Board index ‹ Faith and Knowledge

[Newbie]

What is faith to you? When you use the word faith, what are you talking about? How does this faith express itself in your life? I notice that a lot of atheists have definitions of faith that differ from mine significantly.

[jimwalton]

Faith is an assumption of truth based on the evidence (and faith is always based on evidence) that makes it reasonable to make that assumption. When I go to sit in a chair, I can't be 100% that it will hold me (chairs occasionally do break). But I've sat in this chair 100 times, my eyes tell me it looks the same, and so I plant my rear in it, believing and assuming it will hold me. It's the same when I turn the key to start my car (I have faith it will start), going to the store (I have faith it's still there), or thousands of other things in daily life. It's what the author of Hebrews claims in Heb. 11.1: “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” There is a certainty based on evidence, though because it is not seen it is subject to faith, just like the store in my previous example. A blind person cannot distinguish color, but color is a real thing, and its reality is unaffected by whether or not the blind person is able to appreciate them.

There are certainly different kinds of existence. The existence of the chair behind you is very different from the existence of memories, or the thoughts in your brain. Your car in the driveway exists in a different way than, say, time does. Physics cannot and does not cover the whole of reality; it's only a slice of it. Faith is an assumption of truth based on evidence that makes it reasonable to make that assumption. If your friend tells you they bought you a ticket to a concert, you'd get in the car (by faith) and go with them, because you have all kinds of evidences (your relationship with them, their tone of voice, their body language, etc.) that make it reasonable for you to believe what they are telling you. I find the same dynamics and realities in my relationship with God.