How does knowledge gained by faith, differ from knowledge gained by belief?

Group Members: Rhea Mehta, Seonjong Choi, Caton Peters

Journal Entries

March 7th, 2017

Today we did a practice paragraph for the actual one that's due on Friday. This is about our WoK3, but our actual one will be about our WoK4. Here it is:

To what extent is imagination derived from other ways of knowing?

Imagination is something our mind creates. It can be a memory, depiction of something that exists, or something completely original. Therefore, it is subject to bias and influence from other factors. In this case, the other factors are the other ways of knowing. Our faith might imagine a God, or a life after death, and what that would look like. That would also be affected by our memories, as we have seen depictions of God and Heaven throughout our lives.Fantastic imagination is completely original but comes from our experiences and memories as well as emotions. We cannot create imaginative stories without inspiration from our other senses.

March 9th, 2017

Today in class we wrote our paragraphs that are due Friday. I was actually able to finish mine in class, and am very happy with the result. It deals with the difference between belief and faith. Here it is:

While we may define belief and faith similarly, there are concrete differences between the two. While belief is a rational trust in something, faith is an irrational trust in something, resulting from our intuition, memory, and emotion. When Billy Graham was in college, he claims he was ``visited´´ by Jesus Christ. This completely changed his beliefs. From then on, he had faith in the existence of God and devoted his life to preaching and spreading Christianity. Furthermore, during his TED Talk, he tells the story of him and his friends discussing the Bible. His friends said they only believed part of the Bible. However, Billy Graham had absolute faith in God, leading him to accept everything the Bible says because, ``God is a gentleman and doesn’t lie.´´. Graham’s beliefs originate from his complete faith in his religion. Normally, our beliefs are based on empirical evidence. We may believe in the Theory of Evolution, for example, or the Big Bang Theory because there is a vast amount of evidence for them. However, faith is a deeper trust, something we have a personal connection to, via our other ways of knowing such as intuition, memory, and knowledge. One has faith in things we can’t prove or change, such as a religion or idea. Faith can sometimes be an irrational trust in something. In conclusion, while we may define belief and faith similarly, there are concrete differences between the two.

Reflective Journal

This Way of Knowing has been very different from the other ones. Instead of making a presentation, we developed a paragraph, with the objective of describing one aspect or conflict of the way of knowing. For mine, I chose to talk about the difference between faith and belief and how other ways of knowing affect faith, because there is plenty to talk about this topic. It has been a positive experience, although I'm sure I learned the ways of knowing much better when I prepared presentations, with contrast from the paragraphs. This is because the presentation requires you to thoroughly investigate the topic in order to deliver the promises you made your group.

Elective Reading

I listened to the Billy Graham TED Talk. This dealt with my question, the differences between faith and belief. It was very interesting to hear how an ordinary man had undergone such a transformation, from an almost atheist to a religious preacher, based solely on his faith. This proved to me that faith had to be much stronger than belief, and that other ways of knowing were involved, such as intuition, emotion, and memory.

Extension Proposal

This article deals with the same topic I've been dealing with throughout the Badge Project. The differences between faith and belief are expressed here, and I chose this reading because of its significance to the way of knowing. By understanding the difference, we can fully comprehend the way of knowing of faith, and therefore gain additional knowledge than from only the TED Talk.