Under what circumstances is faith a credible or trustworthy path to truth? I have recently had some conversations with a Christian acquaintance who insists that reason and evidence are not the right tools to use to access truth, or at least with regard to God claims. He insists that I would do better to let go of my faculty of reason and adopt faith as a way to know that God exists. Faith, however, seems a very bad way to discover the truth of anything. There is no claim that could not be verified by faith.
People make all kinds of claims about what is true. The only reliable way to distinguish between the valid claims and the phony claims is with reason and evidence. This is why we employ these standards in our courts of law and in our scientific inquiries. If you can think of a circumstance outside of religious claims in which you believe the application of faith leads to true conclusions, I would be happy to hear it. If there are no other circumstances in which you believe faith without evidence leads to true beliefs, I would like to suggest to you that religious beliefs are not an exception to the rule. Faith does not lead to truth in any circumstance.
People make all kinds of claims about what is true. The only reliable way to distinguish between the valid claims and the phony claims is with reason and evidence. This is why we employ these standards in our courts of law and in our scientific inquiries. If you can think of a circumstance outside of religious claims in which you believe the application of faith leads to true conclusions, I would be happy to hear it. If there are no other circumstances in which you believe faith without evidence leads to true beliefs, I would like to suggest to you that religious beliefs are not an exception to the rule. Faith does not lead to truth in any circumstance.
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