What does it mean to "believe in" something?

[MineralMan]

That phrase has always bothered me...

I've never really understood it, and I'm a fair hand at language. I either believe something or I do not. I'm not sure what it might mean to believe in something. The verb doesn't really fit with a preposition following it.

I believe the fundamental unit of water is composed of two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen. I don't believe in water. I believe the evidence indicates that the Earth is between 4.5 and 5 billion years old. I don't believe in the ancient nature of Earth.

I believe the definition of atheist is one who does not believe that deities or other supernatural entities of that sort exist. I don't believe in that definition. That's a meaningless statement.

People are always saying that they "believe in" Jesus, or "believe in" creationism or whatnot. It's a manner of speaking that is pretty much solely connected to Christianity. Used properly, the verb "to believe" is not followed by any preposition. It takes an object of some sort. You believe this or that, not in this or that. Adding "in" to the object is modifying it in a way that leaves the actual meaning of what you're trying to say tentative. It's a qualifier. Instead of saying "I believe Jesus Christ is part of the Trinity and that His death after appearing as a human being redeems me from my sins," people say "I believe in Jesus as my personal savior." It's not a direct statement, but a wishy-washy dependent sort of expression that defies meaning, because that verb doesn't properly take a prepositional phrase as an object. Interesting, neh?

English is an excellent language. It works best, though, when it is used properly.

[Duer 157099]

1. Simple. People "believe" facts and "believe in" myths n/t

[MineralMan]

2. Hmm....interesting...

So, that conditional "in" means that what follows is a myth? I like that.

[ramblin_dave]

4. I believe in evolution...

does that make it a myth? You wouldn't say 'I believe evolution' would you?

[MineralMan]

6. Actually, yes I would say, "I believe evolution."

I would probably add to that, though, and say "I believe evolution is the mechanism for speciation."

You either believe evolution to be the truth or you do not. You cannot believe in evolution. That's meaningless.

[ramblin_dave]

8. No, it's not meaningless...

If I say I believe in evolution it means that I accept the various principles embodied by the term 'evolution'. I don't have to spell out these terms.

[Duer 157099]

10. No, but that's the truncated version

The full statement would be "I believe in *the theory of* evolution" which essentially puts it on par with a myth. I'm not saying it's a myth, but it's a sufficiently recent "theory" and disputed by a large enough segment of the population that, I think, it's still spoken of that way.

I think, as someone pointed out below, that there are two typical uses for "believe in" -- most commonly one could substitute "I have faith in" such-and-such; the other use is as used above (believe in a myth/theory). Can you imagine someone saying they believe a myth? No, they must qualify it with the "in" to soften it or to make it sound like it's a viable option.

[Meshuga]

3. Maybe a person saying she "believes in" does not really represent the true belief of that person

Perhaps the person is just misusing the English language. :-)

[MineralMan]

7. I think it's just a hedge, leaving the actual beliefs of the person

in question.

[Meshuga]

11. I can see people saying...

..."I believe in God" or "I believe God exists" interchangeably. So sometimes I see communication being the issue when one side understands a slightly different answer than intended by the person making the claim.

[MineralMan]

5. Wait, I think what people mean is

that they "put their faith in" something when they say they "believe in" something. Why not just say that? Faith is a tenuous thing, so it is more appropriate. Further, "to put" can logically use a prepositional phrase following it, after inserting an appropriate object.

I "put my garbage in the trashcan" is a perfectly understandable thing. "I believe in trash" is not. "I put my faith in the Democratic Party" is a logical statement that everyone understand. "I believe in the Democratic party" just doesn't make much sense.

[tblue]

12. Lol! Believing "in the Democratic Party" really doesn't make sense.

At least a whole lot of the time.

Anyway, you can also "believe in" a person, like your kid, say. I translate that as, "I think you can x (or I think you are x) even if no one else does."

That's a different "believe in" from one regarding concepts, such as evolution, freedom, public education, the power of prayer, or Santa Claus. Or is it?

What it's saying, maybe, is you trust in things not perceived by our 5 senses: an ability, a promise, a value, or maybe even a history.

This is making my head explode, but we should explode our heads every once in a while, me thinks.

[MineralMan]

15. As you say, it's good to explode your head from time to time.

I understand that the verb "to believe in" exists and is in wide use in English. I just don't like it. It's wishy-washy. It's not a statement, really. It's a well, sorta kinda thing.

[Jim__]

9. "Change We Can Believe In"

As in Change We Can Believe In.

Have you read Lakoff's and Johnson's "Metaphors We Live By"? There are a lot of metaphorical uses of "in" in English.

It could also be a hold over from the O.E. form "belefan."

[MineralMan]

16. Why not just "Change we can believe."

Or "Cheney we cannot believe."

[Jim__]

18. Ask Obama.

[pokerfan]

13. After his death, Ann Druyan (Sagan's wife) said

"There was no deathbed conversion. No appeals to God, no hope for an afterlife, no pretending that he and I, who had been inseparable for 20 years, were not saying goodbye forever."

"Didn’t he want to believe?" she was asked.

"Carl never wanted to believe. He wanted to know."

[MineralMan]

14. Yes. Very good.

[MineralMan]

17. People often say, "I believe in Jesus."

I say, "I believe Jesus will be here on time to rake all these damn leaves and get them out of my yard. He's very punctual. Would you like his number?"

[MineralMan]

19. A little etymology might help:

believe
O.E. belyfan, earlier geleafa (Mercian), gelefa (Northumbrian), gelyfan (W.Saxon) "believe," from P.Gmc. *ga-laubjan "hold dear, love," from PIE base *leubh- "to like, desire" (see love). Spelling beleeve is common till 17c.; then altered perhaps by influence of relieve. To believe on instead of in was more common in 16c. but now is a peculiarity of theology; believe of also sometimes was used in 17c.

So the root is in the Germanic for love. It is not so much saying the thing is true as much as it to say I love the thing.

So, by saying "I believe in Jesus," you're really saying, etymologically, "I love Jesus." Or, if you say "I believe in freedom," you're really saying, "I'm fond of the idea of freedom."

This clarifies it a bit, perhaps. I had not looked at the etymology before writing my OP.

Still, however, we have to look at the Old English form, belyfan, to find the source of the "on" or "in." It appears that "in" when used with believe isn't really a preposition at all, but the supplying of the complete form in Old English, rather than our abbreviated form today.

So, If I say, "I believe you" when you have told me something, I am actually using a different word than if I say, "I believe in you" when I'm trying to buck you up for something. It clearer to me now, once I look at this information.

Finally, we have from the 17th century KJV, the more common usage "believe on." That more accurately reflects the pronunciation of the Old English word. Corrupted to "believe in" with time, it's confusing, since we substitute a different-sounding preposition, thus losing the sound of the original.

I love language.

[54anickel]

21. That's been my understanding. Borg touched on this at a lecture I attended a couple of years ago.

It's also expanded in his book, "The Heart of Christianity". I remember Borg discussing the pre-modern meaning of the word believe was always about a person, not a thing or doctrine. I believe (in) = I belove God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, Joe Dimaggio, whomever...

The I believe in the Creeds is more like the a pledge of allegiance - I give my heart, commit my loyalty, I place my faith/trust in

[Meshuga]

22. Interesting

Belief (in) something when it comes to Jewish tradition seems to be almost like this "pledge of alligiance." The Hebrew for the word "belief/faith" is "emunah" and the root of emunah means "to support". So having "belief (in) God" means more of an adherence to following the values taught by the tradition rather than intellectual acquiescence in the obsolute truth of a specific claim.

[54anickel]

23. Yes, the "intellectual acquiescence" understanding of belief is relatively new - part of the

paradigm shift of the enlightenment. That's how Borg attempts to explain it anyway.

[GliderGuider]

20. "Believe in" is a statement about values, not facts.

For example:

I "believe in" perpetual economic growth.

I "believe in" sexual abstinence after marriage.

I "believe in" hunting moose from helicopters.

I "believe in" brushing my teeth every day.

I "believe in" half of the gods in the Hindu pantheon.

I "believe in" sending American jobs off-shore if I can make a buck.

These are all statements about my value system.

You "believe" facts, you "believe in" values.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

25. I think you're onto something there

Atheists seem to caricature religion as affirming a bunch of impossible statements before breakfast, but in actual practice, that's not what happens in most mainstream churches.

It's not about marking a bunch of statements "true" rather than "false." It's about relationship with the infinite and with our fellow human beings.

[rrneck]

24. I think the term makes a distinction regarding time and expectation.

It seems to me that the word "in" assumes a future event or pattern of behaivor. If we just use the term "believe" whether it is in reference to a person, object or idea we are accepting what someone or something has to say about an event that has already transpired. Thus we can to say to a person, "I believe you." in the sense that we believe they are telling the truth. The same holds true about believing that the theory of evolution is an accurate description of the development of species.

On the other hand, to say we "believe in something" is to make a prediction regarding future behavior. Thus, we believe that a child will do well in a soccer game and that the theory of evolution will continue to be an accurate description of speciation.

The object of our belief is inconsequential. We can believe in imaginary things as easily as we can believe in objects or people. Belief in both the real and the imaginary are crucial to our physical and emotional well being. How else are we to have ice in our Scotch while reading To Kill a Mockingbird?

Excellent post. Thanks.

[Igel]

26. Try a dictionary.

believe in, a. to be persuaded of the truth or existence of: to believe in Zoroastrianism; to believe in ghosts.
b. to have faith in the reliability, honesty, benevolence, etc., of: I can help only if you believe in me.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/believe+in

Strikes me as reasonable. I can believe in God or believe in Obama, I can believe in evolution or in the resurrection from the dead. It accounts for all the data, even the data nobody mentioned. (Most people really suck at producing syntactic paradigms. Given an example, they can replicate it, but spreading out to completely different lexical fields, trying different kinds of lexical categories or complements is beyond them.)

That people have a feeling that mythical things are properly the object of the preposition is captured by "persuaded by": most of us don't need to be persuaded of things that are observable.

When it deals with mythical or unprovable things, the distinction between the first two can be blurred. To believe in God's reliability or honesty requires first believing that God exists.

Can the idea that the "in" comes from the OE infinitival ending. There's no need to posit an aberrant phonological history for that one verb when it's readily attested without the "in" in many contexts, and is more common without it. In other words, it's simply much less likely and a historical linguist would select that as probably his last option. Actually, he's more likely to just reject the idea and say "unexplained".

That "in" has parallels in Russian (verit' 'believe' verit' v 'believe in') and, oddly, Biblical Hebrew. I'm sure Langacker would have fun with it. The Russian is probably calqued from French, IIRC, and I'm not above speculating that English may have recast 'believe/believe in' as parallel to French croire/croire en. Koine doesn't have anything like "in" after pisteuo 'believe', many Bible translations notwithstanding, but I usually think of it as meaning "have faith" more than "believe"; that may just be translating the English back into it, but that nifty -eu- stem marker really sounds to my ears like the Slavic -ov-, a nice way to make denominal verbs. Pistos 'faith' is a noun in Gk (and "believe" for me really isn't denominal).

On the other hand, French got their "en" from somewhere. Perhaps they just wanted to formalize the dative that Latin credere required. Perhaps there was a semantic nuance that consistently followed "in" or "en". I don't like that, though, not on principle but because I tend to dislike big fuzzies in historical syntax. It strikes me there are two believes: one is intransitive and the other is transitive. The transitive one always asserts that there are two possible truth values of an utterance, fact, or narrative, and selects the value "true" (rejecting "false"). The object has a funny sort of theta role. But things don't have truth values. So when we apply the verb to a person, we say not that the person has the truth value "true", but that his utterance or narrative is true. That leaves uses with things and persons in which it's not the utterance that's at issue, but the older meaning of having trust in or belief in some global sense. Since the verb at some level of semantics is intransitive, English has a nice out--it finds some preposition to make a complement possible in some other sense. (Or as Chomsky and Fillmore would have put it at some point, to assign case and thereby license the noun's presence in the sentence. If you like Chomsky.) Note the early variation, where believe in/on/of all had the same meaning.

I guess the passive ("Picts are believed to have been non-Indo-Europeans") seems to say that's wrong, but English allows the subjects of embedded clauses to raise to subject position if the subject is a dummy: "It is believed for Picts to have been non-Indo-Europeans" or "It is believed that Picts were. . . ". Note the fairly meaningless "for" that in Chomskian terms licenses "Picts" but, in any event, introduces a tenseless clause.)

If you like history, check out the two examples Wiktionary has for gelyfan (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gelyfan):
Gif ðu soþne God lufast and gelyfest. If you love and believe in the true God.Ðær gelyfan sceal dryhtnes dome se þe hine deað nimeð. There whoever death takes must trust in the judgment of the Lord. (Beowulf, ll. 440-1)

Note: soþne God is clearly accusative even to my untrained eye, not dative, but they hedged on the "love and believe in". But they cutely translated gelyfan dome as "trust in"--I think "dome" is dative. So perhaps we already see the distinction made in English between a dative and an accusative, but with a bit of shifting in the semantics.