By the nineteenth century, when knowledge about almost anything consisted chiefly of empirical facts, belief became the opposite of knowledge. A person’s belief in God was reduced to his or her belief system—the unprovable statements of faith that person judged to be true. The great pity of this conflation, Fowler says, is that when faith is reduced to belief in creeds and doctrines, plenty of thoughtful people are going to decide that they no longer have faith. They might hang on if they heard the word used to describe trust or loyalty in something beyond the self, but when they hear “faith”
...more
