I had a conversation with an atheist friend of mine, I said a few things back but felt I didn’t really make a good point. Here’s what he basically was saying:
"Faith by its very definition is belief without evidence or in spite of evidence.
This is in contrast to reason which requires evidence. therefore by definition faith is unreasonable.
This does not mean all beliefs are unreasonable. Merely the ones which require belief without any evidence.
As Douglas Adams put it, when one man has a delusion they call him mad, when many people share a delusion they call it religion.
This is true of things which require faith, however many religions are about a little more than just faith. You do have a level of moral codes and other rules, the problem often lies when this are dogmatically followed.
I see dogma and indoctrination as an enslaver of humanity, a way to prevent people thinking critically, very often this is done to children by threats of physical abuse (torture in hell) This is no different to the way child abusers operate."
What would anyone suggest I’d say?
Your friend is right, quite frankly. “Faith” without “evidence” (or a fact) is not reasonable at all, rather it’s a nice thing we do on Sundays to make ourselves feel better about our impending deaths.
Faith, that is true faith, is a method of knowledge. This is where atheists fail (and really, where many Christians do too). True faith is something that is real, something that impacts the human reality. Let me make it clear: It is unreasonable to ask anyone, including yourself, to “believe” in something without a reason to do so. And simply “believing” in something because you don’t want to “go to hell”, or because it makes you “feel good” isn’t a real reason either.
Your friend should consider this (and perhaps you too, if you believe faith and reason are separable, incongruous, incompatible): Let’s say you are friends with a guy named Carlo. You and Carlo are good friends. You trust Carlo implicitly, because it is reasonable to trust him. That is, Carlo has proven to you, in distinctly human ways, he is a trustworthy person. Carlo always paid you back when he owed you money. He was always there for you when you needed him. He never lied to you. He always told you the truth about politics, about candidates for public office, about banking, about finances, about history, about industry. You trust him because it’s reasonable to do so. It’s reasonable to do so, because your experience with him has shown you this.
Now let’s say Carlo meets up with an old friend he hasn’t seen in a while, let’s call her Georgia. Carlo meets Georgia at an airport one day when they are both flying to different business meetings in the same city. They are both good friends so they begin talking about the old days, and about other friends you and Carlo both knew from before, but have lost touch with. Eventually, Georgia tells Carlo, “Remember Roberto, the guy who sat in the back of Biology class? The one always getting into trouble? He’s in Istambul now, helping the poor! Can you believe it?”
Now at this point Carlo has no reason to doubt what Georgia says about Roberto. Carlo knows Georgia, trusts her (just as you trust Carlo) so, even though he can’t verify Roberto’s situation himself (since there are no phones where Roberto is now, no computers, which Carlo and Georgia both laugh about since Roberto always loved being in constant touch!), and this is the most important point: CARLO BELIEVES WHAT GEORGIA TELLS HIM ABOUT ROBERTO, WITHOUT HESITATION.
Why? Why should Carlo believe what Georgia says? Because he trusts Georgia for the same reason that you trust Carlo. Because it’s REASONABLE to trust Georgia. For purely human reasons. Note, I’ve not said one thing about some kind of “mysterious God force”, not one mention of some kind of “metaphysical abstract”. This is humanity I’m describing. This is REALITY.
So when Carlo gets back home and tells you about Roberto, you believe him. Why? Because again, it’s reasonable, for HUMAN reasons, to do so. It’s reasonable to do so, for reasons any rational person can see. In fact, it would therefore, by definition, be UN-reasonable for you to doubt Carlo, simply because you can’t verify Roberto’s existence for yourself, physically. This is reality. This cannot be denied.
Thus we can see that “reality”, that is “knowledge” is not only conveyed to us by our 5 senses, directly. There’s also a form of knowledge, called “indirect knowledge”, that is EQUALLY AS VALID as “direct knowledge”: This is knowledge through a WITNESS, or mediation by a witness. It’s perfectly reasonable as I’ve demonstrated above to rely on such witness for the acquisition of knowledge. It’s perfectly reasonable to call knowledge gained in such a way a “fact”: It’s a fact that Roberto is in Istanbul. It’s a fact you accept without question, JUST AS IF you had gone to Istanbul and seen for yourself.
The exact same level of confidence in the fact is achieved, as if you had gone and seen Roberto yourself, with your own eyes. Thus, you don’t need to go to Istanbul, see Roberto working with the poor, to believe it yourself. You believe it already, as if you had already been there.
This is the level of confidence that MUST be achieved for every human, to “believe” in anything. Thus, it’s not unreasonable for an atheist to say what he said above about “faith”; it’s simply unreasonable for him to deny that OUR faith can (and truly is) based on a reality as certain as if we had lived 2000 years ago with Christ.
It’s based on the mediation of a witness, trusted, for truly human reasons apart from the “religious”. Eventually, our faith grows from that, based in reality on our own experiences, but the true “seed” is this reasonable assurance of the method of knowledge that is, TRUE FAITH.
