Is there a correlation between faith and ignorance?

Question

Explain:

Answer 1

Many wil claim you must be ignorant to have faith...but I do not believe that is true. I am educated and I have 'faith' in many things...
Faith in the inherent goodness of people
Faith in myself
Faith in love, hope, forgiveness, generousity
Faith in the Universe and the One WHO is behind all others
I do not have faith in the strict Christian sense of blind belief in a book or a historial figure.
But, a highly educated scientist will have faith that his/her theories will be proven. So I think there is no correlation between 'faith' and 'ignorance' except in a very narrow sense.

Answer 2

I don't see it. I know just as many ignorant and anti-intellectual atheists as Christians. As one Stanford scholar said, "There are proportionately as many atheistic truck drivers as there are atheistic scientists." In fact, I didn't even care about Christianity until I had learned much more about it and had finally discovered the deep body of evidences that are behind it (many of which can apply to theism in general). I hardly came to it by blind faith.

And, BTW, "faith" does not mean believing something without any evidence. That is a popular misconception devised by those who simply believe that there is no evidence. There is a difference between not being convinced by the evidence (or knowing it exists) and there not being any evidence at all. Classical Christianity has from its beginning offered a justification for itself -- that is the work of Christian "apologetics." Simply read 1 Peter 3:15, Justin Martyr, Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, J.P. Moreland, or Alvin Plantinga for examples. If the arguments of these people are wrong by the supposed definition of the word "faith," then why do Christians regard them as giants of the faith?

Answer 3

I suppose that there could be, as would be the case in any human endeavor. One could say an assent to a certain measure of ignorance or "not knowing" is integral to any believers sense of God, as one can know far more about what God is not, rather than what God is. Believers describe this as a manifestation of the infinite qualitative difference between God and the world, meaning that what can be known about God would have to be manifested by analogy or by revelation. Mystics refer to the encounter with this negative knowledge of God as being "apophatic".

Perhaps you are asking whether or not there is a necessary connection between faith and ignorance or that the question you are asking is really a statement that faith is a form of ignorance. In both these regards, you can make a prudential judgement yourself.

Answer 4

No. There's a correlation between religion and ignorance. Adherents to dogma show ignorance, as they often are not intelligent enough to question the authority of their dogma; thus, psychology dictates they hide their insecurity behind religious adherence.

Faith in a God(s) does not signify ignorance. Any being more advanced than a human would seem illogical because we are the most intelligent beings occupying this planet.

Answer 5

Perhaps. Consider this, however: atheism may not be a religion, but it IS a belief. It's the belief that there is no deity. (No one has the "knowledge" that there is or is not a god.)

Atheists may not have a "faith" in the normal sense, but they do "have faith" that their belief is correct. ANY idea about god is at this point in history a BELIEF, not a FACT. So if faith makes someone less intelligent, the only smart people are agnostics.

Answer 6

What are you really asking here?

Consider this: Ancient man has come a long, long way out of ignorance to arrive at what we now recognize as intelligence. Belief and faith (in God) have likewise evolved similarly - growing in numbers rather than faltering. But, does this necessarily lead to the answer that faith and ignorance are opposed? I think not.

Along the path of man's progression of intelligence, he has shed a great deal of his beliefs according to his improved understanding of his surroundings. While he may have hung onto his faith, (in God,) he has altered that faith in dribbles and dabs whenever needed and has shown a trend toward gaining faith in his own intelligence over his former god-based faith.

Therefore, I don't think that "faith and ignorance" go exactly hand-in hand since our placement of faith is quite variable. The more intelligence we gain the more we seem to alter the placement of our faith - shifting it and changing it according to our increased ability to understand our reality.

In general, we manage our beliefs intellectually rather than allowing our beliefs to manage us and thus, as intelligence grows our faith is bound to evolve to suit it.

My answer would have to be "No." There is no corrilation between "faith and ignorance," there is only a shift in focus.

(((( r u randy? ))))
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Answer 7

Yes.

The definition of faith is "belief without proof".... the definition of ignorance is lack of knowledge.

If you have faith you believe without reason, and are therefor ignorant to the way things work.

There are some who have faith & who are open enough to gain knowledge & reduce ignorance of the world around them. The ones who have blind faith are the ones who are dangerous. They reject fact & reason to accept myth & fiction.

Answer 8

True faith comes from a knowledge of the word of God. The more you learn, the stronger your faith becomes. Faith based on ignorance would be better called presumption.

Answer 9

No, because everyone has and uses faith. You trust that a bus you get on will take you to 5th street if it says "fifth street" on the sign. You trust that a university will give you a degree if you fulfill their requirements. Everyone has faith, and everyone uses it. You just CHOOSE what to put faith IN.

Ignorance is putting faith in things / people that will fall through, or putting faith in something you made up. (ie, believing that a random bus will take you to fifth street when the head sign says "out of service")

Stupidity is putting faith in things that have proven, many times, to fall through. Like continuing to believe the promises of the Bush Administration.

I put faith in God because he has NEVER failed me when I put faith in his promises. The bus has gone the wrong way, and governments / school officials / sales people have steered me in the wrong direction... in ALL those circumstances the one who saved me was GOD.

Answer 10

Studies have found negative correlations between education and religious belief and between intelligence and religious belief.
I'd say that education and intelligence probably have at least some effect on ignorance.