ACADEMIA Letters Human and Religious Faith: Phenomenology and Experience Pablo Blanco-Sarto Faith is defned as a human need, as a part of human life: everyone needs someone or some- thing to believe in. At the same time, there is a religious meaning of faith that amounts to trust in God. The diferent religions tend to claim that faith is not only feeling, but also knowledge. It is also considered a motor of social and economic life. Anthropology Faith, in its anthropological sense, is a human need and amounts to confdence or trust in a person or institution. Faith and trust are synonyms of confdence, as a state of being that is certain either that an idea is correct or that the person through whom a given piece of information is obtained is trustworthy. For instance, one might have confdence in the police, sure that they will protect, or confdence in the fact that what one reads or studies is correct. Ultimately, one cannot fully test or demonstrate all of the information or proposals that arrive to him/her. Confdence can be explained by the transformation of objective evidence (observation) into subjective certainty (judgment). One fnds evidence that goes beyond one’s own expe- riences and personal certainty is obtainable because of the authority of the arguments or of the witness who ofers a given piece of information. This explanation comes through other persons, but nevertheless it is not sufcient to eliminate personal knowledge. Faith must also be compatible with human logic and experience. It is another light that illuminates the natural inspiration of our reason. Academia Letters, April 2021 Corresponding Author: Pablo Blanco-Sarto, pblanco@unav.es Citation: Blanco-Sarto, P. (2021). Human and Religious Faith: Phenomenology and Experience. Academia Letters, Article 884. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL884. 1 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0