Faith. The word that has been used and abused by billions throughout the centuries. It can have good, bad, or evil connotations, depending on who you talk to. Today I want to examine the word from a few angles, to clear up some misconceptions that people like to use, and to make a point. I fear I may step on a great many toes today, but I will seek to not misrepresent anything, only point out the flaws that necessarily exist, but are often overlooked. Before we proceed, we must establish a coherent, unchanging, clear definition of faith, which is slightly impossible with so many definitions floating around from other people.

Faith: Working Definition(s)

faith (noun) (from Dictionary.com)

1. confidence or trust in a person or thing: faith in another’s ability. 2. belief that is not based on proof: He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact. 3. belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion : the firm faith of the Pilgrims. 4. belief in anything, as a code of ethics , standards of merit,etc.: to be of the same faith with someone concerning honesty. 5. a system of religious belief: the Christian faith; the Jewish faith. The above set of definitions serve to point out some of the problems when talking about “faith:” namely, the fact that faith(1) means confidence or trust in something, while faith(2) is belief in the absence of proof. The problem in the English language, and even in the Greek (pistis), is that the word for faith is used interchangably, and only on examination of context can you be sure which is used. *A note on the Greek, the word Elpsis is also translated as faith, in 1 instance in the KJV, but more often as hope.* From here we need to examine which definition is used to describe faith. First we look to the most commonly referred definition of faith given in the bible, Hebrews 11:1 (NASB): “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” We must spend time here before proceeding. Faith itself is the substitution of evidence for hope. Let me repeat: Faith acts as a substitute for the assurance given by evidence (things seen), to give credibility to a belief or claim. Here we see a very clear parallel to faith(2) given above. The latter portion of the verse, “the conviction of things not seen” refers to the epistemology employed by people on almost all other matters. It is assurance (or belief) of things you hope to be true, despite having no emperical evidence. So a slightly reworked wording of Hebrews 11:1 is “Faith is the proof for what one hopes is true, in spite of observable proof.” I have made no grave errors in this extension, but it is becoming apparent where this is not necessarily an optimal use of our reasoning faculties.

Mincing the Definition

It is often said to me that I (as an atheist) take things on faith. This is true, in the sense of faith(1) but no longer in the sense of faith(2). I have faith(1) that this chair will not collapse below me as I sit, which is based on a reasoned, emperical evaluation of prior evidence to support this idea. I can observe the chair’s materials, its construction, examine the physics of the mass-weight ratio, the orientation, the material construction. I could, if need be, present a mathematical proof to a journal on why the chair will hold me up. This means that if I use the word faith(1) here, it is definition 1; i could just as easily say I have a belief founded in evidence that the chair will hold me up.

This is not the same as faith(2) which is used in theistic circles to mean belief in the absence of evidence; they are completely contradictory terms in this case, and mean nothing like the same thing. When discussing religious matters, this misuse of the term is known as the straw-man fallacy, which basically ignores the case of an opponent and attacks a distorted version of their case. By switching out the definition for faith(2) with “reasonable hope,” you are being at least patently ignorant, and at worst intellectually dishonest. Also, in this article I am addressing the second, biblical definition of faith, not the first. As I said previously, faith(2) acts as a substitutionary reason for belief in something, so faith(2) satisfies 1Peter 3:15b “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” In the next section I seek to provide a basis for equating biblical faith to the definition given by faith(2).

Examples of faith(2)

In Hebrews, following verse 1, is an area called by many evangelists the “Hall of Faith,” a list of heroes of sorts to the Jews the letter was intended for. One such story mentioned is that of Abraham in verses 17-18. By faith, Abraham followed through with God’s command to sacrifice his only son, having been told to by a voice speaking to him (presumably within his head). Abraham invented a story when asked by his child what was to be sacrificed; “The lord will provide a sacrifice,” hoping beyond hope. Even considering this story I am met with the vestiges of hoping in my own life to have faith like Abraham. But let us step back:

Is it a universally beneficial trait to listen to voices in your head that tell you to slit the throat of your son on the altar, with no observable evidence that this voice is anything more than a hallucination? Schizophrenia often results in audible hallucinations, and can result in self-destructive or otherwise violent behavior that does not typically characterize the normal mode of operation of a person. And yet this is held up as the pinnacle of human spiritual development.

A second example, that is a “preemptive strike against critical thinking” as Matt Dillahunty put it, is that of “doubting Thomas.” The story is told in John 20 (NASB):

24 But Thomas, one of the twelve, called [d]Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples were saying to him, “We have seen the Lord!” But he said to them, “Unless I see in His hands the imprint of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.” 26[e]After eight days His disciples were again inside, and Thomas with them. Jesus *came, the doors having been[f]shut, and stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you.” 27 Then He *said to Thomas, “Reach here with your finger, and see My hands; and reach here your hand and put it into My side; and do not be unbelieving, but believing.”28 Thomas answered and said to Him, “My Lord and my God!” 29 Jesus *said to him, “Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed.”

Here we have a story whose moral is incredibly clear: It is better, more admirable, to trust the message of the Resurrection in spite of the lack of evidence for it. This highlights the problem I find inherent to Christianity: It makes a virtue out of accepting stories without evidence as factual occurrence. Many go so far as to willfully ignore evidence to suit their own views. There is a word for this, and it is nearly the same as faith(2): Gullibility.

Gullibility:credulousness: tendency to believe too readily and therefore to be easily deceived

Dangers of Faith(2)

Few like to be called gullible, and rightly so. We learned the dangers of gullibility on the playground, when people told us our hands were bigger than our face, or in the cafeteria, when others insisted that it was not, in fact a word. We paid a price in the laughter of our peers, when we found, scrutinizing the pages of Meriam-Webster, the word was there all along. Many more have been suckered into pyramid schemes, the lies of faith healers or mystics; of televangelists promising wealth if you sow your seed into their ministry.

Many more will say that they could never have been suckered in to such obvious hoaxes; that they live absent gullibility. And yet they are willing to accept, based merely on flimsy non-eyewitness testimony, that a man rose from the dead? As George Carlin (NSFW) said, “When it comes to bull, big-time, major league bull, you have to stand in awe at the all time champion of false promises and exaggerated claims: religion; no contest.” What evidence is there for these claims, that any one God is real, whether it is Allah, Jesus, or Yahweh? Even for Thor or Apollo or the great bear spirit. There is none. What evidence there is points to the fact that religions are man-made: Stories, fables, guidelines and laws that benefited the story inventors in some way or another. The bible contains nothing about calculus, electricity, or any evidence of divine authorship rather than a desert-tribe story collection. Yet there are verses that dissuade normal agriculture and textile techniques that we have known for centuries to be vastly superior. Ever heard of cotton-polyester blend? God hadn’t.

Conclusion

So, everyone is left with a choice. Your beliefs about the workings of the universe can be founded in empirical, reliable, observable facts, or you can substitute evidence for faith(2). In no other realm but religion do we ignore observable facts. If we are told our house is burning, we go to see it. If we are told a loved one is dead, dying, or stricken with illness, we want to be with them. If a political system is failing, we look to the candidates, see where the money went, and what went wrong. But when it comes to the most important questions: Who are we? Where did we come from? What happens after we die? We are admonished by our pastors, our friends and neighbors, by the writers of the gospels, the epistles, the torah, to accept as fact fantastical stories on words alone. No thinking person in their right mind would ever dream of believing that their mother was murdered by President Obama, or that I can levitate, without proof; and yet many millions of Americans believe that a man rose from the dead, in spite of evidence of forgery, heresy, and with no contemporary records of him even existing at all.

So I would urge you to examine whether your faith(2) in God merits you altering every area of your life, realizing that he probably doesn’t exist.