QUOTE(Keith321 @ Apr 12 2010, 03:32 AM)
Although faith and knowledge are not absolutely separate, but they can determine each other
faith determines the knowledge, OR
knowledge determines the faith
people believed this Blondin that he could walk over niagara falls over and over. But why did not they allow themselves to be carried?
It all goes down the the Murphy's Law and most importantly their own experience.
People have sat on different chairs many times, commonly without the doubt that the chair will support their weight and stay intact. They placed more faith In the chair than Blondin, and they have experienced enough with chairs to do so. People know that if you fall off the tightrope, you will be dead meat without the safety net. Most importantly the person him/herself has never experienced the ordeal before and therefore succumbing to the murphy's law , thinking " he might fall" subconsciously or consciously, they will not risk their lives for a minute on television. In this case Harry Colcord has enough knowledge about Blondin to put faith in him, filling up the rest of the gap with bravery.
Faith and knowledge are not mutually exclusive, no disagreement on this.
In Harry and Blondin case, Blondin had walked across the tightrope many time in earlier attempts alone successfully (this is so called knowledge, proof, reason). Although carrying a man on the back and perform the same act seems possible, however it never been done before, hence it takes faith for Harry to allow himself to be carried.
How did previous knowledge (walk alone on the tightrope successfully says three times) provide enough justification and could extrapolate that carrying another man on the shoulder would yield the same successful result?
In this example, no matters how many time (says 1000 time) that an alone act have been carried out successfully by Blondin, it can't provide enough evidence or proof to Harry that he would reach the other end successfully (two persons act). Will he know if Blondin would not be tired, not stable and all? He won't, he just have faith and believe in his friend.
Your example on chair is good too. People has faith that the chair they attempt to sit will support their weight even this is the first time they see such chair. In some rare scenarios, the chair does break and the people would fall over, I have seems this happened with my own eyes before.
Faith doesn't warrant the correctness of one's belief, as it is not based on absolute proof, just like the one sitting on a chair which break. The main point here is in many real life scenarios, we need to make decision and justification without solid proof (there is no such thing as we could reason, proof everything), but based on our experience, knowledge and also ..... some faith.
This post has been edited by nice.rider: Apr 15 2010, 11:58 AM 
Apr 12 2010, 12:31 AM
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