Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Kierkegaard has been called a philosopher, a theologian, the Father of Existentialism, a literary critic, a humorist, a psychologist, and a poet.
One of his popular ideas is the "leap to faith," or the "leap of faith ."
The leap of faith is his conception of how an individual would believe in God. He thought that to have faith is at the same time to have doubt. For example, to truly have faith in God, one would also have to doubt that God exists; the doubt is the rational part of a person's thought, without which the faith would have no real substance.
Doubt is an essential element of faith, like a type of beginning. To believe or have faith that God exists, without ever having doubted God's existence or goodness would not be a faith worth having. For example, it takes no faith to believe that something you can see and touch is real especially when you are looking at it or touching it. In the same way, to believe or have faith in God is to know that you can't really see or touch God, and yet still has faith in God.
Doubt is uncertainty in the context of trust, action, decision or belief. It implies challenging some notion of reality in effect, and may involve hesitating to take a relevant action due to concern that one might be mistaken or at fault. It's a type of skepticism, but it should NOT be confused with atheism. Doubt prods a person to ask questions.
Faith has two general implications which can be implied either exclusively or mutually; to trust or to believe without reason.
To trust means that you believe based on personal hopes or believing in certain ideas despite having much evidence. I think that faith leads you to discover how real or unreal something is and this "faith" has forced me to discover what I have determined to be True Knowledge.
Its foolish to say that someone believes in something without reason. It would be better to question how valid you deem that "reason" to be (i think that its a stupid rule in the english language that you arent supposed to end a sentence wtih a preposition...sometimes it just fits ya know).
There exists a wide spectrum of opinion with respect to the epistemological validity of faith. One philosophical extreme is fideism, which holds that true belief can only arise from faith, because reason and evidence cannot lead to truth. Some foundationalists, such as St. Augustine of Hippo and Alvin Plantinga, hold that all of our beliefs rest ultimately on beliefs accepted by faith. Others, such as C.S. Lewis, hold that Faith is merely the virtue by which we hold to our reasoned ideas, despite moods to the contrary.
Many noted philosophers and theologians have espoused the idea that faith is the basis of all knowledge. One example is St. Augustine of Hippo. Known as one of his key contributions to philosophy, the idea of "faith seeking understanding" was set forth by St. Augustine in his statement "Crede, ut intelligas" ("Believe in order that you may understand"). This statement extends beyond the sphere of religion to encompass the totality of knowledge. In essence, faith must be present in order to know anything. In other words, one must assume, believe, or have faith in the credibility of a person, place, thing, or idea in order to have a basis for knowledge.
I think that this is true because one simply does not have the time or resources to evaluate all of his knowledge empirically and exhaustively. "Faith" is used instead.
It is sometimes argued that even scientific knowledge is dependent on 'faith' - for example, faith that the researcher responsible for an empirical conclusion is competent, and honest. A person could argue that scientific discovery begins with a scientist's faith that an unknown discovery is possible. Scientific discovery requires a passionate commitment to a result that is unknowable at the outset. The scientific method is not an objective method removed from man's passion.
Sometimes, faith means a belief in a relationship with a deity. In this case, "faith" is used in the sense of "fidelity." For many Jews, the Hebrew Bible and Talmud depict a committed but contentious relationship between their God and the Children of Israel. For a lot of people, faith or the lack thereof, is an important part of their identity.
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