by Ryan Thomas

Created on: September 17, 2008   Last Updated: November 15, 2008

In the words of renowned atheist Richard Dawkins, "Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence." To the atheist community, the word "faith" embodies the epitome of human ignorance, and the way Dawkins defines faith, I would tend to agree with this assessment.

However, the question must be asked: is this what "faith" really means? Does Dawkins' definition represent an accurate understanding of faith, or is he merely building a strawman that he can knock down with powerful rhetoric and insults? I would argue for the latter.

Unfortunately, Dawkins' understanding of faith is what has come to be generally accepted by modern Western culture. Academia has been especially influenced by Dawkins and his fellow atheist crusaders. Many religious people have even begun to adopt this intellectually bankrupt view of faith, for it alleviates the believer of any responsibility to engage in any rational inquiry of their beliefs.

The truth is that this definition of faith is an oversimplification, for it fails to distinguish blind faith from rational faith. Blind faith allows an individual to believe whatever he or she wants to believe without having to provide any justification for that belief. Rational faith on the other hand requires a belief to conform to the dictates of reason and logic.

We exercise rational faith every moment of every day. The belief that the computer you are reading this on even exists requires some level of faith, however small it may be. This is because our physical senses are not 100% reliable. Schizophrenics experience hallucinations that seem very real to them, and just looking at insects on the TV can cause some people to feel bugs on their skin. Oftentimes we cannot even distinguish our dreams from reality. The famous philosopher Rene Descartes coined the phrase, "Cogito, Ergo Sum", or "I think, therefore I am" because he recognized our inability to prove with absolute certainty that anything else existed by utilizing only our physical senses. He proposed that the only genuine knowledge we can ever attain is knowledge of our own existence.

The element of faith is more properly understood as a bridge between the gap of uncertainty and belief. If we required absolute proof of a belief in order to accept it, then we could believe absolutely nothing except that we exist. It goes without saying that this would have disastrous implications on society and life as we know it. This is why faith is required to bridge the gap between the uncertainty caused by the fallibility of our senses and any given belief.

Faith and reason are not opposing concepts that are constantly striving against one another in the epic battle between ignorance and enlightenment; rather, they are complimentary and necessary components of rational belief. To believe in God is therefore not an intellectual death sentence as Dawkins would have you believe. Many of the best and most respected modern philosophers and logicians have been Christians, or at least believed in some form of God. While it may take a little more faith to believe in God than to believe in your next-door neighbor, the concept of God can still fall well within the realm of reasonable faith. I personally don't have enough faith to believe that Universe created itself from thin, er, nothingness, but that's just me.

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