Faith: The reality-creating force – when our belief changes the world

Source: When belief creates the truth

"Faith is the belief in the truth of a matter, regarding which doubt is still a theoretical necessity... Often, belief in a certain fact is the only thing that can cause that fact to come into being. Our belief is what creates the truth."

(William James, "The Will to Believe", Section 9; 1897)

Explanation: The philosophy of wagering on life

William James, the American pragmatist, argued that there are truths that do not exist before we believe in them. For instance: “Is life worth living?” If you wait for an answer, you'll be disappointed. If you believe life is worth living, you will create a life worth living. Faith is not a description of reality; it is the engine that creates it. Sitting on the fence is, in effect, wagering on the “no.”

Perspective: The believer as creator of the future

Life is a wager, not a laboratory. We have to bet in order to play the game of life. From an early age, we play games of chance with children (dice, cards) so they learn how to bet, how to leap into the unknown (carefully, of course…). When you decide to believe there is good in the world, or that you have a purpose, you change the way you move through space, and that changes the outcomes. The skeptic stands on the sidelines with hands in pockets, feeling clever, but the believer is the one who builds the future, because they dared to bet on it before it happened. Faith is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Going Deeper: From Pascal to James: The wager that changes worlds

This idea calls to mind “Pascal's Wager” (by the philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal), who argued that it pays to believe in God because if He exists—even if there is serious doubt about it—we have gained eternity, and if not, we've only lost our synagogue membership dues. But James takes this somewhere deeper: belief doesn't just secure the next world; it creates this world.

Culture: Field of Dreams and Noah's Ark: Building by default

In the film Field of Dreams, the farmer hears a voice telling him: “If you build it, he will come.” He builds a baseball diamond in the middle of nowhere, even though everyone thinks he's crazy. His faith is what ultimately creates the miraculous reality. Faith as a practice makes us wonder: could building the ark have been what brought about the Flood in the first place? Jewish tradition suggests that Noah didn't try to plead for mercy; he simply set to work building the ark. Had he refused, perhaps no flood would ever have come into the world.