Knowledge, Belief, Faith

 

            That is why I am suffering as I am. Yet this is no cause for shame, because I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him until that day. (II Timothy 1:12)

I will readily admit that this post is in response to someone quoting Carl Sagan as he propagandized that knowledge is different from and superior to belief and that belief is effectively wishy-washy mumbo-jumbo put forth by those who haven’t a clue about reality. Another person added “faith” to the list of foolishness. So excuse me while I try to clear up the misunderstanding, even though the people involved are not likely to ever see it.

First, consider how you know what you know. How much of what you know have you independently researched and verified as being true? An easy example. Have you done sufficient research to confirm that America won the war for independence in the last quarter of the Eighteenth Century under the leadership of George Washington? Have you done the research necessary to say that you know that black holes exist? How do you know that the Scarecrow is right? Much of what we claim to know we have learned from someone in authority. With faith that what they have told us is true, we act on that information. That acting is the result of believing.

This triad is somewhat like the Pythagorean theorem: A²+B²=C². Belief and faith are necessary for the knowledge triangle to be complete. Knowledge without the other two is non-functional. But most people accept that their knowledge makes them superior to those who “merely” believe or who “merely” have faith. They are like the Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz, quoting a formula without validating it and having faith that they are superior to others. But the Scarecrow was wrong. He said, “The sum of the square roots of any two sides of an isosceles triangle is equal to the square root of the remaining side!” The first problem is that the Pythagorean Theorem isn’t about isosceles triangles; it’s about right triangles. And the sum of the squares of two sides does not necessarily equal the square of the remaining side. A²+B²=C² but A²+ C² does not equal B². Consider the standard example, 3²+4²=5², which turns out to be true: 9+16=25. But 3²+5² =34, while 4² =16, which is less than half! The sides in question and the number of degrees in the angle involved are both critical. But how many of us, if we recognized that the Scarecrow was supposedly citing the Pythagorean Theorem, bothered to verify whether or not he was right!