Knowledge, Faith and Revelation

In everyday living, how do we decide what is true?
Aim- exploring theories and sources of knowledge in contemporary West, including Christian notions of ‘revelation’
To properly understand this lecture, I think it is vital to define revelation, faith and knowledge.
Revelation
a. The act of revealing or disclosing.
b. Something revealed, especially a dramatic disclosure of something not previously known or realized.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/revelation
Faith is -Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence
There are many theories of Knowledge and to explore them one must talk about Epistemology
Epistemology (from Greek ἐπιστήμη – epistēmē, "knowledge, science" + λόγος, "logos") or theory of knowledge is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope (limitations) of knowledge.[1] It addresses the questions:
• What is knowledge?
• How is knowledge acquired?
• How do we know what we know?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that studies knowledge. It attempts to answer the basic question: what distinguishes true (adequate) knowledge from false (inadequate) knowledge?
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/EPISTEMI.html
How do we know what we know?
Whenever one wants to give information, its ones responsibility to give account of how one found out what one knows. How reliable is this account? Is there any such thing as 100 percent reliable? “The modernist and postmodernist contend that to count as knowledge a claim must be both absolutely certain and empirically demonstrable”
The question that must follow is, in how many instances can knowledge be absolutely certain and empirically demonstrable? The modernist say reason and scientific experiment meet such criteria but the claims of theology do not. The postmodernists on the other hand “despair of any claims meeting the criteria of absolute certainty” which I agree with and feel that we shouldn’t want to or have to prove everything. We must come to the conclusion that as humans, some things are beyond us and we must just relax and believe or not believe but we must set criteria for knowlegability and fact. Its extremely time consuming and sometimes does not lead to happiness but in my belief madness.
Why must knowledge be something that can be demonstrated or a 100 per cent fact? Why can’t you know things because you feel it?
Scholars say not all claims can be demonstratable and absolutely certain. In fact only a select few are and they are called analytic truths but even those need questioning at some level. Now truths that are related to history are called synthetic truths but even these truths have to be proven and one gets to a point where you must trust the testimony of the people who recorded these stories as eye witnesses or some sort of oral tradition so faith comes in to play here. Knowledge and faith always go hand in hand.
I conclude this blog with a statement made my Jesus from the bible about faith:
I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, "Move from here to there" and it will move.
Matthew 17:20