Consciencebound

When trying to learn about what is true and what is not true when it comes to the many religions and belief systems that are available, the question of faith is often brought up as a very important and necessary component.  Faith, it would seem, is even the primary reason that many people give for why they believe what they believe and why they choose to be a part of one religion over another.  The difficulty is that many different religions which are VERY different in their conception of the world have faith as the primary determining factor of why a person should follow their teachings.  The obvious question then it would seem is this: Does Faith help or hinder the search for truth?  If I rely on faith, will I be better off in my search for knowing what the truth is than if I did not rely on faith?

There is no other area of life where faith is used as a way of knowing something.  If we want to understand why lightning strikes certain buildings and not others we can find this out by a careful observation of the event, by making a hypothesis about what we think is going on, and by testing that hypothesis with future lightning storms to see if our predictions come true.  We do this with weather, growing crops, understanding biology, understanding disease and it’s cures, understanding human brain function and psychology and just about every other bit of knowledge that we have about the world.  Yet when it comes to what seems to be the most important thing that can be known, i.e. is there a God and if there is what does He require of us, we default to what we call faith and are happy to let that be the deciding factor for us.  I know that many believers will say that they have other reasons for their beliefs rather than faith alone, but I don’t think ANY believers will say that faith has NO part in their knowledge of the divine.  And if this is the case, then the question of whether faith is a reliable means of attaining knowledge would seem to be a valid one.

What is faith?  The Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary says:

(1): belief and trust in and loyalty to God (2): belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion b (1): firm belief in something for which there is no proof (2): complete trust3: something that is believed especially with strong conviction ; especially : a system of religious beliefs

In the Bible we have a definition in Hebrews Chapter 11 that says;

1Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.

Some questions that I would have are as follows:

1. What exactly does this mean practically?
2. How is one to distinguish between a true and a false faith.
3. Why is being  “sure of what we hope for” important anyway, if it is not something that we can know with certainty, why act as if we are certain of it?
4. If a person is sincerely wanting to know what is true about the world and about what happens when we die or whether or  not there is a God, what exactly does faith have to do with it?
5. Does my being sure of something actually give me any real information about what I am trying to understand and know?

Based on the definitions above, faith seems to be rather subjective and seems to be more of an emotional feeling and hope than a means of knowing something to be true or false.  When a religious believer is asked how they know that God exists or that the Bible is true they will often respond with, “I know this by faith”.  But what exactly is meant by “I know this…”?  If all that a person means by this statement is that they hope that God exists, or that they wish that God Exists than I guess I have no argument, but if they are saying that they KNOW that God exists or that the Bible is true and they KNOW this by faith, then my questions remain.  How do they know this?  The conversation might go something like this:

Skeptic: How do you know that the Bible is the word of God?

Believer: I know this by faith.

Skeptic: Are you sure about that?

Believer: Yes of I am quite sure.

Skeptic: How are you sure?

Believer: I know this by faith.

Skeptic: Is it possible that you are mistaken in understanding what this faith is?

Believer: Sure it is possible since I am fallible, but I believe that it is true.

Skeptic: Is there other people who have faith that another religion is true which you do not believe in?

Believer: Yes

Skeptic: How do you know that their faith is false and that your faith is true?

Believer: Because my faith is consistent with what the Bible says.

Skeptic: But I thought that the way that you know that the  Bible is true is by faith?

Believer: It is.  You can’t know the Bible is true apart from faith and we understand this faith as being true by what the Bible says.

Skeptic: But isn’t that what people of other faiths say about their own scriptures  and beliefs?

Believer: Yes I suppose so.

Skeptic: So how is it that you know that your faith is true and their faith is false?

Believer: Because of the Bible

Skeptic: And how is it that you know…

And on and on it goes.  The human heart/mind is very complicated and we have different “gut” feelings and impressions and seemingly innate beliefs which we feel are true.  But we have to ask ourselves these questions to be able to determine if our faith is something that is based in fact or if it is something that is just wishful thinking.  Is the belief that we have a feeling?  A hope? A Comfort?  Is it wishful thinking? Is it something that can actually be known for sure?

Consider this example.  In 1997 there was a comet that came close to earth called Hale-Bop.  It was one of the brightest comets of many decades and a small religious cult called Heaven’s Gate believed that a spaceship carrying Jesus was hiding behind the comet and that the only way to board this space ship was to kill themselves and their soul’s would be allowed onto the space craft.  From Wikipedia,

“Heaven’s Gate members believed that the planet Earth was about to be recycled (wiped clean, refurbished and rejuvenated), and that the only chance to survive was to leave it immediately.^[2] While the group was formally against suicide, they defined “suicide” in their own context to mean “to turn against the Next Level when it is being offered”,^[3] and believed that their “human” bodies were only vessels meant to help them on their journey.”

38 members of this group believed what they were told by the leader Marshall Applewhite by faith and this led to their group suicide.  The group got some of their beliefs from the Bible and others from various sources.  Their web site is still actually up here and you can read it now just as you could when they were preaching their message of salvation in 1997.  As ridiculous and tragic as this may seem to us, the methodology that they used was very similar to what anyone who uses faith as a way of knowing about the world does.  They sketched together some various beliefs from seemingly credible sources and the people were convinced that a space ship was going to save them from the destruction of the earth.  Similar to what many people believe will happen when Jesus Christ comes back on a white horse to save the Christians and bring destruction to all of the  ungodly people left on earth, although without the suicide component fortunately.

So how would one deal with the claims made by this Marshall Applewhite about the coming destruction of the earth if you happened to be a part of their group or if you were a young person and your parents had taught you in growing up that these things were a reality.  If the leader was telling you these things and said that the way that you know that what he was saying was true was to take it on faith, what would you do?  Should the followers of that group have questioned the leader?  Sure they should of.  They should not have taken his word for it but should have asked how he knew such things, and how we could be sure that what he was saying was true. They could have asked for evidence of this space craft or of these alien cultures.  The group’s explanation of the world and of history had an explanation for the Bible, prophets of the past, Jesus, UFO sightings and just about every other unexplained phenomenon.  This makes it seem credible because we always want an explanation for strange things.  But ultimately their statements had to be taken on faith.  They could not be proven factually but they could given you a lot of REASONS why you should take them seriously.

It is easy for us to criticize this group as we look back at their destructive end but it is the same thing that people who are in main stream religions are facing now.  Whether it be Catholicism, Evangelical Christianity, Mormonism, Islam or Scientology, the way that you know the most important things in those religions is by faith we are told.  Faith in a book, faith in a teaching, faith in a tradition or faith in a man.  As we hear the claims of these various groups we have to ask these serious questions and we have to have a healthy level of skepticism and doubt since there are so many competing claims that cannot all be true.  We know that there are many psychological reasons for people to believe in various unusual things but they each have to be examined on their own merits.

If faith is defined in any way as the absence of questioning or doubt then faith seems to not only be an unreliable means of finding truth, but it seems to actually get in the way of finding truth.  If truth exists and faith can be misunderstood, then not questioning ones faith will definitely get in the way of a person finding truth.

Now some will object by minimizing their definition of faith so much that they say every person has faith.  Faith that the chair that I am sitting in right now will not collapse, faith that an airplane will not fall out of the sky, faith that human’s evolved from lower life forms, faith that I was not created 2 minutes ago with fictitious memories in tact or faith that we are not a part of the Matrix and are simply power sources for artificial intelligence.  They say that they just have faith in God, or Christ, or the Hail-Bop Comet or L. Ron Hubbard but we all have faith in almost everything since most of our knowledge is based on what other people tell us.  But there is a difference here.  A person’s faith in all of the things listed above is what we would call tentative.  We  believe it  because we have seen certain reasons to believe it and have seen it tested over and over again but we would change our belief if it was shown to be wrong at any time.  I may take the scientific consensus on faith that the universe is 14 billion years old but if good evidence was shown which brought this into question I would abandon it in a heart beat.  The problem comes when we feel a need to have certainty about our beliefs that we cannot prove.  For some reason this is where faith comes in.  When we cannot prove something but we still feel the need to be SURE about something, we use faith as our justification.  But why?  Why do we need to have an answer, any answer it would seem, to the mysteries of life that cannot be proven?  Why can’t we be content to say that we really do not know about many things and therefore we cannot take a dogmatic position on it?  If more people would step back and admit their ignorance of the many things that we honestly just do not have enough evidence of to hold a firm belief, the world would be a much better place.

At least that is my belief…

Jeff

Similar Posts:

• The Testimony of the Holy Spirit as it Relates to Knowing the Truth of Scripture
• Faith… What’s the Point?
• A Skeptical Discussion of Miracles
• How Christian Apologetics Refutes Itself
• Who Would You Rather Trust: God or Man?
• Consciencebound to Leave the Faith: My Conversion and De-Conversion Story
• Does Conscience Overrule Dogma?

3 Responses to “Does Faith Help or Hinder the Search for Truth?”