Is faith a trustworthy means of acquiring knowledge?
I'd appreciate an explanation for your answer, but a simple "yes" or "no" is also OK by me.
2007-03-24 15:22:02 · 18 answers · asked by ZER0 C00L ••AM••VT•• 7 in Society & Culture ➔ Religion & Spirituality
Absolutely not. Faith gives you no way to distinguish between true and false ideas. The only way to arrive at the truth is to test ideas with reason and evidence to see whether they are consistent with reality.
2007-03-24 15:25:08 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 4⤊ 0⤋
No, I don't think so. You may choose to have faith if you don't know the answer for sure, but that does not make you know it any more than before.
For example, I have a friend that is always there for me, and so based on past evidence, I can have faith that she will be there for me when I need her again. But I can't say that I KNOW it for sure, since it's a future event. But it is valid to have faith in her. SO in a case like this, faith is valid. But not as a means of acquiring knowledge. It is only valid as a means for deciding what is likely to happen, or what I should do.
2007-03-24 16:10:34 · answer #2 · answered by Heron By The Sea 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Much like Wikipedia, faith is not trustworthy as a sole means of acquiring knowledge. However, there can still be a lot of good stuff come from both.
2007-03-24 16:57:07 · answer #3 · answered by hazydaze 5 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Good question!
Actually, if you mean what is meant by biblical faith it is a valid means. Some people have the misguided notion that faith is believing any fool notion that comes along - I have faith that I'm going to win the lotto, or just have faith that if I jump off a cliff, I won't die. It's not faith to trust that getting onboard a sinking ship will get you to your destination, that's stupidity.
Real biblical, salvific faith is putting your trust in a reliable Object. For Christians that Object is Jesus. True Christians trust that He is the only Way of Salvation. They look at the credibility of Him as being the perfect sacrifice, sent by God to die for the sins of the whole world. They look to His Resurrrection as evidence that the claims that He made about Himself are trustworthy. The reliability of the Bible and the eyewitness accounts of these events are left for the reader to investigate as to its claims.
You can say that you don't believe those things about Him and certainly that is your perogative to do so. You place your trust in a belief that Jesus was not who the Bible claims Him to be.(actually it restates His own claims about Himself)
One day, your faith and mine will be exposed as either true or false. We could both be proven false, one of us could be right, the other wrong, but ultimately we cannot both be right.
This is the reasoning of Pascal's wager, he went on to submit that the non-believer's potential outcome (non-belief in the face of eternal damnation) was of far greater negative consequence than that for the believer to experience death as the end of all existence.
What I'm saying is that faith is the working hypothesis that we all live under in trying to distinguish truth and falsity -the atheist and the theist. My belief system is just as reasonable and logical as the person making the case that there is no God. He asks for my evidence -where's his?
2007-03-24 16:23:43 · answer #4 · answered by biblechick45 3 · 0⤊ 2⤋
No....having faith instead of your complete judgment of evidence is like having faith in the words of a used car salesman, buying the vehicle, then taking off on a 300 mile trip across a desert.
2007-03-24 15:28:52 · answer #5 · answered by Terry 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Absolutely not, we've all seen what a dozen eye witnesses do at a crime scene, no two have the same story. Faith is equally personalized and from each individual's point of view, it is the truth, but not fact and not what you're looking for
2007-03-24 15:26:28 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
No, I don't think so. By "faith" I am assuming you mean belief in God. I have that faith. But there are too many things not specifically covered by scripture. We have principals to go by, but we do not know everything nor do we profess to.
If the Bible says that the earth is 6000 years old, then any believer should accept that as fact. Most Christians do not know anything about the dating methods that scientist use to date artifacts, but some do. In fact, most people who are not Christians do not know about dating methods either. But, so far, the Bible has not lied to us. Now most people do not believe it-but that does not make it wrong, or right.
2007-03-24 15:37:10 · answer #7 · answered by DATA DROID 4 · 1⤊ 2⤋
Joseph Miller had faith that the world would end in 1842. Then he changed it to 1843. The Applegate man had faith that there was a UFO behind a comet that would take him and his to heaven. I think this answers your question.
2007-03-24 15:28:52 · answer #8 · answered by Mr. Bodhisattva 6 · 2⤊ 0⤋
If I have faith that I will hit the lottery is it a trustworthy means of income? I doubt I'd be so lucky.
2007-03-24 15:26:14 · answer #9 · answered by apple juice 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Validity is purely a formal requirement; it automatically implies logic, not faith, and a valid argument can still be untrue, depending on what premises one starts from.
Faith can, however, be trustworthy, if it is based on a significant level of empirically established certainty. This is not generally the faith of religion.
2007-03-24 15:29:09 · answer #10 · answered by neil s 7 · 0⤊ 2⤋