Dynamics of Faiths: From Hope to Knowledge

December 5, 2025 | 1,789 words | 9min read

Paper Title: Dynamics of Faiths: From Hope to Knowledge

Link to Paper: https://files.core.ac.uk/download/pdf/155818585.pdf

Date: Fall 2000

Paper Type: Philosophy, Epistomology, Religion, Faith

Short Abstract: In this paper, James P. Danaher argues that all types of beliefs, including faith and knowledge, originate in hope—a pre-rational confidence which, over time, gains rational support. Hope is the foundational form from which all knowledge and faith emerge.

Justified True Belief

He starts by introducing the most widely used model for knowledge: justified true belief, which says something is knowledge if:

• it is true,
• one believes it is true, and
• one is justified in believing it is true.

There is a distinct differentiation between knowledge and belief. Knowledge needs to be justified; belief does not. For example, believing that the next dice roll will be a 7 is a belief because it may turn out to be true, but there is no justification behind it. On the other hand, knowing that water is made of hydrogen and oxygen is knowledge because we have good justification for it.

This justification he also calls logos. He acknowledges that there seems to be a degree of knowledge, i.e., probable knowledge, some knowledge is more certain than other knowledge.

Faith, Belief, Knowledge, Hope, and Truth

He differentiates faith from other terms by saying faith consists of beliefs held with confidence, not with a rational justification, but rooted in hope.

Hope is a desire that a certain possible state of affairs will be realized. This can be separated from a wish. A wish is also a desire for a certain state to be realized, but unlike hope, a wish does not need to involve the possibility that what is wished for is possible. For example, we can wish for a unicorn, but we cannot hope for a unicorn; we can, however, hope that in the future we will have a good career because, unlike a unicorn, a career is possible.

Truth is a necessary component of both faith and belief. If we hold a belief and find it is not true, we abandon it. Similarly, if I have faith that my baseball team will win the championship and this turns out not to be true, I can no longer hold this belief as faith.

The difference between faith and knowledge is how the truth is supplied to the belief. Knowledge gets its truth through reason, i.e., logos, for its justification. In faith, at least initially, the truth is supplied by hope. Over time, faith can become more certain; for example, if our baseball team continues to win, faith may be replaced by reason.

Hence, every faith has a natural dynamic whereby it moves from being initially supported by hope to being supported by reason.

Science and Faith

This also often occurs in science, where an initially held hypothesis in faith may, through experimentation, become knowledge. When a scientist pursues a particular hypothesis instead of others, this is done out of confidence that what he hopes is true.

Even if later the scientist’s belief becomes entirely supported by reason or logos, its initial support was faith, which relied on hope. That is because all knowledge requires justification, which in turn needs justification, and so on. Hence elementary beliefs cannot have a more elementary justification. Thus, our initial confidence in such beliefs must be rooted in hope.

Thus, every knowledge starts as faith, and later, when hope is replaced by reason, it becomes knowledge. Knowledge originates in reason; faith originates in hope.

These elementary beliefs are what we call axioms in mathematics, a priori knowledge in philosophy, and laws in logic and physics.

Faith in Socrates

That hope and faith are underlying is understood by many philosophers.

In the dialogue Meno, Meno suggests to Socrates that learning is impossible because:

“He would not seek what he knows, for since he knows it there is no need of the inquiry, nor what he does not know, for in that case he does not even know what he is to look for.” (Plato, Meno, 80E)

Socrates responds by telling his recollection myth: the soul is immortal and has already seen everything and only needs to remember it.

He later gives an example of this by teaching a slave geometry. Meno himself is impressed and takes Socrates’ account as true, but Socrates isn’t so sure it is true. Socrates believes we should act as if knowledge is possible:

“Meno: Somehow or other I believe you are right. Socrates: I think I am. I shouldn’t like to take an oath on the whole story, but one thing I am ready to fight for as long as I can, in word and act—that is, that we shall be better, braver, and more active men if we believe it is right to look for what we don’t know than if we believe there is no point in looking because what we don’t know we can never discover.” (Plato, Meno, 86B-C)

Hence it seems Socrates’ belief that knowledge is possible is not so much based on reason as on hope—that such a belief will give us certain desired values, i.e., make us better people.

Faith in Descartes

In Discourse on Method, Descartes starts by doubting everything and then tries to reconstruct what we know from first principles. His famous starting step is “I think, therefore I am,” which began by doubting everything until he reached something he could not doubt.

But this first piece of knowledge was preceded by a method that could not have been entered into with certainty that it would lead him to his desired end, but in the hope and faith that it would.

In his second maxim he says:

“[I resolved] to be as firm and resolute in my actions as I could be, and not to follow less faithfully opinions the most dubious, when my mind was once made up regarding them, than if these had been beyond doubt.” (Descartes, 96)

He notes that this is “very true and virtuous,” but it is knowledge that does not come purely from philosophy or from his first principle. Like Socrates, it precedes all knowledge and is based on hope and faith that such a belief will give us what we want.

Socrates’ belief encourages bravery; Descartes’ belief serves a similar purpose. He says this maxim:

“…deliver me from all the penitence and remorse which usually affect the mind and agitate the conscience of those weak and vacillating creatures…” (Descartes, 96)

Thus, for both Socrates and Descartes, what is good is knowledge, and this is supported by hope.

“Every system or body of knowledge must begin with a step of faith in the hope that such a step will eventually lead to knowledge. Whether our first steps are in the direction of sense experience, or steps toward the a priori truths of logic and mathematics, our first steps must always be steps of faith based upon hope.”

Faith in Modern Philosophy

In modern philosophy, the basic axiom is that belief in sense data is a fundamental belief and needs no further justification. But even if this is true, we can trace back everything to sense data. True sense data may be a basis for our perception, but our perception is shaped by our conceptual understanding of the world, which varies across cultures and languages.

If our most elementary and foundational beliefs are conceptual (i.e., perception) and rely not purely on sense data (noumena), they are in need of justification.

But what could this justification be? Such beliefs are suppositions in which we place our confidence because of our hope that they will provide a foundation for us to pursue the kind of knowledge we seek.

The logical positivists’ notion that we should accept nothing as meaningful unless it can be verified or falsified by observation is meaningless by its own criterion. If we want to believe something, it is because of the hope that this supposition will lead us to what we desire.

The same is true for rationalists, e.g., the law of identity, A equals A. But why does A equal A? The only answer that does not beg the question is that our confidence in the laws of identity is supported by the hope that such a foundational belief will lead to a body of a priori knowledge.

Hope to Knowledge

Hence all our beliefs are ultimately rooted in hope and faith, but this does not mean we should give up reasoning. Hope is merely their origin; over time, we can move away from it through reasoning and evidence.

All beliefs evolve over time from being almost entirely supported by hope to being supported by some type of rationality.

When two people marry, they may have faith in one another, but that faith is initially little more than hope. Over time, that faith may become more than mere hope as one person proves faithful and gives reason for the other person to trust them. Similarly, for all our beliefs in the trustworthiness of another person, we begin with belief, and over time trust them more because of reasoning.

In the ninth chapter of Mark’s Gospel, a man asks Jesus to cast out an evil spirit from his son:

“But if You can do anything, take pity on us and help us!” And Jesus said to him, “‘If You can!’ All things are possible to him who believes.” Immediately the boy’s father cried out and began saying, “I do believe; help my unbelief.” (Mark 9:22-24)

It seems that the faith this man has is largely rooted in desire or hope rather than reasoned confidence in the proposition, “all things are possible to him who believes,” because Jesus is the one saying it. We have no indication that the man is a follower of Jesus or even knows much about Him. By contrast, the disciples’ faith or belief in the same situation is rooted more in reason than hope, since it is not their son who is seeking to be healed, and the disciples had experienced multiple instances of Jesus’ ability and willingness to heal. Thus, the faith of the disciples is more a matter of reason, while the faith of the boy’s father is more a matter of hope.

Origin of the Idea that Knowledge is Not Rooted in Faith

One may ask: if all knowledge is rooted in hope or faith, why do we in modern Western circles tend to disdain it, or at least not consider it important?

The author identifies one source of this: Aristotle’s Metaphysics, where he attempts to classify all things through families and what is called genus. Importantly, most of them had only one genus, and from this came the idea that everything must have a single source.

reply via email