Editor's Note:  We often introduce Citric Acid as "Orange County's unlikeliest literary arts journal." In an embrace of more unlikelihood, we're pleased once again to surprise and delight even ourselves (!) by sharing further entries from UCI Religious Studies Lecturer Dr. Joseph McKenna's unpublished lexicon, An Opinionated Dictionary of Religion. We keep the faith that Joe's book will soon be published.

Mere Belief

A belief is an idea that is presumed to be true, though its purported truth is not based on one’s personal  knowledge, which is a different matter altogether from belief.

The statements ‘I believe a goat has horns’ and ‘I know a goat has horns’ are not identical. The first sentence hints at experiential distance from goats, while the second sentence suggests personal ocular or tactile experience of pointy projections atop sheep-related mammals. 

Of all the ideas a person may crowd into their head in a lifetime, the vast majority of those ideas are a matter of belief and not knowledge.  Mere Belief.

For instance, all ideas about matters that predate your birth are beliefs for you, not knowledge.  (You believe a man named Shakespeare wrote a play called Hamlet, but you don't know that because you did not live 400 years ago in London or Stratford-Upon-Avon and were not his intimate friend and were not privy to his writing hours.)

Also, all ideas about matters beyond your expertise are beliefs for you, not knowledge.  (You believe Egyptian hieroglyphics refer to an afterlife, but you don't know that because you are not a trained Egyptologist.)

Also, all ideas that are beyond your senses, beyond your drowsy grasp, your sniffing nose, your glimmering tongue, your bent-back ears, your oval eyes, are mere beliefs for you and not knowledge.  (Exceptions: correct mathematical ideas and ideas about your current state of consciousness are attained without the five senses and may indeed be considered knowledge, not belief).

Knowledge of a thing never requires an act of faith. I know a boulder is hard and I don't need faith to know that. I know bleach smells harsh and I don't require faith to know that. I know a lemon is sour and I don't need faith to know that. I know a horse’s whinny and I don’t need faith to know that. I know a cloudless summertime sky is blue. But belief in a thing always necessitates faith. “I believe Muhammad flew from Mecca to Jerusalem on a winged horse named Buraq.” (I also believe this was the first and last on-time arrival of a flight between those two cities.)

Since most religious persons are far removed from the origins of their religion, religion for most people is a matter of belief, not knowledge. The originator of a religion may have seen an apparition of God, in which case that person need not have possessed faith that God exists; they knew God exists. But for all subsequent participants of that religion, God is a belief, not a datum of knowledge.

Given the tentativeness of belief and its inherent component of doubt, and that belief is not knowledge, it is remarkable that many religions insist upon  certainty of belief  (a contradiction in terms)  and insist upon mental assent to very precisely worded beliefs in order to be saved from otherworldly damnation.

In some religions, a Believer (a telling designation) absolutely must pose as a Knower:  "I know Jesus walked upon the surface of a deep fishing lake."

In those very same religions, assent to slight divergences in doctrine puts the devotee at risk of losing a comfortable spot in a post-mortem Happy Pavilion: "I've been told that, because I think God the Spirit proceeds from God the Father alone and not from God the Father and God the Son, I am going to hell."

Return to the word ‘mere’ here for instruction. Mere Belief  !

Then respond accordingly.

Numbers

Distinction is the cause of number. Somewhere in prehistory early humans noted that there was a second object because the second object was different than the first object. Thus, an appreciation of distinction created the numbers 1 and 2, and also every digit thereafter.

Our understanding of symbolic competency in prehistoric humanity, gained through archaeological study of the physical remains of prehistoric cultures and anthropological study of aboriginal peoples, suggests that they used numbers to signify ideas even before written numerals existed. Native Americans had no written script for 4. But they utilized the number four as a symbol of natural completion, since there are four seasons and four directions for the winds.

And so the human fascination for numbers is very, very old, as old as religion itself.

All religions have recognized numbers as symbolic representations of ideas, and it's curious that numeric symbolism is similar in world cultures. This could be due to ideational contagion: borrowed ideas pass from culture to culture. Or symbolic similarities could have occurred because the inherent logic of a number leads people to similar figurative conclusions: one is unity and therefore harmony; two is duality and therefore oppositional.

And there are other numerical flourishes. Three is the synthesis of the contradiction between one and two. Four is earth and its seasons and directions. Five is humanity, with its five senses and five fingers on each hand. Six were the days of creation. And seven? Seven is perfection: a perfect cycle of a week's days. There were the seven fates of ancient Egypt and seven houses of its underworld, each with seven gates; seven strings on Greek Apollo's lyre, seven pipes of Pan, seven stars in the Pleiades; seven jewels of Hindu brahmanas; seven steps of Buddha's birth; seven doors to Mithra's cave where there were seven altars; seven Hebrew trips around Jericho, seven bindings of Sampson, seven months before the ark landed and seven days before the ark's dove took flight; seven statements of Jesus from the cross, seven Christian sacraments, seven gifts of the spirit, seven trumpets, and seven churches, and seven seals of the book of Revelation, seven deadly sins, seven virtues; seven Islamic heavens and hells.

Some religions equate letters with numbers. Therefore a word or a name can have a numerically symbolic meaning. Gemetria in Judaism and Ilm-ul-huruf in Islam entail the study of hidden meanings discerned through the numerical equivalence of letters.  So, the Hebrew letters in King David's name add up to seven, a perfect number.  Arabic letters in the names Adam and Eve add up to the sum of the letters in the name Allah. And so on.

Though there are those in the religions who truly believe there are metaphysical and occult implications in numbers, one need not accept this to appreciate that almost all sacred writers have employed numbers as part of their metaphorical repertoire. 

One need not believe in the efficacy of the signs of zodiac, the historicity of the tribes of Israel, or the authenticity of the disciples of Mithra or Jesus, in order to understand the significance of the number twelve for each.

Original Sin

Sin is a Christian concept referring to any human act that offends God's moral law.

‘Original sin’ denotes humanity's inborn sinfulness, a sinfulness inherited through biological and social contagion, an innate sinfulness that will inevitably manifest in sinful acts.

Biologically interpreted, original sin passes from parent to child via procreation, beginning with the first human family, Adam, his wife Eve, and their surviving children Cain and Seth. Socially interpreted, original sin is deposited in each child via sin-soaked societies.

Original sin is considered blameworthy in Christian theology, even in an infant. And thus the need for infant baptism.

The problem with being born with sin is that characteristic faults do not normally incur blame, and therefore the two words ‘inherited sin’ are contradictory.

We might espy the problem of a ‘culpable’ inherited defect in this little story:

Slomic, who is twelve, has an inherited imperfection, a flaw that he was born with. The cartilage in his knees is stiff and inflexible, thus making it inevitable that he cannot run fast. Slomic's junior high school coach requires each student to run at least an 8 second 40-yard dash.  If a student cannot do this, the student must sit alone under a nearby tallow tree as other students run and play. Slomic cannot run fast due to his birth defect. The coach knows of Slomic's affliction but penalizes him anyway. What's the problem here? Answer: the coach's judgment is unfair to Slomic.

If humans are born to sin, if they are bound to sin, how can sinful acts be deemed blameworthy since humans cannot escape the inevitability of sinning? In fact, if humans are determined and bound to sin because of a natural sinfulness, then ethical blame is impossible by the very rules of morality.

Moral judgment requires that a person freely chooses either a right or a wrong act. Determinism is the opposite of freedom and would mean that a person does not act freely but is somehow compelled to choose whichever act is performed.

No doubt humans lack complete freedom and are determined in many ways.  But determinism can have nothing to do with moral blame. Where determinism occurs no guilt is incurred.

Christians may sense this and therefore original sin may be more honored in the breach than the observance. It's possible that few Christians actually believe in original sin.

There is a test you may take that will disclose whether you believe in original sin. It's a simple question. Do you think newborn infants are inherently sinful and worthy of moral blame?

St. Augustine of old, the originator of the concept original sin, thought that dead un-baptized infants crawled on the fiery-cinder-red floors of hell.

What kind of lumbering moral code would dream of such a horror?

Dr. Joseph McKenna has been teaching religious studies as a Senior Lecturer at UC Irvine since 1999.