enormous compared to any alternatives. Confidence, however, can never be perfect.
Confidence is a term that is permanently rooted in the perspective of the individual who holds it. It is never transcendent. Every assertion confidence can provide comes with the disclaimer: “given what this person has thought and experienced.”
The closest outcome to certainty is when an expected outcome is obtained in the expected way. Even then, one’s interpretation of events could be incomplete or incorrect. A baby could think that milk comesfrom crying, an incomplete idea even though milk does come after crying. A shaman could think that rain comes from dancing, an incorrect idea, even if it sometimes rains after they dance.
Uncertainty is commonly used as a synonym for doubt. However, it is a very different idea at higher resolution. Uncertainty means the absence of certainty, which can happen at any degree, yet uncertainty does not mean that there is insufficient reasoning and evidence to suggest a clear winner among options.
Put another way, there is always more information beyond what you know about and have access to, and what is right is only ever right according to the subset of information you possess and your interpretation of it. This is always true, and it is the reason you will never be able to categorically and finally list what is right and what is wrong.
Faith doesn’t provide certainty. Rather, it provides a way to act in confidence amidst the otherwise debilitating, yet unshakeable, truth that all things are uncertain. This ability to act under uncertainty is critical, because it is through this very action that more information or better interpretation is gained. To resolve doubt, one must engage in reason and action. Reason and action will also increase certainty, though unlike doubt resolution, this is a process that is never-ending.Reason and action, in concert, are the only way to gain confidence. Reason alone can’t dispel doubt—doubt is only resolved by faithful action, when outcomes become indisputable past events. Action alone can’t provide plausible explanations of cause and effect; only reason provides understanding.
Reason works in conjunction with other actions. Thinking requires a supply of information through action. What happens in the mind depends on your interactions in the world. Each plays off the other, and neither can do its job in isolation.
Many people pray for increased confidence: to have courage to do what is right, or knowledge to know what is right. Prayer is a wonderful example of the many actions that one can take to dispel doubt and move towards certainty. However, not all prayers are equal. Some can be interactive conversations that yield new information revealed or recalled through the Holy Ghost. Most are not. Some can be intentionally and carefully structured inquiries that work through reason. Most are not. Some can be brutally honest admissions of true motives that would otherwise remain deeply hidden. Most are not.
Even good prayers are typically not enough to generate confidence. Jesus himself said:
If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself. (John 7:17)
He did not say “pray so that the Father can show you everything you should do before any action on your part.”
It is wrong to pray and ask God for certainty. It is right to search faithfully, including through prayer, to think and act so as to move towards certainty. If you want bold answers from God, the only way to get them is through honest, open-minded reasoning and bold action.
Faith is confidence in what has not yet occurred based on processes in the mind: reasoning based on information and past observation, but not yet proven through experience. Faith pertains to future events. The difference between believing something and knowing it is whether it is fully apparent in reality. Faith describes the future and new things. Knowledge describes the past and any future replication of the past. If it is still in your mind, it is faith. If it has already happened, it is knowledge, not faith. Repeating something is knowledge; creating something is faith.
Faith requires that you have all reasons to believe that certain specific actions on your part will yield certain specific outcomes. When you know that a certain specific action on your part will yield certain specific outcomes, that is not faith, but knowledge.