In most places, "faith" is a ridiculous concept.



Think about it.



You don’t have “faith” that you’ll get to a destination – you check your gas gauge beforehand. You don’t have “faith” that your baby will be well fed and survive – you make sure your baby gets proper care. You double check receipts. You look both ways before you cross the street. You don’t have faith you’ll have enough money to buy something – you check your bank account. Right?

That's not to say faith about these things wouldn't make you feel awesome.



Sure, it would feel great to have faith that money will magically appear in my bank account to buy everything I want, or that my care will never need maintenance, but you and I both know that's a recipe for disaster. I have to go out and work, and I have to figure out how to make sure my car gets from a to b. I mean, this isn't rocket science. And it's something myself and most Christians know -- I can tell it from the way they actually live their down-to-earth, day-to-day lives.

Because we have that common sense down-to-earth knowledge in common, I don't really agree with atheists who think Christians are intellectually inferior. Most of you are very intelligent; and in different ways are probably more intelligent than I am. In almost every area of your life you have doubts, you question, you investigate, you make sure you’re right. If your child came to you saying that a monster was in her closet, most of you wouldn’t believe her until you both went to check. If a friend of yours said that she ran five miles in ten minutes, you would need to see proof before you believed her.

We know that you don’t know EVERYTHING about the world. But there are some things that seem to happen less than others, and we use probability to make our choices. We have to. If we don’t, we exit the gene pool.

But we also have stories – fantasies that we engage in from time to time, in which we suspend our judgment. All kinds of fantastic things can happen in a fantasy, and we can suspend disbelief in them when the stakes aren’t that high. For example, we can watch Star Wars and believe in the “Force” for a while, because – well, why not? It feels great.