Can you please explain what is the difference between knowledge and faith?

Question

At what point do we know something as opposed to having faith in something?

For example: My sister said she is visiting me on the weekend. Do I KNOW she's coming to visit, or do I simply have FAITH that she will show up? When does the faith turn to knowledge? When are these two appropriate?

I ask this question because I wonder, for example, how open minded our school system is when they teach children so vigorously that it leaves little room for argument, debate, investigation, or question. For example, is Thanksgiving really a celebration of how cozy and fuzzy the Natives and Europeans got along in the beginning? I would ask a Native, but, there aren't that many left....can you say sugar-coated genocide?

Anyway this question isn't about Natives. It's about brainwashing. Why are we all SO ready to accept what we are spoon-fed? As soon as someone puts on a white coat or hangs a degree on the wall, we turn into glaze eyed lackeys, ready to eat up whatever they tell us....what happened to having a mind open to possibility? What happened to making up your own mind??

Doesn't it approach a religion when we so vehemently obey doctors that questioning their knowledge is considered blasphemy in some circles? Are certain people immune to skepticism??

Opinions?

Answer 1

Faith and Reason? Reason substantiates faith. Faith must be reasonable.

Answer 2

School's aren't forcing you to accept what they teach. They teach the facts as science has found them and that's it.

Knowledge is knowing something based on facts or evidence, and faith is believing something with no evidence.

Answer 3

knowledge is fact-based and requires evidence.  It is subject to change (for example, thousands of years ago people "knew" the earth was flat but after that was proved wrong, the knowledge about the earth changed).

faith is not based on facts but instead exists in spite of the lack of facts or in opposition to facts that prove otherwise.  Faith is a self-confirming theory.

Answer 4

daughter,

I wrote a book about this subject.

Ray G did try to give good answer, I salute his efforts.

small circle / medium circle / big circle / and so on

love + worship + knowledge is based on both

truth and devotion

LOVE + WORSHIP + KNOWLEDGE,

more and more

you can never build faith on either false or illogical knowledge

[e-mail]

ask me about the Straight Path

as for your question, here:

we all know about the hard life of Abraham ppuh and the many tested he passed, after succeeding in all, he seeked top knowledge:

002.260

YUSUFALI: When Abraham said: "Show me, Lord, how You will raise the dead, " He replied: "Have you no faith?" He said "Yes, but just to reassure my heart." Allah said, "Take four birds, draw them to you, and cut their bodies to pieces. Scatter them over the mountain-tops, then call them back. They will come swiftly to you. Know that Allah is Mighty, Wise."

he is among the top believers in history. his question was ON OUR BEHAVE :

he wanted us to SEE as true as possible:

eye seeing certainty vice certainty  based on blind faith

as for your sister's example:

it is based on her character:

how often she keep her promise ?

then, u can tell if u can trust her words.

Answer 5

Certainty, measurability and records.

Things like, say, Creationism do not have those things on its side. Things like, say, Biology do.

Answer 6

Doctors went to school to learn their knowledge. I didn't. I will have to have faith in the doctors knowledge. But I can always get a 2nd. opinion!

Answer 7

"Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word..." This Christian doctrine teaches that faith is built upon knowledge, because only by study of the word can one grow their faith. Very few people seem to understand that faith is knowledge in action, it is not some magic pixie dust that is sprinkled on us when we get saved, or whatever. If you have faith that your sister is going to show up it is because she has been true to her word in the past and you KNOW that. IF knowledge of the past told you that she routinely blew you off to do something else, then you wouldn't be looking for her to pull up. You would not have any faith in her arrival.

"Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Faith is not blind, but it does use senses other than our eyes to find it's target. It is not merely accepting what just anyone wants to tell you, either. No one actually does that, contrary to popular opinion on this board. When I first encountered God, it was like falling in love, though I didn't know that at the time. I was only five, and hadn't had the latter experience yet, but I did know the love of my parents. Love cannot be seen, measured, weighed, conveniently described or explained, yet it is known to exist. Who would dispute that? We detect it by other means than our eyes or ears, but we cannot argue with it's reality or power. When I felt this, I obtained faith in the One who was the source of it, not seeing Him. As I gained more knowledge of Him, my faith grew. Faith is based in the real knowledge of things we cannot quantify. Faith is the knowledge that there are things out there which don't fit into the normal observable universe.

Faith is not the same as indoctrination. What you described happening in the schools is the indoctrination of kids to a system of ideas. They do not need faith to accept what they are taught, since it is all about physical reality. They can go home and web search any of it, or look it up in a book for themselves. They can, and will, formulate their own questions about science. I speak from experience, having been a science teacher. My students used to openly question many of the things I would teach them, and I thought that was a good thing. In this way they avoid being spoon-fed by me, and start to build their own faith in things they can't explain. Faith is a little higher order of intelligence, and is needed to have the intellectual leaps that have driven science throughout history. Einstein developed relativity theory after he had a dream about riding on a beam of light, for instance. Would anyone take him seriously today if he said that?

Answer 8

Knowledge comes from personal experience, or understanding. I.E Seeing something proven, being able to prove something, something rational and logical.

Faith comes from being spoon-fed. I.E Believing something without proof, or something that cant be proven, something irrational or illogical.

I thought it was normal practise to only have faith in Doctors, when it's obvious theyre just guessing. I don't KNOW these pills I have to have each morning will work, because I havnt had a test to prove the Doctors right, but I have faith that the Doctor prescribed the right ones because they know my symptoms from their personal experience - and that doesnt hurt, because they're not making me more sick, and theyre not hurting others or discriminating against others.

Answer 9

As a scientist, the idea that a lab coat is the ultimate proof of a theory is a scary one.  People who aren't scientists tend to take some of the things I say without question.  I encourage them not to--I'm as fallible as the next s*****k.

As for knowledge, strictly speaking nobody can know anything until they have experienced it.  You don't learn gravity out of a text book, you learn it by falling out of a tree...or having an apple hit you on the head.  Where books are concerned, you have to have faith that the author is competent and not a liar.  Teachers help that along by insisting that the book is correct.  Children are gullible and already have faith that the teacher will not lie to them.

It becomes ingrained in us to accept the word of "authority" as being true (not just from our teachers, either).  "Authority" includes teachers, books, parents, schools, the government, and other very serious, official-looking institutions.  It takes a very strong mind to continuously override that ingrained acceptance, to continuously question what we see and hear.  Most people don't have the discipline, the time, or frankly, the interest.

As long as what they hear turns out to be true most of the time, people are likely to go along with the rest.  We do have lives to live, after all.  We can't afford to take the time to question everything.  The best we can hope for is to plant the seed of doubt, so that people are thinking somewhere in their minds, "This may not be 100% true...if it's important, I should look into it more."

Answer 10

Evidence decides. If your sister regularly does what she says, you have reason to take her claim to visit seriously. Faith is something people cling to when they want something to be true regardless of evidence (often in spite of it).

Answer 11

Correct use of language is very tedious. You "know" only that your sister SAID she will visit you on the weekend.You "believe" she will. You will "know" she did when she shows up. The Europeans were going to starve to death. They arrived at the wrong time of year. They didn't even know what animals were available in a land that was new to them, nor where to find them or how to capture, kill, and prepare them. Do you really think the genocide started before they ate? Do you think it started right after these people gave them food? What are teachers going to gain by "brainwashing" us? What is their reason? "Vehement" means with anger. The correct way to say it is: "obey doctors who feel that questioning their knowledge is akin to". But that leads one to wonder why you would be SEEING a doctor whose knowledge you question. The assumption one has when keeping an appointment at a doctor's office is that the doctor has education that one lacks. If one knew as much as the doctor, one would not need to go.

It's called "grammar", and we can all use improvement. Semantics has helped me tremendously with the logic of expression.

Answer 12

Umm, well I did not feel like reading all of that but the difference is, Faith is believing without seeing, and knowledge I guess means you need proof to believe.