Faith and Logic

Humans have an instinct called curiosity - to know more of things around - and for satisfying this urge, they acquire knowledge. There are two possible sources for gaining knowledge - by learning from others and believing them, and by studying unknown things logically or by grasping such studies of others and accepting the facts by satisfying themselves through reasoning. These two methodologies are, respectively, known as 'faith' and 'reasoning', and the latter is generally called as 'science'.


For faith, the person need not be knowledgeable in advance, nor he/she needs to have reasoning capability. In faith, the person gets an information from another just accepts that. So, it needs neither wisdom nor any mental exertion. Therefore, it is very easy and often an asylum for the idle minds - their curiosity gets satisfied without any efforts. Such a person may call him/herself as 'knowledgeable' but all his/her knowledge is shallow and changeable with time and circumstances. Imagine a person going to a group of theists and by just listening their views becomes a theist him/herself. The same person when goes to a group of atheists becomes an atheist just after listening their views. Thus, his/her faith and knowledge are changeable. For stabilizing his/her faith, he/she goes by majority view, or whatever is said by more people in his/her contact, is believed to be true..


Conversely, gaining knowledge logically is difficult, needing efforts and use of intellect of the person. In this process, the person examines each fact critically and accepts it only after getting satisfied. For this, the person must have reasoning capability and previous knowledge of examining the things critically. Therefore, only really knowledgeable persons could be logical. Because this scientific process is difficult, only few persons go for it and they acquire a little with much efforts. But their little knowledge is deep and unchangeable. For his/her little knowledge, such a person always remains curious and never considers him/herself 'knowledgeable'. With this feeling, he/she keeps on making efforts for gaining more and more knowledge. In reality, this is humanism which keeps the instinct of curiosity alive for ever.


Faith is not a natural attribute of human-beings. This was chosen by early humans on ad hoc basis to satisfy their curiosity when their sources and means of gaining knowledge were too few to satisfy their curiosity instinct. Even their intellect was also limited at that time. So, faith is not a permanent solution for satisfying curiosity but the 'science' certainly is.


Even humans have inertia like that of the dead bodies which provides them convenience of getting satisfied without working. For this reason, convenience-seeker humans are assertive on holding 'faith' steadfastly to save themselves from hardships of gaining knowledge through science.