On Faith

Crazy Eddie

Nov. 2007

Abstract
This article discusses the current trend among some groups and individuals to redene the word
faith and enforce that meaning in conversation. It is unclear whether those employing this denition
are purposfully being dishonest or simply do not recognize the error they are committing, but what is
clear is that understanding cannot be acheived in such a situation. This article attempts to clarify what
the word faith means through the analysis of ocial denitions provided by various dictionaries and
the usage by those employing the word to describe their own beliefs. I also attempt to establish where
the misunderstanding seems to be coming from; this should help clarify what it is about faith that people
nd objectionable and establish a core understanding of the dierences between these two camps.

Contents
Introduction 1

A proposed denition 2

The ocial denition 3

Use of the word 4

Guided by reason? 5

Introduction
As a backlash against the perceived (though not necessarily unfairly) threat of religion, there has been an
increase in the popularity of Atheism and in the debate between Atheism and the religious. For instance,
we can consider the fairly recent televised debate between the Rational Response Squad and the founding
members of The Way of the Master, including Kirk Cameron .
1 Additionally, several key authors have
done much to further fuel this debate and raise public awareness of Atheism as an alternative to traditional
religion. The dangers posed to us by religious extremism has also done much to further this debate and has
lead many to the conclusion that religion is something that needs to be confronted, and possibly defeated,
in order for humanity to survive.

It is quite clear that there is an inherent schism between those who accept science and its ndings, and those
who do not. It is also quite clear that this is a national, if not an international, policy issue. Furthermore,
without science and its methods there is nothing else that the religious can argue their case with than faith,

1 Personally I think both sides of this particular debate are less than rational in their tactics, and it bothers me to no end

that RRS would take that name and so utterly fail to live up to it, but The Way of the Master are truly diabolical and nasty,

employing actual brainwashing techniques in their conversion sessions.

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for science steps outside of faith issues and requires more certainty and rigor of evidence than religion can,
or wants to provide; it will become clear why this is the case as we analyze what faith is.

It is important that we foster understanding in situations like this. Without understanding true debate
cannot take place. When debate turns to schismatic argument, which it must when the two sides have no
common language or when one side attempts to twist meaning, there can be no reasonable outcome. Without
reason we are left to the darkness and the darkness will swallow us all.

In this debate (for it is becoming less and less so as time goes on) there is an inherent disagreement about
language. Though there are obvious fallacies being employed by participants of both camps, in this article I
am going to speak directly to a straw man being employed by members of one side and not always recognized
by the other. That straw man is to redene the word faith so as to have an inherently unfavorable meaning.

A proposed denition
I do not know where this denition originally comes from, but the rst time I ran across it was in reading
the book, The End of Faith, by Sam Harris. In that book, Harris argues quite well that the various
forms of faith employed by the religious is nothing other than total credulity. He declares, as point of fact,
that faith is certainty without evidence. Though his case against religion is quite strong, and the problems
he points out about a particular kind of faith are quite apparent and well reviewed, he is narrowing down a
general word to a specic meaning that he wishes to attack. Unfortunately he claims that this denition is
the only acceptable denition and even goes so far as to attack any disagreement as rationalization to justify
credulity: Of course, anyone is free to redene the term 'faith' however he sees t and thereby bring it into
conformity with some rational or mystical ideal.

Harris is clearly correct when he points out that a very common use of the term employed by religion through
the ages has been nothing more than, believe it because I said so. He and Daniel Dennett both show
quite well how edicts of belief have been put forth by clergy that the religious populace is simply supposed
to accept, on faith. I would also advocate that we ght this kind of faith anywhere we see it, be it in
ourselves or our government.

Since reading Harris's great book I have seen a common insistance on this denition as the correct use of
the term. It has been common to hear, faith is belief without evidence, just about every time the word
is used by someone to describe their belief system. Even further is Pat Condell's (a British comedian and
satirist that posts on youtube) insistence that faith is, by denition unexamined.
2 More and more the
term is derided and bent to mean only those beliefs that are completely unfounded and without reason or
rational examination. Any time someone uses the word they are heckled and told that there is no reason for
their beliefs. Worse still, this ignorant rampage goes on to a truly diabolical, though possibly unintendedly
so, word game.

For religious people there is no objective, material evidence that can be pointed to that will prove their
beliefs. Science, the methodical study of the material world, has never found anything that would indicate
a deity of any sort. Religious belief is based primarily upon testimony and revelation, the handing out of
information, on a personal basis, to the individual themselves by said deity. Neither of these are acceptable
forms of evidence in science, a philosophy built to be as entirely objective and dispasionate as possible. This
means that when push comes to shove, in a debate based on material evidence and scientic scrutiny, religious
believers come totally unarmed. The only thing this leaves them is faith.

Obviously it is not encumbent on the opposing side to take personal faith as a reason to believe in the
religion themselves, and if those of faith expect others to accept their beliefs as truths they need to provide
material reason to do so, but the argument often takes a further turn. The primary form of this is to claim
that the person has no reason for their beliefs. The religious individual will usually, and obviously, disagree
with this and claim that they do have evidence for their beliefs. This is obviously not going to be evidence

2I don't think Harris would even agree with this statement since he quite clearly describes how you can expect the faithful

to act rationally based upon their core beliefs.

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acceptable to the individual they are arguing with, but to them it is evidence none the less. The next step
is to assert that faith means belief without evidence and so, if they indeed have evidence and reason to
believe what they believe then they must not have faith. This is a stab at the core of their belief system
since having faith is a founding principle of their religion. Furthermore, it leaves them with no language
at all with which to explain themselves, for outside of discussions of faith the evidence and reasoning they
have is of no value. Having thus rendered the person incapable of describing their beliefs and the reasons
for them, they must either admit (justly or unjustly) that their entire belief system is baseless or they must
accept a set of rules designed for their failure.

There is no reason behind, or to this attack. The only goal that can be acheived by such is the belittling of
another's belief system without truly giving it examination. It is certainly reasonable to expect that anyone
attempting to convince you of their religion's truth should be ready to provide reason on the listener's terms,
but it is not reasonable to make claims that such people's personal beliefs are irrational, unwarranted, or
baseless without giving adiquate ear.

Though Harris may be right in his assessment of what he perceives as faith his denition is at the least
not entirely correct. It is true that the word has been used thus but it is not the only use of the word and
may not even be appropriate. The word faith has perhaps been misappropriated many times by dierent
groups or individuals with specic agenda. On the one hand we have those who want to ght religion and
stoop to what may be unfair or disingenuous tactics, and on the other we have those who want to enforce a
particular set of superstitions that they wrap up and insist are accepted on faith.

The ocial denition

The primary idea in the word faith is trust. Not only is that almost word for word what the Easton's
1897 Bible Dictionary says about the word but if you look at any other dictionary that is the one idea that
can be seen in all denitions that are not speaking of a system of belief, such as the Christian Faith. For
instance, dictionary.com contains the following denitions for the word:

1. condence or trust in a person

2. belief that is not based on proof

3. belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion: the rm faith of the Pilgrims.

6. the obligation of loyalty or delity to a person, promise, engagement, etc.: Failure to appear
would be breaking faith.

7. the observance of this obligation; delity to one's promise, oath, allegiance, etc.: He was the only
one who proved his faith during our recent troubles.

In the above it is really numbers two and three that we are primarily concerned about, but the others lend
a feel for the word and it's general meaning. The ommitted denitions either support this idea or relate to
the use of the word as a system of values and would seem fairly unrelated to what we want to know.

The question is, are numbers two and three dierent from the other denitions? Are they or are they not
also reections of the general theme of trust? Consider rst of all number two. If I were to use the word
in a sentence to reect that meaning how might it be constructed? I have no proof for my beliefs but I
have faith that they are true. I would say that used in this context the word still conveys the same theme
as the other denitions as I am stating a trust in my judgment, in my feelings, or possibly that I have been
told the truth about the subject at hand.

Next, consider number three. Statements that might reect this meaning would be, I have faith in God,
or, I have faith that God exists, or perhaps, I have faith that God walked upon the earth in the form of a
man, was killed, and rose again three days later. Again, I would have to say that these statements convey
a sense of trust. Trust in God; trust that God is real; trust that the doctrine of Jesus's divinity is valid.
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One question that is often raised is why faith is considered a virtue and why those without it are considered
to be lacking in something vital. Atheists often nd themselves the target of unfair judgment and ridicule
for not having this virtue. If the central theme to the word is trust though this goes a long way toward
answering that question. People who do not trust are often not trustworthy if for no other reason than that
they do not trust that you'll behave in a moral manner and they might act accordingly, such as defecting
in an agreement before you can. There are many problems in relationships that contain no trust and this
goes beyond just interpersonal relationships. Attempting to work with someone who simply doesn't trust
anyone else is a problematic situation; you're often better o not even doing it.

It seems as far as ocial denition goes it is clear that the word's intent is an idea of trust. Furthermore it
works to explain certain phenomina associated with the word among personal perceptions in interpersonal
relationships. That being the case we can further analyze the situation by asking ourselves if trust is always
unwarranted, without evidence, and/or irrational or baseless. Furthermore we can ask ourselves, if we
answer that it is not always thus, if it can never be thus.

I won't go into great detail here but I think it would be quite unreasonable for someone to make the statement
that trust, by denition, is unexamined. I think a great many people would object to that denition at out
and I can say with some degree of authority that my trust is given when deserved. We could debate whether
it is reasonable to assume a position of trust about a new person to whom you've no prior experience, but
we would be crazy to say that trust is never something that is based on reason or evidence.

Going the other way, I think I just gave one example when trust can be given while being completely baseless
and without any form of evidence. Such as when trust is given to someone you've just met who's been
given no credibility by a trusted friend or associate. We can also argue quite eectively that this kind of
trust is very dangerous to the person handing it out and perhaps trust can be handed out in degrees with
some amount of planning for default. I might go as far as to say that trust is not often, if ever, given out
completely but that there is always doubt in the mind of the truster.

Furthermore, if we look at the subject of trust it is not often that we could nd any proof or material
evidence to support it. The best we can muster is past personal experience and in the scientic world this
is exactly zilch. That means that trust itself is without reason if we adhere to the same rigor as we do with
faith. Trust is belief in a person's good intent without evidence. Well, I have evidence and reason to
trust them. Then it isn't trust since you have reason. It's not a productive game.

Use of the word

So what are some uses of the word faith that could help support or counter the thesis of this article, that
faith is synonymous with trust and is beside the point of evidence? I'll consider here a few uses that I
believe are similar to, or exactly are the way the word is used in religious discussion.

First it is important to note that faith is not simply something employed by the religious or credulous but
something employed by us all. Most of what you (think you) know you just accept on faith. By this
I do not mean the faith of religious belief, but something much simpler: the practical, always revisable
policy of simply trusting the rst thing that comes to your mind without obsessing over why it does so.
... Unless somebody publishes a study that surprises us all, we take for granted that the common lore we
get from our elders and others is correct. And we are wise to do so; we need huge amounts of common
knowledge to guide our way through life, and there is no time to sort through all of it, testing every item for
soundness. This was said by Daniel Dennett in his book, Breaking The Spell: religion as a natural
phenominon. That we trust others with the knowing of things we cannot invest the time in knowing is
not something we should, or can, be ashamed of. It is important to our very survival that we do this and
though this trust shouldn't be given irresponsibly, it is clearly necessary that we do so.

Looking closer at religious faith the distinction that Dennett makes between it and his faith seems rather
arbitrary. What is it that people mean when they say they have faith in God? They are telling us many
things but primarily they are telling us who they trust. They are telling us that they trust their instruction,
their instructors, and their culture. Is it odd that most people in the world follow the religion of their
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parents? Not if we keep in mind what Daniel Dennett said about what we know and how much we take on
faith, and why. Who better to trust than our parents? So what a religious person says when they say they
have faith is not very dierent from what the rest of us say when we talk about subjects we are not experts
in. Unless you've personally looked at all the proof and material evidence of everything you believe is true,
you have faith. The question is, is that faith justied?

A third use of faith is closer to what Harris talks about in his book. This is not just a trust in a set of
beliefs, but absolute insistence on them. Not only does a person say, God is thus, but they also claim to
know this as fact. Harris rightly derides this kind of faith in his book when he says, How does a mulah
know that the Koran is the verbatim word of God? The only answer to be given in any language that does
not make a mockery of the work 'know' ishe doesn't. But is this any dierent than the former? Are
we no longer talking about trust? I would say that we are still there; that these people simply trust their
beliefs absolutely. We can certainly question if this trust is given responsibly though, and we can certainly
expect that if they want our trust, our ear, they need to provide something more concrete than, have faith,
since I for one don't just hand my trust out to anyone that insist I give it; quite the contrary, the more you
insist I just trust you, the less likely am I to do so.

A fourth and nal use of the word faith is as employed by those who will say, You just need to take
it on faith, or, You just need to have faith. These two statements are actually quite dierent but are
employed interchangibly. The rst simply says, You just have to believe it. The person making this
statement expects the listener to trust their statements when they can't prove them; they may even expect
such trust with no evidence whatsoever (for faith does not necessitate lack of evidence certainly doesn't
require it either). Obviously this isn't the most convincing argument one can make. The second statement
says that you just need to trust. This can mean any number of things but often means that you need to
trust that there will be a good outcome to events that transpire. It can certainly be a benet to have this
kind of outlook but it is likewise less than convincing for the acceptance any particular belief system.

All of these uses adhere to the central theme of trust. In all uses of the word faith some thing or some
person is being trusted, possibly a group of things or people. The thesis so far holds and I am without an
example that does not short of talking about a system of beliefs such as the Christian Faith. Though I am
no linguist it is not outside of my imagination to see how the latter could derive from the former through
time and use. The Christians have a particular set of values they believe in, a particular set of articles of
faith, and so using faith as a descriptive term for those values seems natural given the intimate involvment
of faith in those beliefs.

Guided by reason?
Now we come to the nal and most important question: can faith be guided by reason? Clearly in many
cases it is not. Superstition and credulity run rampant in the various religious communities. Furthermore,
trust is often given out to people and ideals that are unworthy of trust. One particularly public example
is that of Ted Haggard who clearly demonstrated to the whole world his total lack of credibility but many
people still give him and the people he is with their total trust. They have absolute faith in the instruction
of these miscreants and are thus enablers and puppets of people with questionable values and agendas.

But such is the nature of credulity. To hand out trust willy-nilly without giving thought to why is problematic
no matter what you're talking about. Faith is not something dierent in this regard. Religious zealotry is a
particular kind of faith, to be sure, but as with trust it is not a denitive aspect of faith that it is credulous
or superstitious.

What are the kinds of evidence that can be given to support belief in a religious dogma? Testimony from
people we trust is one. If our parents, people we are basically hard wired to trust, believe a thing we are
more likely to believe it. This is true of everyone. Furthermore, when someone we trust as being a rational
person with good judgment and sound senses tells us something this is evidence as well...for us. It is not
necessary that it be objective to be evidence for a personal belief. It is only necessary to provide objective
and veriable evidence, material evidence, when you wish to convince a larger society that your beliefs are
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valid. We all may rightly question if that trust is warranted, such as with parents who probably also just
believe what their parents did, on back through time so that nobody actually used any real judgment on the
matter, but we can't just assume that a person is irrational or stupid because they trust in a belief system
that can't be objectively critisized.

Another form of evidence commonly employed and accepted to support personal faith is personal revela-
tion. That we trust our own senses and thoughts is not something that should be considered strange or
irrational to anyone. There are certainly demonstratable reasons why we cannot completely trust our own
senses, but this only goes so far. We can always expect that a prudent person will doubt their own senses,
but completely distrust them? That I think is expecting too much of a person. Clearly, what we see,
hear, smell, touch, or taste is only evidence to ourselves and unless it can be veried objectively isn't good
evidence in an argument for the formation of belief in another person or in society as a whole, but in the
formation of personal beliefs such evidence is entirely acceptable.

So is faith completely without evidence? Is it a denitive feature of faith that it is unexamined and without
reason? I have to strongly disagree with anyone that says it is. It is certainly worth questioning any faith a
person has, and those of religious faith will very often express the opinion that faith without doubt is useless
and dangerous (and it seems worthy of note to me that I have noticed a trend among those who insist they
are correct NOT to use the word faith for the reason they believe, but that this word is used by those who
have reasonable doubts), but let us not go that extra step and insist that all people who trust are credulous
and use poor judgment. Let us hear each other out. Some will prove to have twisted and baseless beliefs,
others may have formed their beliefs through MUCH self examination, questions, and doubt.

To conclude I think it well worth questioning how we can be careful not to be taken in by bad faith. How
do we protect ourselves from being too credulous and trusting? How do we keep from being taken in by our
own wishes or the designs of others? Carl Sagan wrote an excellent book entitled, The Demon Haunted
World: science as a candle in the dark, in which he gives us exactly the tool we need. He tells us that
the more emotionally invested we are in an outcome, the more evidence and proof we should require before
believing it. He applies this to his own great wish that there would be contact with an extra-terrestrial
intelligence and explains how carefully he, and others in his eld, carefully scrutinize anything that makes
them think they've found such; he withholds belief until it can be demonstrated to be factual within a
reasonable doubt. This tool of his will help protect you from most unwarranted faith and in the cases when
your faith is ill-constructed and wrong, it won't be as dangerous since you won't be as emotionally attached
to it.