Knowledge and Belief

A paper I wrote for freshman inquiry on belief and knowledge.

Knowledge and Belief

Knowledge and belief are two sides of the same coin that have been fighting over who is heads and who is tails for about as long as there has been cognate self aware life on this planet. Who is right and who dares to be proven wrong?

Belief is the acceptance of a theory or concept without concrete evidence. It is in short.. faith. Faith in something or faith that someone is telling you the absolute truth. Belief is often steeped in what is unexplainable. Ghosts, cosmic energy, God, karma and even the existence of a soul are all things that we can not conceivably prove with hard evidence. Not to say that there is no evidence supporting the claims, but rather that the evidence used is questionable at best. Yes, we exist on this earth, but it is not something we could have made, maybe God made it, thats what this book says. Someone cut me off in traffic and I become frustrated, perhaps I take that anger out on someone else. We can not prove that there is an exchange of negative energy even though we feel it and express it. Belief is a concept we understand but don't fully grasp. It is what I call an incomplete truth.

Knowledge is the understanding of a theory or concept through complete tests and concrete evidence. Unlike belief, knowledge is only knowledge when there is tested proof to explain a truth.

It is to say, I know this cup is made of glass because we can look at it under a microscope and see that the chemical compounds and carbon bondings are that of glass. It is to say, I know that paper burns at 451 degrees Fahrenheit because I can place paper in a closed off environment and test to see at exactly what temperature the paper will start to burn. When testing knowledge we use hard evidence to prove that we know something without a semblance of a doubt. It is in a sense, a complete truth.

If you take a step back and truly observe the two, one can see that they are two sides of the same coin. Though they constantly try to discredit the other, one could not exist without the other. Without incomplete truths there can be no truths to complete and vise versa. Ultimately it is only when we accept both sides of the coin that we truly become rich.