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Question: Religion and faith, can it be true!?
Religion and faith, can it be true!?
The problem I have with the theological concept of faith is this: theists try to claim that it provides some kind of knowledge, that it is essentially just a different way of arriving at knowledge (i!.e!. that reason and faith are two different methods of reaching the same kind of goal)!. However this is inconsistent both with the definition of reason, and the definition of knowledge!. "Reason" is commonly defined as the process of "abstracting the immediately given concretes of experience into concepts, and integrating these into still wider concepts"!. Knowledge must be justified (justifiable), as well as true (and obviously the individual must possess the belief)!. So beliefs on their own do not constitute knowledge (we can have true or false beliefs)!.
In order for a belief to become knowledge, we need a method by which we can try to distinguish between true and false beliefs - and this is what reason does!. That is how reason brings us to knowledge; it provides us with basic guidelines for integrating new information, and for distinguishing good ideas from bad ideas based on current information!.
The key point that follows from this is that reason is perfectly capable of providing us knowledge about that which is knowable and comprehensible!. Since faith must differ from reason, and there is no need for faith to apply to the same claims as covered by reason (since we would then have two names for the same thing) - it follows that faith must only apply to the GAPS (or rather, the areas which reason cannot touch)!. And, as already defined, the only such areas are those which are completely unknowable and incomprehensible to us!.
So faith, it seems, can only possibly give us knowledge of the unknowable!. Since this proposition is absurd, I reject it and conclude that faith is not a way to knowledge at all, but the opposite!. It is a way to try and squeeze reason out of the picture when there is no good reason to do so (reason has a very good track record!)!.
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Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:
Well, yeah!. You're on the right track!.
Of course faith applies to believing that one knows the truth about something that reason says is unknowable!. If you accept that it is true that reason is the one and only path to truth, and that if reason can't access the info, there must be NO information, then yeah - it's absurd!.

But if you admit there is, must be or could be some true information, which is not accessible to reason or 'knowable' in a reason-based sense, then you admit there is a role for faith!. There IS actually a reason to ignore reason, when reason has no access to some true information!. If you can ask the question, is there a true answer "out there"!? You just don't *call* faith-derived belief about that true info, "knowledge!." You call it a belief!. That's not absurd!.

The thing about faith is this!. Don't get me wrong, I'm basically an atheist!. The thing about faith is, the "answers" to questions of faith are fundamentally not like the answers to questions of reason!. They can't be given as literal statements that are verifiably true at face value!. They consist only in direct conscious experience as it is occurring now!. They can't be "thought about," because they ARE the "thinking about!." Introspection is not a path to "knowledge about" anything, but it does give the mind access to some apparent true information or "answers to questions reason can't answer," which ends up interpreted - with bias! - into belief!. People attempt to represent experience with words and analogies like gods and souls, and too many of them end up worshipping these gods and souls as if they were true, reasonable, literal things!. That's why faith can seem so false to reasonable people!. But the source of belief, is actually not absurd!. You can't "know about" it, or "be" the knowing, until you look within yourself!.

Matters of faith are not true in the same way that matters of reason are, either!. They're only as-if true, or "might as well be true" because as soon as you ask if something "IS true" you have represented it, and it is no longer direct experience - the information is obliterated!.

I hope this helps you at all - when listening to people who are talking about faith, you might want to try to listen as if they were really speaking in vague allusions and metaphors, about the ineffable!. Most of them aren't, most are just following dogma - but many deserve benefit of the doubt, that they might actually derive their belief from a mystical perspective!. Of course, figuring out the truth value of *their* belief for anyone ELSE, is a matter of absurdity!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

Well said! Religion is an escape from personal responsibility!. "The Devil made me do it", or "It's Gods will"!. Www@QuestionHome@Com

Suppose you are canoeing down a river and come to a fork in the river!. One person says that the right folk leads toward God who is your ultimate happiness!. Another person says the left folk leads toward your independence, i!.e!. you get to live your life as you wish to live it!.

Futhermore, let's suppose you must take one fork or the other!. How do you decide!? There are several elements!. Hope!. What goal is desired!? Belief!. An assumption of truth!. Faith!. Acting on a belief!.

Faith comes in when the path is unknowable but we must choose anyway!.

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Yes, theology is just philosophy with the exception that it takes the correctness of whichever holy book as an assumed "first principle"!. In other words, they withhold their philosophical skepticism for that one major issue, since they know there's no way to arrive at that first principle through valid philosophical analysis!.

Really, if you are an intellectually credible theist, you simply can't do philosophy!. Ethics!? God says do this and this and this, and don't do that and that and that!. Metaphysics!? Duh, God exists, he created the world, etc!., etc!. And yet, that's the furthest you can get from philosophy: dogma!.Www@QuestionHome@Com