Atheists often accuse Christians of believing things or having “faith” without evidence and like to remind them of the old adage: “faith is believing what you know is not true.” In the eyes of many atheists, “faith” has become a buzzword for putting your intellect out of gear and for believing something without any reason or evidence for it (i.e., blind faith). For example, atheist and scientist Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith, argues that faith is separate from reason and is the absence of evidence:

Faith is nothing more than the license that religious people give one another to believe such propositions when reasons fail. . . . When we find reliable ways to make human beings more loving, less fearful, and genuinely enraptured by the fact of our appearance in the cosmos, we will have no need for divisive religious myths.1

On a more popular level this argument is used by the atheist activist Aron Ra, best known for his YouTube videos, who defines faith in a similar fashion to Harris:

Sometimes I say that faith is an assertion of unreasonable conviction which is assumed without reason and defended against all reason. By that I always clarify that evidence is the only reason anyone should believe anything. I cite apologetics as the practice of systematically making up excuses to dismiss any and all counter arguments in order to rationalize how one could still hold an unsupported and thus unwarranted position, and I cite the ‘statement of faith’ posted by so many fundamentalist organizations to demonstrate how faith is assumed independent of evidence and regardless of it.2

Ra previously described himself as an “apistevist,” someone “who rejects faith as being the most dishonest position that is possible to have.”3 So, not only does Ra claim not to have “faith” but also he argues that those who do have it are being dishonest (even though he misrepresents faith as being without evidence).

A favorite proof-text by atheists (including Ra) to argue that Christians believe without evidence is the apostles Paul’s words: “For we walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7). However, Paul is not suggesting that Christians take a blind leap of faith. He suggests that they base their lives on what God has revealed to be true about the world, as Guthrie explains:

When Paul says that we walk “by faith” . . . he insists that his pattern of life is governed by what God has revealed as true about life: in other words, he trusts God, based on revelation. This faith, moreover, contrasts with walking “by what can be seen” . . . At present Paul cannot see Jesus, or God the Father, or the Spirit, or the spiritual realm, but he trusts God in any case. His focus of life rests on the unseen, eternal realities, known through God’s revelation, even though he cannot physically see those realities (4:18). This is what it means to walk by faith—to trust God on the basis of what God has revealed to be true.4

Although these atheists may have heard sincere Christians wrongly say things like, “oh, you just have to have faith” as if they didn’t need evidence for their belief, this is not supported by the meaning of the words faith or belief that is found in the New Testament.

What Is Faith? THE WRITERS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT NEVER PLACE “FAITH” OR “BELIEF” AGAINST REASON, EVIDENCE, OR TRUTH BUT RATHER THEY USE IT TO REFER TO A CONVICTION OR CONFIDENCE IN SOMETHING. In English translations of the New Testament, the most common word for “faith” is the Greek noun ÀίÃĹ (pistis), and “believe” is the Greek verb À¹ÃĵύÉ (pisteuM). The leading Greek lexicon today lists a range of meanings for pistis, from subjective confidence to an objective basis for confidence, and it shows that it can refer to “that which evokes trust and faith” or a “state of believing based on the reliability of the one trusted, trust, confidence, faith.” PisteuM refers to considering something “to be true and therefore worthy of one’s trust” or “to entrust oneself to an entity in complete confidence.”5 In its classical usage, even before the writing of the New Testament, pistis referred to “conviction,” “certainty,” and “proof” that can be relied on.6 The writers of the New Testament never place “faith” or “belief” against reason, evidence, or truth but rather they use it to refer to a conviction or confidence in something.7 The apostle Paul’s explanation of the content of Christian belief confirms this:

Click for Full Text!