Knowledge vs Faith (or is it AND and not VS?)

It has been a number of years ago, that I have had a long & a very interesting conversation on the topic of the knowledge and faith.
A quite heated one, but still understanding and a respectful, in my opinion – even though enough people around were quite concerned that our discussion would turn into an offensive rant (the person in question is known to have those discussions with me and I guess we love digging the path in finding a better understanding and truth).
The topic of that conversation and this blog post is as a matter of a fact quite thought provoking – Knowledge vs Faith. Well, actually I do not think that the title is correct – it should be Knowledge AND Faith in my opinion, but the discussions are typically focused on the VS and so I thought keeping such a title would be a good starting point.

Note that I am not pointing any particular faiths in this topic, as I am not sharing mine.

For a good number of generations, in a lot of societies there were no question – the faith was ruling those societies and I am intended to say that the faith was quite ruling the earth. A lot of time it was for the good and another lot of times, it was not exactly for the good – some of the interpretations of the natural phenomena and some of the decisions (as hurting other people on basis of whatever) were extremely unfortunate, to say at least.
I am also believing (hint: faith!) & specialists that did a research (faith & knowledge) point that a number of ancient scriptures were not exactly targeting those simplistic scenarios that are written, but mostly hiding the messages behind them in order to make it more accessible and understandable for the people of the age – imagine writing about racial and/or sexual equality in 1300s would not take you very far, first because not a lot of people could read and secondly, unfortunately the society was still hundreds of years away in its progress.

Not willing to write another good book here, here is the image that came into my head and that I am using every time I am talking on this matter:

The knowledge is something that is growing on the humans, as we start almost without any knowledge, but as we grow and time advances we can acquire the knowledge that we need & want, but at some certain point we shall have to admit that we simply do not know the matter. At some point we have to admit that based on our experience, or on the words of wiser people – we choose to believe in something (hint: faith!).

Example: I do not know for sure that we have all those wonderful planets in our solar system, because I have never been into space nor looked at our solar system from the outside, but because of the basic experiments and the words of the wiser scientists, I choose to believe that it is true.

The knowledge is something that is rather non-static and those rings expand with the time for any being who is growing, but the white space between the knowledge is filled with space is something I call faith. We need to fill the gaps between the knowledge and beyond the knowledge with faith. When we are ready to learn something new, we need a leap of faith to reach out to the new knowledge.

At some certain point though we need to admit that we have reached our current limit of knowledge, the last ring we can reach at the moment, and at that moment the faith starts.We believe that there ways of getting out our current solar system, we have a faith in the future generations, I have a huge faith in the voice of reason and love and even as it may come late, I believe that the eventuality and growth will bring humans closer to it.

But without the knowledge we would never be the people we are, our society would never achieve so many incredible things that help, support, connect and improve life of so many people every single moment. Knowledge is the key even to read and understand this very article.

In Technology area, without the knowledge you won’t get anywhere, but without faith (in yourself, in others, in technology, in possibilities) you won’t get far.

I salute to knowledge and faith in whatever form you find them and in whenever you find them useful.

As for me, I am in the need of both. All the time.