In philosophical conversations with religious people, I've heard several say that they know their beleifs are true through faith. But I see knowledge and faith as incompatible concepts. Isn't faith only neccessary when you cannot obtain knowledge and must predict and make sense of events? And if I know something has happened already, I don't need faith, do I? Could someone enlighten me on the whole knowledge through faith thing. I'm not trying to make fun of anyone's beliefs. I just want to understand.
2006-09-15 07:56:13 · 10 answers · asked by Subconsciousless 7 in Arts & Humanities ➔ Philosophy
I learned that the beginning of knowledge is fear. Throught it you will understand faith my friend.
2006-09-15 08:04:52 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋
Well, take this for an example: You have probably never been to Antarctica, but you have FAITH that all the information you have is true, even if you have never seen it. There are proofs all around telling you so. So it is with a Christian's faith in what is based on the Bible as God's only written word. We may never have been to the city of Jerusalem, but we believe, and have faith that it exists and that in one form or another, has existed for many centuries as told in the Bible. We exercise this type of faith every day, but we seldom think about it. When you hand over your life to an airline pilot you have probably never seen, you have faith that someone MUST be flying it, and we get you to your destination alive. So then, you have KNOWLEDGE you are indeed in an aircraft flying at 500 MPH, and you have FAITH that the pilot knows how to fly. No contradiction here, no incompatibly issues at all.
2006-09-15 15:35:02 · answer #2 · answered by The Oldest Man In The World 6 · 0⤊ 1⤋
What a wonderful question.
What ever the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve.
Belief is everything,if you believe that LIFE will help find the answers or knowledge you need then your thoughts which are things will go out and attract that which you seek and desire,your belief that this is true is your faith.
What has happened is LIFE'S way of teaching us.Learning from the experience and having total acceptance that LIFE knows best is faith.
2006-09-15 15:51:09 · answer #3 · answered by LIFE 1 · 0⤊ 1⤋
The Bible in the book of Hebrew (11:1) explains it with a simple statement "Faith is the evidence of things not seen, the substance of things hoped for".
My religious faith begins with the things I do see. I see a world around me that I can not explain through "random chance". I see answers to prayer. I see miracles. I see the presence of love in the face of my wife and family. All those things give me the faith (or confidence if you prefer) to know that God is out there. My faith becomes the last piece of evidence I need to see the things that are not seen in the natural.
It is that faith which then gives substance to the things I hope to get from God. It lets me draw from him the strength to struggle on against any odds. It lets me draw from him the promise that things will be right in the end. It give me the faith to go to God and pray so he can answer them. To love so that I can be like him, to trust so that I can walk with him, and to live in all that he promises me. My faith give substance to my hopes.
God never ask for people's heads. He ask for their heart. Once he gets that, the head comes along for free.
2006-09-15 15:19:29 · answer #4 · answered by dewcoons 7 · 0⤊ 1⤋
The use of faith as an epistemological framework is, i think, a misunderstanding held by many Christians as to what role faith plays in the Christian life. I don't think it is force-fitting the facts to fit one's mold of the universe, all evidence to the contrary. Neither is it a fabrication of a claim to knowledge when one does not have reason to say he knows the thing in question.
Rather, faith can be understood as the extension of what follows after the thing in question is accepted as true, or at least more plausible than its negation. Some might use "confidence" as an interchangeable term, and for the purpose of this question, that term might well suit. But faith is more often challenged when that commitment demands of us that we hold on to that which we have already established to be true, even when the outcome does not serve our own self-interest, or in moments of emotional doubt. Or perhaps faith-in-practice is maintaining a personal integrity to what one believes to be true. Many people, for example (Christian or otherwise), can understand the moral failure of not living consistently with one's own stated beliefs about life. Such a person is said to "lack faith," and this understanding is more consistent with Jesus' use of the term in the gospels.
Misnomers aside, what I suspect people mean when they say they can know something "by faith" is that the thing known has come to them by non-traditional means of knowing something.
Alvin Plantinga offers some additional insight into this, and can give a far better treatment of this than I am capable (See his writings on Reformed Epistemology in "Warranted Christian Belief"). It is possible that one can have veridical knowledge of something, an "inner witness" if you will, of the truthfulness of some proposition without being able to produce tangeable evidence for the thing known. He offers one compelling example of a man accused of murdering his wife: He comes home to find his wife stabbed to death with a knife... distraught, he runs to his deceased spouse, and handles her and the weapon. No one is present to validate his claim that he was not the murderer, and neither is there any evidence to implicate another suspect. This man has veridical knowledge of his innocence, though he is unable to produce evidence of that. But his failure to produce this evidence counts as no deficiency in his claim to know something -- namely that he did not murder his wife.
It's important to understand that left to these factors alone in a philosophical context, these conditions do not therefore constitute an argument offered from one person to the next in favor of the belief in question. It is a means to justify the thing known for the individual who has special access to that which gives him warrant to hold to his belief as true.
2006-09-15 15:41:53 · answer #5 · answered by Daniel 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
To know through faith, we must first need His promise. and the only true way to know is by trusting in God to bring us through one day at a time, to trust in his word and follow the way He has set before us.
2006-09-15 16:08:37 · answer #6 · answered by Conway 4 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Do you have faith in the fact that if you put your finger in a electrical wall socket that it will send a surge of electrons thru your body, even if you can't see electricity?
2006-09-15 15:07:00 · answer #7 · answered by Royal Racer Hell=Grave © 7 · 0⤊ 1⤋
It means that we KNOW God is there with us through faith. We feel faith, we feel His spirit move within us so we KNOW whatever it is that He may be telling us at that time
2006-09-15 15:05:17 · answer #8 · answered by yuna 2 · 0⤊ 1⤋
If you can look up at the sky or watch birds and animals play or even watch the rain fall and say there is no God, there is no use in anyone trying to dissuade your thinking.
2006-09-15 15:05:18 · answer #9 · answered by nighttimewkr 3 · 0⤊ 1⤋
everyone has their own truth, faith is a leap of.
2006-09-15 17:42:53 · answer #10 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋