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.