Although faith may not be the sturdiest common ground for knowledge amongst people, it provides many with comfort, which other areas of knowledge cannot give through reason. It can be understood that without reason and guidelines in what is considered ‘true’ knowledge, everything would be so jumbled and confusing that virtually no knowledge would exist. However faith is more personal and while in school knowledge based on reason is taught, faith cannot be taught or imposed upon people, something the Catholic Church failed to understand in the Middle Ages. Faith is a personal development and creation within a person built on a basis consisting of reason, for example faith in religion can be built on the pillars or the scriptures of that religion (e.g. Islam is based upon the so-called five pillars which teach the importance of goodness, prayer and fasting. In short the Koran, or the holy book of Islam, is aimed at making a better person out of you if followed).
If such a position is taken, then it becomes apparent that there are two categories of knowledge which should exist. The first is justified by reason and created upon the grounds of hard evidence. The second is a personal knowledge, pieced together by oneself with aspects of all knowledge based on faith and personal beliefs.
Personally it is interesting how beliefs tied with religion are considered to be absurd by many, while the theories in science which sometimes have the same or less ground are taught worldwide throughout schools. I cannot call myself a deeply religious person who believes in only the Bible but personally I find it easier to believe that all creatures were created by God than that all species developed from a single-celled organism which appeared out of nowhere. In this example it is clear that both theories have an equal amount of evidence, absolutely none. The difference between the religious beliefs and the theories based on reason is that religion leaves all questions answered. Whether one believes the scientific version, which leads to new questions, or whether one decides to believe in the creation of life by God is a question of faith: faith in reason or in religion. Faith need not be the more logical explanation, as according to Darwin all life came from a single cell, but then new questions of finer detail arise and remain unanswered. Such as where did the cell originate? Where did the earth originate? Where did matter come from? If it is possible to believe that matter has no beginning and no end why then is the eternity of God questioned? In religion these all have one answer, which is that God created all and that the creation of life and the world around us is above our comprehension as human beings. As visible, deciding what to believe is often a matter of faith more than anything else, and the legitimacy of the basis of personal knowledge on faith is a personal matter which should be a private inner decision.
Religion throughout time has proven to be not as trustworthy as reason. In classical Greece and in many ancient civilizations knowledge based on reason was huge; however, the difference was that reason and religion were not confused. There was a time when Christianity looked down upon and condemned innovation and new discoveries. This has caused many scientists to cease working alongside and begin working against Christianity. Many consider that knowledge, like truth should have only one face. This is not always the case and the same truth can be interpreted in various ways making that same truth to be two very different knowledge claims. An example of this could be the creation of the earth. While religion claims that God made the earth, scientists claim that the earth was a mass of dust, pulled together by gravity. These two explanations are not mutually exclusive and yet they are used to disprove each other. Although religion and science are far from parallel they have many similarities and attempt to answer many of the same questions.
The danger of education is that teachers have a very powerful position in society in terms that they have the ability to impose their personal bias upon their students. Unprofessional teachers often impose their personal beliefs, which are often based on personally created or previously imposed faith in a possibly bias belief. This situation rids the students of the possibility to question the authenticity of the ‘facts’ they are being taught. If all information is received as truth then eventually faith in a bias belief becomes truth or vise verse, truth becomes faith in a bias belief. This is dangerous as definitions of knowledge change with the definition of faith, meaning that what stands true one day as knowledge can be disproved the next. Also that common belief, which may not always be true, will be considered knowledge.
Faith is questionable in the case of every person; however, there can be no knowledge without faith. Common faith gives humanity common knowledge. For example let us take Europe in the Middle Ages, in which the main religion was Christianity. All knowledge therefore was based on Christianity and stood true for all people. Now there are many different factions that share different faith in various ideals. Scientists, who base their knowledge on reason, would not agree that they share common knowledge with people who base all their knowledge on religion. As visible, faith, belief and knowledge are all very closely interconnected and cannot exist without each other. Knowledge claims based on religion and those based on reason both heavily depend on belief, while one is based upon faith the other is based upon belief in reason. This means that every individual should determine the legitimacy of their own knowledge, which they chose to believe. Although there is the belief that knowledge in order to be true must be one-faced, it is my belief that every individual person has their own interpretations and understandings thus meaning that there can be no one standard for any area of knowledge claims.
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Bibliography
1. Alchin, Nicholas. Theory of Knowledge. John Murray Publishers LTD. 2003. Oxford, UK.
2. Hampton, Jean. The Authority of Reason. Cambridge University Press. 1998. Cambridge, UK.
3. Miller, Fred and Paul, Ellen & Jeffrey. Scientific Innovation, Philosophy, and Public Policy. Cambridge University Press. 1996. Cambridge, UK.
4. Parrinder, Geoffrey. World Religions: from Ancient History to the Present. The Hamlyn Publishing Group Limited. NY, USA.
5. Tomkinson, John. The Enterprise of Knowledge. Leader Books. 1999. Athens, Greece.
6. Wolfe, Gregory. The New Religious Humanists. The Free Press. 1997. NY, USA.
