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Faith

Faith is confidence or trust in a person, thing, or concept.[1] In the context of religion, faith is "belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion".[2] According to the Merriam-Webster's Dictionary, faith has multiple definitions, including "something that is believed especially with strong conviction", "complete trust", "belief and trust in and loyalty to God", as well as "a firm belief in something for which there is no proof".[3]

This article is about religious belief. For trust in people or other things, see Trust (social science). For other uses of faith, see Faith (disambiguation).

Religious people often think of faith as confidence based on a perceived degree of warrant, or evidence,[4][5] while others who are more skeptical of religion tend to think of faith as simply belief without evidence.[6][7]


In the Roman world, 'faith' (Latin: fides) was understood without particular association with gods or beliefs. Instead, it was understood as a paradoxical set of reciprocal ideas: voluntary will and voluntary restraint in the sense of father over family or host over guest, whereby one party willfully surrenders to a party who could harm but chooses not to, thereby entrusting or confiding in them.[8]


Accordingly to Thomas Aquinas, faith is "an act of the intellect assenting to the truth at the command of the will".[9]


Religion has a long tradition, since the ancient world, of analyzing divine questions using common human experiences such as sensation, reason, science, and history that do not rely on revelation—called Natural theology.[10]

Etymology[edit]

The English word faith finds its roots in the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root *bheidh-, signifying concepts of trust, confidence, and persuasion. This root has given rise to various terms across different languages, such as Greek πίστις (pístis), meaning "faith", and Latin fidēs, meaning "trust", "faith", "confidence".[11]


Furthermore, the Proto-Indo-European root *were-o- adds another layer to the word's etymology, emphasizing the notions of truth and trustworthiness. This root is evident in English words like veracity, verity, and verify, as well as in Latin with verus, meaning "true".[11]


The term faith in English emerged in the mid-13th century, evolving from Anglo-French and Old French forms like feid and feit, ultimately tracing back to the Latin fidēs. This Latin term, rooted in the PIE root *bheidh-, encompassed meanings such as trust, confidence, and belief.[11]

Religious faith[edit]

Extent of religious faith[edit]

Referring to "religions" (plural), Pope Francis claims that "the majority of people living on our planet profess to be believers".[15]

 – Curiosity-driven scientific research, without a clear practical goal

Blue skies research

 – Psychological fixation of holding false beliefs in spite of clearly disqualifying proofs

Delusion

 – Belief(s) accepted by members of a group without question

Dogma

 – Two approaches that exist in varying degrees of conflict or compatibility

Faith and rationality

 – Property of a philosophical proposition

Incorrigibility

 – Person's relation with what they accept as being of ultimate importance

Life stance

Major religious groups

 – Arousing spiritual or religious emotion; mysterious or awe-inspiring

Numinous

 – Argument that posits human beings bet with their lives that God either exists or does not

Pascal's wager

 – Branch of philosophy

Philosophy of religion

 – Religious devotion or spirituality

Piety

 – Epistemological view centered on reason

Rationalism

 – Adoption of religious beliefs

Religious conversion

 – Gallo-Roman saint

Saint Faith

 – Private Christian gathering

Simple church

 – Way of categorizing one's belief regarding the probability of the existence of a deity

Spectrum of theistic probability

 – Christian ethics

Theological virtues

 – Claim that high-stress situations prompt everyone to believe in god

There are no atheists in foxholes

 – Quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than actual truth

Truthiness

 – Fundamental cognitive orientation of an individual or society

Worldview

Gupta, Nijay K. . Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2020. ISBN 978-1-4674-5837-5

Paul and the Language of Faith

The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, W. W. Norton (2004), 336 pages, ISBN 0-393-03515-8

Sam Harris

Morgan, Teresa. . Oxford University Press, 2015. ISBN 978-0-19-872414-8.

Roman Faith and Christian Faith: Pistis and Fides in the Early Roman Empire and Early Churches

Stephen Palmquist, "Faith as Kant's Key to the Justification of Transcendental Reflection", The Heythrop Journal 25:4 (October 1984), pp. 442–455. Reprinted as Chapter V in Stephen Palmquist, (Lanham: University Press of America, 1993).

Kant's System of Perspectives

D. Mark Parks, "Faith/Faithfulness" Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary. Eds. Chad Brand, Charles Draper, Archie England. Nashville: Holman Publishers, 2003.

by Swami Tripurari

On Faith and Reason

: Discourses, San Francisco: Sufism Reoriented, 1967.

Baba, Meher

Richard Dawkins' God Delusion (online reading)

John Bishop; Daniel J. McKaughan (July 15, 2022). . Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

"Faith"

Elizabeth Jackson. . Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

"Faith: Contemporary Perspectives"

James Swindal. . Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

"Faith: Historical Perspectives"

Peter Forrest (June 22, 2021). . Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

"The Epistemology of Religion"

. study.com/academy.

"Free and open courses with videos, help and review, about the 10 biggest religions in the world"

chabad.org

Faith in Judaism

Pew Research Center Reports on Religion

We'd be better off without religion? Panellists: Christopher Hitchens, Nigel Spivey, Richard Dawkins, rabbi Juliet Neuberger, AC Grayling and Roger Scruton.

(Dawkins believes the law of nature and denies Jesus resurrection and miracles; Lennox believes Jesus resurrection and miracles with justification by God's capability of breaking the commonly recognized law of nature.)

The God Delusion Debate (Dawkins – Lennox)

(four topics: the nature of individual human beings, the origin of the human species, thirdly the origin of life on Earth, and finally the origin of the universe)

Dialogue with Professor Richard Dawkins, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and Professor Anthony Kenny