Earlier I declined to define my terms, but Fowler does a good job of defining his. Religion, faith, and belief are not the same thing, he says, though we often speak of them as if they were. In the sixteenth century, “to believe” meant “to set the heart upon,” or “to give the heart to,” as in, “I believe in love.” But in the centuries following the Enlightenment, secular use of the words “belief” and “believe” began to change until they said less about the disposition of one’s heart than about the furniture in one’s mind. By the nineteenth century, when knowledge about almost anything
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