1.5.07

faith vs knowledge...

is a topic that i said i speak on over at joe's place; so let's see what we come up with.

knowledge. coming from the philosophical, it is something immutable. unchangeable. for instance i have knowledge that two plus two is four. this is a 'fact,' as it were, of the universe. whether i exist or not. two plus two will always be four. period.

plato speaks of this in his 'republic'; where he in a sense changes the definition of what a philosopher is. etymologically speaking; a philosopher is someone who 'loves wisdom.' plato's sense of the word becomes a person who loves the 'vision of truth.' knowledge becomes knowledge of itself. this is not a knowledge of something; for then we are limited by that thing, and only have an opinion of that thing. so thus knowledge is some sort of infallible thing that is logically impossible to be a mistake.

so it is logically impossible for two plus two not to be four.

so where does faith fit into knowledge? it doesn't. faith fits into something else...religion.

religion offers something that no philosophy is able to offer; some sort of here-after; and eternal life, a god.
god or some other divine being communicates true propositions that cannot be discovered by reason, and faith is the belief in these. that god does not reveal these propositions, but god reveals himself. faith is devotion, trust in and a commitment to. faith is the belief in god, or something metaphysical.

philosophically speaking religion has the epistemology to be foundationalist in nature. to be a foundationalist is to believe that there are certain beliefs; which are self-evident, and are accepted without evidence. there are two types of belief; those which we hold by the basis of others, and those which do not hold on the basis of others, or self-evident, or immediately.

we many not marvel in the beliefs; which stem from others, but what about those beliefs that do not stem from anything? as we look and understand our belief system; there becomes a 'chain of causation.' i believe x because of my belief in y, and so on until there becomes a starting point for the beliefs themselves. a belief or beliefs from which all others stem from. these 'starting point' beliefs are the support for all other beliefs from which they stem. the foundationalist believe that there is a structure of beliefs or our knowledge that begins in resemblance of a tree; where there is a starting point for all of our knowledge; which cannot be challenged or changed. a point from which all our other knowledge grows out of, like the branches on a tree.

now within the school of foundationalism they all agree with what i have just stated, but they will disagree with what is the foundation of our beliefs, and how the superstructure is supported. if we are to take this notion of religion, and the religious person, then the foundation of belief, the 'starting point' of which all other beliefs stem from, would be that of faith. the faith in a metaphysical, a faith in god, or the faith in your appropriate deity.

now we are able to 'build' up a logically sound, at least some what sound, metaphysical system. aristotle did it, and it became the christian view for centuries after. but in any metaphysical system the question is still there; how do you know?

mentioned before was the 'chain of caustion;' which in and of itself is a big problem. what is causality? hume speaks that causality is not a quality in any object, but rather a 'habit of association' in the mind. we understand that the sun will rise in the east, because of our habit of experiencing it rise in the east every morning. all we have to go on is our experience, and for hume, our reason is unable to go beyond this. so then there is no reason that whatever begins to exist must have a cause of existence.

so for hume where does god fit in, or this notion of faith? to rely on the existence of god we then have to have some sort of causality. all the arguments for the existence of god come from some argument from this. however, if we do not perceive the cause, then we do not know the cause. so how are we able to assign a cause to the universe when we have never experienced the universe as related to anything we might consider a cause? how are we able to even then ascribe moral characteristics to such a being? we cannot infer from our experience the existence of god. the order in the universe is just an empirical fact.

wow. did i go on. i through this rabling i hope i made my point between faith, knowledge, and the difference between the two; and some problems related. i have a feeling that i will need to clear some things up later.

but as for now...

[shalom...]