Belief

Stephen Hawking opens A Brief History of Time with the anecdote of a famous astronomer lecturing about the nature of the universe and how the earth orbits the sun amid a galaxy of stars. A woman at the back of the room objected: "The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." The scientist challenged her belief by asking what the tortoise stood on, and the woman replied: "You're very clever, young man, very clever… But it's turtles all the way down!" Hawking seems to understand that the first conceptions of time and space were grounded in belief, and that, as we acquire more knowledge about the nature of our world(s), knowledge works both from and against belief to create new ways of conceptualizing and understanding reality.

What's more, beliefs are at the core of today's ideological and political battles. In the post-truth age, beliefs in global warming or homosexuality are always already a political positioning that entails a series of intersecting beliefs concerning the media, government, nature, science, etc. Ironically, technology (especially the Web) serves to legitimize and support a myriad of beliefs, from those held by anti-vaxxers, flat-earthers, and others. Our beliefs constitute our characters, and invariably we are judged according to these beliefs. For instance, we might judge a believer in neuroscience differently than a believer in UFOs (unless we also believe in UFOs).

Though their aim is truth/Truth, beliefs ground us and give us faith in what we cannot know. For better or worse, religious and secular beliefs collide. Consider the beliefs that underlie the Declaration of Independence: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights...; and those pledged in the Nicene Creed: I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. In the Declaration of Independence, "self-evident" is a scientific statement the Founders use to make equality not only a religious notion but also one based on empirical evidence (science). Because "unalienable rights" are not empirically verifiable, they must be religiously granted by the Creator (faith). Politically, Americans want/need it both ways because they are unable to simply believe in science and/or religion. Since the Nicene Creed is solely religious and not political, both beliefs are not required: God created everything, visible (science) and invisible (faith). In a post-truth era, humans need the contradiction of science and faith, and in the end truth becomes whatever we want to believe.

We see this contradiction play out with issues like abortion. While the religious community tends to believe life begins at conception and was created by God, the scientific community creates criteria for when life, which is created by biological processes, begins. Today, many choose their beliefs based on their political ideology. Democrats tend to believe in science and a woman's right to choose; Republicans tend to believe in God. The irony is that we have regressed to pre-Enlightenment irrationality.

But, whether we categorize beliefs as ideological or religious, traditional or ethical, they have long made us who we are individually and collectively. We sacrifice for beliefs, and we kill for the sake of them. When our beliefs are threatened, foundations are shaken, resulting in existential angst and civil unrest.

For this issue we seek creative and critical prose, poetry, and artwork that interrogate belief(s), whether those beliefs are socially acceptable, conventional or radical, and marginal or marginalized. Deadline for submission is June 16, 2020.

Prose and art submissions for the belief issue can be emailed to theturnips@im-possiblethink.com.