To what extent is faith a legitimate basis for knowledge claims, in religion and different Areas of Knowledge? For many centuries, the debates about religious beliefs and knowledge claims have a bitter conflict amongst many people
Jerich Cyrus Sto. Tomas T.O.K. Essay
Word Count: 1236
Some people say that religious beliefs can be neither justified nor refuted by reason. However, while sometimes this claim is used as a reason for rejecting religious beliefs, at other times it is used to conclude that these beliefs are established by faith. To what extent is faith a legitimate basis for knowledge claims, in religion and different Areas of Knowledge?
For many centuries, the debates about religious beliefs and knowledge claims have a bitter conflict amongst many people. It has been a battle yet to be won by even the brightest people in the universe. The Catholic bible states that God created the universe out of nothing which is further explained in Creationism1. But this is greatly contradicted by the fundamental laws of physics which states that matter cannot be created out of nothing. Furthermore, in Buddhism, reincarnation2 is a major conviction for Buddhists but most people ask where the empirical evidence of going back as another form of being is. Millions of people ask if there's a God; if there was none, how can someone explain the beauty of the ocean, the mountains and the sunset. Thus, the saying that reason can either refute or justify religious beliefs is extensively accurate. It is hard to prove or disprove faith through the use of motivation but instead, knowledge, religion and different areas of knowledge can be an accepted basis of our faith.
Knowledge is the logic, the evidence, the foundation of knowing while faith is the trust or belief in the power greater than us, a strong religious conviction; our sense of accountability. Faith is a very influential basis of our ways of knowing. There may be no evidence of God's existence yet men have developed a special conviction that God exists. These people say this because God is omnipotent3 and omniscient4, there is no need for evidence or proof of his existence. We must truly accept his superior nature.
Although faith is a great foundation for our ways ...
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Knowledge is the logic, the evidence, the foundation of knowing while faith is the trust or belief in the power greater than us, a strong religious conviction; our sense of accountability. Faith is a very influential basis of our ways of knowing. There may be no evidence of God's existence yet men have developed a special conviction that God exists. These people say this because God is omnipotent3 and omniscient4, there is no need for evidence or proof of his existence. We must truly accept his superior nature.
Although faith is a great foundation for our ways of knowing, knowledge can also be the basis of our faith; without knowledge of what faith is all about then we cannot have conviction. In order to have faith on someone or something, we must be sure of our knowledge. How can we be sure that we know what we know? According to Plato5, for you to know what you know, you must have justified true belief. There are three tests on knowing what we know. The first and most important test is belief or believing what we know. The next test is truth or the certainty of our knowing and the last is justification or the evidence and logic to prove what we know. We must believe our statement and accept its truthfulness then we must have justification for our true belief. If we are already sure of our knowledge then we can be sure of our faith. Many people consider that when we believe in something, there's a rationale behind it which can be answered by knowledge. For example, I cannot simply say that I have faith in God. In this case, my faith is blind because I have no reference of why I trust God. Knowledge simply puts the pieces together in order to understand and build the fundamentals of faith. Thus, knowledge claims and faith are intertwined in a way. Faith is the obscured way of knowing while knowledge is partly evidence of showing faith.
Faith is a magnificent basis for religion. There are some things that people cannot explain in religion through the use of knowledge. Most religions contain Gods and different types of beliefs that have no evidence. For example, in Buddhism, it is believed that nirvana can be achieved through deep meditation. How do we know if we have already achieved nirvana? What proof do we hold in order to support this religious claim? Thus, faith or strong religious conviction is the only way of accepting our religious beliefs. If we have faith, then we are accountable to a higher truth. Faith is probably the most important basis of our religion. If a person cannot accept that his/her God exists even with no back up evidence then he/she has no right to religion. For instance, a person who had cancer goes to church everyday asking for a miraculous cure until one day he wakes up feeling better. He goes to the doctor and finds out that the cancer had left his body. A miracle, a leap of faith had led the man to believe that there is a God. However, there are many people who think that reason has a huge part in religion. In fact, it does. The catholic bible, taken in matter consists of evidence that God existed and there is heaven and hell. Through this, the holy bible has shaped many Christians today and it has strengthened their faith. Through the use of reason, the concept of "to see is to believe" has expanded religion.
Communications, Medicine, Transportation, Space Exploration... These are miracles brought to us by science as proof that knowledge can bring us the answers. Everyday, we discover new things that would closely reveal the truth about life. Faith has already become insignificant, an illegitimate basis for Science. Science have evolved into a God of answers. Fith is diminishing as we discover new knowledge. In other areas of knowledge like math, there is no significance of faith. Math consists of logic and different problems with provided answers. One does not need faith but proper skills and knowledge in order to solve math problems. In social science which consists of different area topics, faith also becomes insignificant because there are already evidence from different observations to prove theories in this area of knowledge. Lastly, in history, faith does not have to do with the study of the past. Faith also becomes irrelevant to history. In dealing with the past, one does not need a religious conviction to study some highlights of the earlier periods. Thus, faith is not a legitimate basis for these knowledge areas.
In conclusion, faith is a legitimate basis for knowledge claims and in different religions but it has partly became irrelevant to different areas of knowledge particularly Science. Faith is the most powerful tool to support knowledge claims. We cannot claim that we know something without having faith that we truly believe of what we know. On the other hand, faith serves as a back bone to religion because without faith, we can never believe in God(s) or religion itself in the first place. Although faith serves as a unique or higher way of knowing, sometimes we do not need to generate faith in order to know. In the field of Science, discoveries about matters turn up to be accidents. Experiments are made to test a hypothesis. It can either contradict or accept the hypothesis. In this case, we do not need faith to back up what we have discovered. Thus, faith serves as a unique basis of knowing in religion and other knowledge claims.
Creationism is basically part of Genesis in the Old Testament of the Catholic Bible
2 Going back to life as another form after death
3 all-powerful
4 all-knowing
5 A wealthy philosopher of Athens, Greece who founded the Academy
