The Nature of Faith

1342 Words3 Pages

To provide a reasonable point of view on this topic, one has to first establish what faith means at a personal level in order to indentify how it serves as a basis for knowledge in religion and natural sciences. Faith is regarded in various ways; commonly as reliability on someone/thing, religion, beliefs, and others. An English dictionary generalizes faith is a “strong or unshakeable belief in something, especially without proof or evidence” . Essentially, in this context, faith is the solid unconditional belief of something with little evidence or proof. With the definition stated, we can now focus on the matter in hand, its strengths and weaknesses.

Religions are, for the most part, guided by the beliefs of those who choose to profess them; in other words, what they have faith in. The choice of profession is up to the individual; it is also usual to see people who realize that their faith inclines towards a different direction and proceed to change what their religion was. What one follows or believes in usually has a strong impact on the person’s life. It is common to see people wearing religiously symbolic items, such as a cross hanging from a necklace, or families getting together to attend the weekly mass (or other cult-like activities). Ultimately, all of these customary behaviors are directly affected by people's knowledge about their religion.

Religion is, habitually, an established dogma. The Bible, for example, established the basis of the Christian faith, the Quran for the Islamic one, etc. One chooses to what extent one is going to follow its path. Faith is the limiting factor here; where one of its weaknesses becomes visible.

A sad example of the extreme extents of faith is the people who have such a strong devo...

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...rals, and therefore better the community. On the contrary there are religions were the “right thing” is not as clear, and what one believes to be right might not be viewed in the same way by the rest of the world. The extent of one’s faith determines to what point one is going to follow a religion.

The constant argument between religion and sciences is also influenced by faith. The belief that religion is the answer helps individuals to not require having a feeling of knowing the answers to the greatest philosophical puzzles of life, its existence, or creation. Those who support science have a more reasonable explanation (according to them) to what goes on around them. We are not to make religion and science clash, we should acknowledge both and allow them to coexist. We are curious in nature; we will always try to get answers even if we do not know the questions.

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