Faith

Faith is trust, hope and belief in the goodness, trustworthiness or reliability of a person, concept or entity, or a belief that is not based on proof. Religious faith is a belief in a transcendent reality, a religious teacher, a set of teachings or a Supreme Being. Generally speaking, it is offered as a means by which the truth of the proposition, "things will turn out well in the end," can be enjoyed in the present and secured in the future. Consequently, religious faith appeals to "transcendent reality," or that reality which is beyond the range of normal, physical human experience (e.g. the future). "Transcendent reality," therefore, constitutes a reality which is off limits to material measurement and other rigors of scientific inquiry such as falsifiability and reproducibility. Most atheists and agnostics criticize religious faith as superstition, categorizing it with other forms of belief that are not based on observable material things.

Informal usage of the word faith can be quite broad, and the word is often used as a mere substitute for trust or belief. The English word is thought to date from 1200–50, from the Latin fidem or fidēs, meaning trust, derived from the verb fīdere, to trust.

Some critics of faith have argued that faith is opposed to reason. In contrast, advocates of faith argue that the proper domain of faith concerns questions which cannot be settled by evidence. This is exemplified by attitudes about the future, which (by definition) has not yet occurred. Logical reasoning may proceed from any set of assumptions, positive or negative. In this view, faith is simply a positive assumption.

Epistemological validity of faith

There exists a wide spectrum of opinion with respect to the epistemological validity of faith. On one extreme is logical positivism, which denies the validity of any beliefs held by faith; on the other extreme is fideism, which holds that true belief can only arise from faith, because reason and physical evidence cannot lead to truth. Some foundationalists, such as St. Augustine of Hippo and Alvin Plantinga, hold that all of our beliefs rest ultimately on beliefs accepted by faith. Others, such as C.S. Lewis, hold that faith is merely the virtue by which we hold to our reasoned ideas, despite moods to the contrary...

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About Project Belief

The Project Belief is an on-going project to build a user-created free scholarly commentary to all religious texts.

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Project Belief aims to avoid disputes over religious doctrine. The goal is for all commentary to be restricted to exegesis of the text, limited to an examination of the text and context. Eisegesis (reading into), or exhortation based on the text, is to be avoided.

There are, of course, many differences of opinion within exegesis, and no-one can approach any religious document without bringing a range of personal opinion to bear on their examination. The Project Belief does not aim to portray a correct commentary, or adhere to any particular religious viewpoint: the general Wikipedia principle of Neutral point of view applies here. Opposing viewpoints should each be accurately represented and cited.

Commentary

The primary focus of this site is to produce a commentary on the religious text, as well as an encyclopedia of historical reliogious figures, places, and doctrines. However, to avoid the significant redundancy involved in discussing people and places each time they are mentioned, it is also necessary to build articles on these topics that can be referred to in the body of the commentary.

Although the verse divisions within many texts are a relatively modern invention, and often quite arbitrary, we have chosen to make the verse the basic 'unit of commentary'. As such each verse will have its own page on this site.