Faith & Science

Faith & Science

Some people say that religious beliefs can be neither justified nor refuted by reason. However, while sometimes this claim is used as a reason for rejecting religious beliefs, at other times it is used to conclude that these beliefs are established by faith. To what extent is faith a legitimate basis for knowledge claims, in religion and different areas of knowledge?

Faith and science undoubtedly share contradictory aspects yet nevertheless I believe they both can be used for generating knowledge. Religion, relying as it does on faith, can be seen as a means by which we may come closer to the truth of our existence, the central theme of civilisation throughout history. Could one then consider atheism as a barrier to understanding our existence? By this I don't mean that religion and atheism cannot have similar views in different areas of knowledge although they are quite liable to arrive from different basis and in different ways. Belief is likely to come from different premises, being more to the emotions of a person, one who chooses to believe something in the feeling that it confirms to his own feelings. However knowledge derives itself from actual facts that have been either ascertained or proven by other people both now and in the past.

Mathematics, natural sciences and human sciences are normally accepted as being on the side of the knower following reason, as it is to a higher extent proven and justified. This falls under knowledge, and therefore knowledge depends less on our emotions but more on our perceptions; our five senses. We tend to understand and judge things based on the way we perceive them and this could be considered knowledge. An Almighty far more advanced then we could ever possibly imagine. When talking of a concept of God, how is one to use words or any other tools to communicate the divine essence? As Thomas Aquinas wrote, "an infinite series of causes is impossible, therefore a first cause, which is uncaused and which is god must exist." Must there not be a source that caused the very beginning?

It is understandable that we benefit through empirical observation, and thus we may therefore mix religion with science and from such a union follow the corresponding belief. Emotion however remains always from within and as a stoic I would suggest that it remain in such capacity. This does not prevent us from ...