55 replies to this topic

[dreamingonacloud]

Hello!
Faith has a couple of quite different meanings in the dictionary:

1. Trust in somebody’s ability of knowledge; trust that sb/sth will do what has been promised.
2. strong religious belief
those are the closest ones to this essay question.
Which one should we analyse in our essay? Faith, meaning religious beliefs; or faith, completely trusting somebody/something?

[Bad Boys of Boston]

dreamingonacloud, on Nov 06, 2011 - 14:09, said:

Hello!
Faith has a couple of quite different meanings in the dictionary:

1. Trust in somebody’s ability of knowledge; trust that sb/sth will do what has been promised.
2. strong religious belief
those are the closest ones to this essay question.
Which one should we analyse in our essay? Faith, meaning religious beliefs; or faith, completely trusting somebody/something?

I suggest you talk about the first definition instead. 2nd one seems too specific and inapplicable in other AOKs.

Edited by Bad Boys of Boston, Nov 21, 2011 - 16:57.

[lizguerre]

I'm having trouble finding the strenghts part for faith as the basis of knowledge in religion. Any thoughts?

[Julia_19]

Desy Glau, on Dec 20, 2010 - 09:07, said:

I also need help!

Basis of knowledge, I think they mean like when you develop a knowledge, faith is the most important fact/idea from which that knowledge is developed. In other words, all knowledge is based on faith..?

By 'faith', do they mean a particular religion or just a great trust in something? What other AOKs can I relate this to? Can I relate this with Natural Sciences or Human Sciences?

I think, by 'faith' they mean not only religion but any feeling of strong belief in smth. The book says that faith is a strong belief without any evidence or having not enough evidence to become knowledge

Edited by Julia_19, Dec 01, 2011 - 05:20.

[saleen]

Hey everyone!

I have chosen this essay question as well and I have a question about knowledge issues. As I understand the essay should be based around knowledge issues, (areas of discussion), i've always worked with knowledge issues as questions in class and it seems like I shouldnt be asking questions throughout the essay. Are the knowledge issues supposed to be integrated into my own ideas and thoughts? Or are the knowledge issues my ideas and thoughts.... sounds simple, but my understanding of it is much more complicated! gah..


thanks,
sal

[yellotheemcee]

how about the many axioms we accept true in maths without any proof?

[saphyre]

hey guys.
iam also doing this question but i have no idea where to begin :\ . my instructor said it would be intresting to do history as my Aok. but i dont know what time in history to use. but i do know that sometimes the faith of a person can cloud some parts of thier knowledge. so i might look at it from that point of view, but i still nead a Aok. help would be greatly apreciated.

[mollymayhem]

HII
I'm also working on this topic and when I originally chose it I was planning on using ethics as my  area of knowledge and it made sense at the time but now I'm not sure how to carry it out...
help?

Edited by mollymayhem, Dec 08, 2011 - 23:11.

[Damien R.]

I think natural science and religion are interesting together due to science using faith just as religion does. Evidentally, there are differences between them but they both have a basis to their supposed faith. Doubt, faith and knowledge all need to be discussed and this is a good way to go about it, using n.science.

[Bad Boys of Boston]

We should also keep in mind that we use faith in science when we accept certain scientific knowledge, faith that our results are correct and that we have minimized the errors in an experiment. Would that be included in the category of "basis of knowledge"?

[Rachel_Harris]

ok so i understand why you think using history could get alittle sticky but it wa pointed out in my TOK class many times that faith is believing something without actually seeing it and history is just like that you cant go back in time and see the jews get slaughtered by the nazis but you have the remains of aushwitz and the stories from survivors to make it appear as though this really happened but how can we ever really know? thats why i decided to use history as my other area of knowledge.

[shakamaka21]

Hey guys. I am planning to chose this topic too. It's amazing guys. You guys are so helpful.. I dont know what i'd do without you all.
Keep helping.
Hope all of us get amazing grades.
Wohohohoho.

[pulsmatt]

Since many of us have problems of how to define "faith" you can always use an actual definition from say Freud and refute/endorse it throughout the essay.

As a general comment, most atheist have a very negative view of the concept of faith, for them it is blind belief and they tend to prefer more "reasoned" arguments. Yet what we've been learning from 'reason' is that nothing can be certain. So, although faith-based approaches tend to thrive on paradoxes, reason offers us no better of an alternative to understand the reality.

That of course seems very abstract and I'm still trying to find an example that won't make it seem like a far fetched idea

[JonathanSpencer]

I don't think faith can be a basis of knowledge at all. There was an interesting discussion on this Facebook siteon this, actually it contained ideas that anyone can use.

[Positron]

I would define knowledge to be the best collective explanation for a certain thing at the given time. So in my opinion, you can know things which are not true/ turn out to be false later on. Therefore faith can be used as a basis for knowledge. And I actually think that faith/assumptions (yes, I do know that they're not the same thing. But they both mean believing something without having actual proof) are quite essential for acquiring knowledge in the first place.

If you wan't to analyse the strenghts/weaknesses of using faith as a basis for knowledge in religions, I think that you should first think about the purpose of religion. The whole point of religion is believing (=having faith) in a God/supreme being or a greater good. Religion doesn't try to prove its claims through science or logic. So religion is specifically about having faith in something, not about knowing/trying to prove something. Of course one could argue that at some point faith/knowledge start being the same thing.

The following quotation refers to my previous statement about assumptions/beliefs being essential for acquiring knowledge. I thought that it could be quite useful.

"The question how knowledge should be defined is perhaps the most important and difficult of the three with which we shall deal. This may seem surprising: at first sight it might be thought that knowledge might be defined as belief which is in agreement with the facts. The trouble is that no one knows what a belief is, no one knows what a fact is, and no one knows what sort of agreement between them would make a belief true. Let us begin with belief."

-Bertrand Russell, Theory of Knowledge

Edited by Klaus.A, Feb 02, 2012 - 19:01.

[gianinaivodie]

Need help with the advantages and disadvantages of using faith as the basis of knowledge for Natural Science..HELPPP!!!