Faith and Certainty of Knowledge

As we have seen so long as we use the correspondence theory of truth we can never have certainty of knowledge. But the vast majority of the human race wants exactly that, certainty of knowledge. What people want people eventually get. But no matter how they try they can never have true certainty of knowledge. So they settle for the only thing available, the illusion of certainty of knowledge. That illusion is known as faith.

Faith is hope in things unseen. And therein lies the problem. We cannot know for certain things unseen actually exist. Yet people claim they know something is true simply because they believe in its truth. Their belief has no room for the possibility of error. Indeed they believe because they do not want to deal with the possibility of error. Their faith has made them blind to the possibility of error. Their entire view of reality would shatter if they were to ever admit to the possibility of error.

This is why faith has such a bad reputation in the fact based community. Not only do the faithful harm themselves by confusing things as they really are with things as they wish them to be the faithful conspire to harm others by forcing them to behave in an identical manner. We simply do not have the evidence which would allow us to conclusively establish God's will. We do not even have the evidence to conclusively establish God's existence. In the absence of such evidence tolerance of diversity, it can be argued, is the best action to take. And if one wants to argue there must be positive evidence for God's existence before He can take a role in public life then there is no possibility for God to play a role in public life.

Secularism part 1.

Secularism is based on one simple principle. Truth requires proof; proof requires fact. Without fact there is no truth. The secularist lives in a world where there is only fact based truth and opinion. This makes secularism powerful because fact based conceptions of reality are the most accurate conceptions of reality. But it puts secularists at a disadvantage when discussing moral and religions issues because the concepts used in morality and by the religions are not backed up by facts.

Secularism defines truth by the correspondence theory. The correspondence theory of truth claims truth is the word we use to describe the identity of the conception of reality we hold in our minds and reality as it is. But since we can never be certain of this accuracy we can never be certain we know the truth. So in the world of secularism there is no such thing as truth. More accurately there is no such thing as certainty of knowledge.

Now the correspondence theory of truth is the theory of truth used by scientists. They call it the scientific method. Scientists observes reality. They then create hypotheses to explain their observations. They then test these hypotheses by gathering new information, new facts. As more and more facts defend the hypothesis it becomes a theory. The theory will be considered true until facts are discovered which cannot be explained by it.

Because science uses the correspondence theory of truth it is wrong to say science gives us truth. What science gives us the the most accurate description of reality possible. As science gathers more facts its description of reality becomes even more accurate. This is its power and this is why secularists are accepting of it. But people want certainty of knowledge. And that neither secularism or science can give. This is why science and secularism are not universally popular.