Saturday, October 23, 2010

Is faith a reliable way to find religious truths?

A response to "I just have faith."

By faith here we mean religious faith of course - which is related to the meaning of faith as something like "belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence" (one of the meanings of faith) rather than the kind of faith that is confidence that arises because of reason or material evidence (a different meaning of faith). Beware equivocational imitations.


Is faith a reliable way to find religious truths?


While we ponder that question, look at this:


If the answer is yes, how, then, it is the case that more theists in the world think Christianity is false than think it is true — surely faith, if it is a reliable path to truth, would overwhelmingly lead people of faith to truth?

Either faith isn't a reliable way to find truth - and so we should not rely on religious faith to discover what's true
or
the truth that most people are led to by faith is that Christianity is false.

(Aside: I'm not making an argumentum as populum here - I'm showing a consequence of the premise of reliability)


The same argument works for any religion.

Any consequences for the old argument about "different ways of knowing" is left as an exercise for the reader.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I know you wrote this awaile ago, but I just found it on google. This is the question I have been asking myself or a long time, it has led me to discredit faith as a reliable way to find truth. And no one "faithful" has been able to answer this question for me.