Those two words, faith and belief, get tossed around as if everyone knows exactly what is meant. People talk about their faith in something, and then they talk about their beliefs. Some people seem to use the words interchangeably as if both words have the same meaning. I’ve seen one person describe a position of faith that another person sees as a statement of belief. So what is what here?
Just what do you mean when you say belief? What is faith? Are they different? If so, how?
JT
Faith in something takes place when there is no evidence for this “something”. Faith is thought of as a kind of superior knowledge, outweighing reason, kind of insight going beyond the scope of reason.
Belief is a wider state of mind which may or may not be grounded in facts and reasons. In others words, beliefs can be rational or not, and there can be various degrees of reasonableness.
Faith, on the contrary, is outside reason.
It is my current understanding, which owes much to Baggini’s “Atheism: a very short introduction”.
here’s my quick and dirty analogy.
Belief is the sailing ship out on the ocean with holes in it. It may or may not be trustworthy we don’t know everything about it but all of us choose one side or the other. Some of us choose to trust in the ship, I.E. we put our faith in the ship that it won’t sink. Others of us choose to no put faith in the ship or put faith in anything else.
Another way of looking at it is in language… it’s quite common to use the words interchangeably like:
I have faith in you that you can get the task done.
I believe that you can get the task done.
should they be used interchangeably like that?
A belief is like a…unit of knowledge, almost. Anything you think is true is a belief of yours, regardless of how you come to that conclusion. Faith, on the other hand, is used in lots of different ways by different folks. You’ll find some people saying that every belief requires an amount of faith, and others proudly saying they don’t have any faith in anything.
As for me, faith is what lends stability to belief. Faith is what keeps a person from instantly changing their minds everytime they are exposed to a new argument for something. If you’ve believed one way, heard an argument that completely tore it apart, but maintained your old beliefs at least until you could examine the case further, you’ve demonstrated a sort of faith.
To say that faith is belief outside or in contrast to reason would be to assume that any of us have a perfect grasp of reason to begin with. Anybody who believes strongly in something has to acknowledge that there are rational-seeming arguments that support them, and rational-seeming arguments that don’t.
Samkhya wrote:
I am aware of the sun. In all my years the sun has always been there. In all of man’s history the sun has been there. Science tell’s us that the sun is a nuclear furnace, and at some point in the future the fuel will have been consumed and the sun will go nova and the earth will cease to exist. If I believe science (and I do) the sun will still be viable for several million years. My experience plus my learning says that the sun will still be here in the morning. It will be here next year at this time. I have faith that the sun will still be here long after my passing.
Do I have belief or faith or both? Is there a point at which belief becomes faith?
JT
I would say that belief is built on faith. In the end, to believe anything, we have to have faith that our mind is functioning properly and our senses are not deceiving us. That’s why Max Planck, generally regarded as the father of quantum physics, wrote:
“Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: Ye must have faith.”
the transition occurs during future casting. You can’t know (and neither can science at this point) that the earth or sun will still be here a year from now.
part of “belief” is founded in some sort of experience…
A belief is something you think is true, based on some measure of evidence and basis in reality. (Down the scale from believing one plus one equals two, to believing in aliens and UFOs)
Faith is a belief minus the evidence, or in spite of the evidence.
Hi JT,
I think that belief is the more passive of the two. If someone tells me something and I consider it believable, I generally put it to the unproven but credible. It is something that doesn’t have to have weight in my life, but of course in a number of people it is an important part of their psychological make-up. Beliefs are often collected like postage stamps (mistaken for knowledge) and a particular collection is generally considered status quo.
With faith, I think we are talking about something that is taken on actively. If I put my faith or trust in something, then I am relying upon that something to carry me. It would therefore be something that I should put to the test in some way. As a manager, I trust my staff to do the job they have - until I find cause to distrust them. That means, I regularly look to see if my trust is founded.
In religion, trust or faith means setting a course or finding direction. If I continually change my course I am likely to end up getting nowhere. That is why it is important to check the course before we set sail and then stick to it. You often find a lot of people along the way who say that there is no need for a course since it is nice to set sail, but they too are underway to somewhere - perhaps somewhere else than they think. You sometimes find people will a ship full of beliefs but without a course, but who haven’t got time to set sail, they are too busy defending their beliefs against marauders.
Again, I can’t survive without metaphers … 
Shalom
Bob
Well, so far we seem to see faith as believing something to be true and at the same time, we must have faith to believe something is true and it all seems rather fuzzy, both in concept and most certainly in common usage.
I’m still trying to figure out how we can say either word without a lengthy explanation of what we mean by what we say. Is there no way to make a clear distinction between the two words, or have they both been so mis-used that misunderstanding is guaranteed?
JT
It seems that you have to start with the assumption of the uniformity of the laws of nature (and perhaps other basic assumptions).
Then you can separate faith from belief.
I think it’s misuseing the word faith to use it for any belief that doesn’t have certianty.
Faith to me implies specifically believeing something on what one would normally consider insuffient evidence.
If you believe in Nessy but not UFO’s but have the same level of evidence for both, than I would call your belief in Nessy a belief by faith.
Of course, this is assuming the evidence for each is equally compelling and acurate.
If the evidence were equally compelling, and one was believed and the other wasn’t, the reasoning could only be irational and illogical, as it is inconsistant.
Interesting ideas, but none of you have really nailed the difference.
a belief in the boogie man is not faith.
a belief in the tooth fairy is not faith.
unless these beliefs determine how you will act, they are merely beliefs.
Belief rises to the level of faith when it shapes conduct and determines a course of action.
faith=(belief + (-justification)
x=(y+(-z))
How you act as a result of this unjustified belief is irelevent.
Not all faithful god believers preach the word, or live any different than they would otherwise.
In fact, I would say the majority of the faithful don’t think much about their faith whatsoever.
ILP is certainly not a microcosm of the world at large.
If their faith doesnt shape or determine conduct, then they have no faith, they simply have beliefs.
Hi y’all
Belief comes from the mind. It is all the conscious and unconcious pieces of intellectual information about God, religion, everything that the we have gathered from our earliest experiences and we can have beliefs about anything that may or may not be true.
Faith is deeper, it comes from the heart. It’s not having the knowledge that the sun will shine everday. It’s knowing the force that causes the sun to shine and knowing that force exists inside your own heart. Faith is the virtue central to all virtues of the virtuous.
Tao or Zen says:
“A master in Zen is not simply a teacher. In all the religions there are only teachers. They teach you about subjects which you don’t know, and they ask you to believe because there is no way to bring those experiences into objective reality. Neither has the teacher known them - he has believed them; he transfers his belief to somebody else”.
A
Tentative-
Hey bub, good to see you again.
I would take faith out of my vocabulary if I could. It is a meaningless word, if you think about it. If I have proof for a belief, I don’t need faith. But, with all that proof, my faith would be still in that belief, because I have evidence to support it. Without evidence, I still need lots of faith, because I have no evidence supporting my belief.
See how ridiculous “faith” is?
I would take out faith and use evidence. Choices should be made on evidence and probability, and nothing else.
Sincerely,
Floyd
Hi Floyd.
Nice to have you back. I thought you had fallen off the truck or something.
I do agree that belief is primary, but faith is still there, and probably the essential support behind belief. I guess I wanted to see if there was any way that the two words/concepts could be placed in their proper relationship. There is so much confusion generated when folks throw those word around as if everybody knows and agrees as to what is being said.
Hang around. There is an occasional thought that’s interesting, if you can get past us ‘mystics’. 
JT
Tentative-
Yeah, it’s hard to define those words, because people have used them so interchangeably. It’s a murky water, that’s for sure.
But no, haven’t fallen off the truck. Started reading again, and my curiosity peeked. 
Sincerely,
Floyd