The Myth of “Blind Faith”
The atheists idea of Christian faith. Ironically, this definition could also be turned around on atheism.
“You want to build a rocket and send it to space? Science will help you with that and it will work. Faith won’t send you to space.” - Angry Atheist Comment
During a recent exchange on social media with an atheist, she retorted to my Instagram post with this comment. Which just had me sigh, yet again. Atheists keep perpetuating this idea that Christianity is just “blind faith” in the unknown, with no reason or logic or evidence behind it. Which is ironic since the exact opposite is true. Atheists insist believing in a Creator is like believing in the Greek god, Zeus, the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus.
However these atheist comments merely reveal the lack of understanding of what faith is… and not just Christian Faith, but good ole’ plain regular everyday faith. Because everyone has faith. Everyone not only has faith, but everyone relies on faith every single day of their life without even noticing that they are doing so.
Trusting That - Trusting In
The first thing to realize is that as far as biblical Christianity is concerned, the word faith is synonymous with "trust.” And this definition applies outside of Christianity too. Essentially, there are two basic ways we trust: “trusting that” and “trusting in.” And the best way to illustrate this is with an example from my own life.
Cessna 172
Sometime in my early thirties, my best friend at the time, Tony, a very successful dentist, decided he wanted to be a pilot and proceeded to take lessons. After he did his solo flights and got certified, he called me a few days later and invited me to go on an flight with him, leaving out of Seattle for a 90 minute flight up to land at a tiny landing strip on Orcas Island in the San Juan Islands. I agreed and met up with him at the airport where I watched as he went thru the preflight checklist. Then we got in, buckled up and taxied out to the runway in the tiny little two seater rented Cessna.
Now, let’s clarify a few things here: Up to this point, I had never actually seen my friend take lessons; had never seen him fly a plane or do his solo flights; and I had never checked to see his license to see if he was actually certified to fly. In other words, I personally had no physical proof or evidence that Tony actually knew how to fly a plane. And since I myself had no idea how to fly a plane, my life was literally in his hands. If he messed up that could very well be my last day alive.
Right here you could perhaps say I had blind faith in Tony. And yet, I actually had very good reasons to believe I would have a fun, exciting and safe flight to the San Juan Islands and back. Because of our friendship for nearly a decade at that point, I knew several important things about Tony:
He was highly educated and very smart.
Since we were fitness and sports buddies, I knew first hand that he had excellent dexterity and hand/eye coordination.
He was very professional and a leader in his field of dentistry - he had high standards for himself in everything he did.
Knowing these things about Tony, gave me a reason to have the faith/trust that he was actually certified and that he had the skills and knowledge of how to fly safely. So that summer afternoon I got in the plane and put my life in his hands. I “trusted that” Tony had the training and certifications it took to fly safely. But then I had to “trust in” Tony by not just “trusting that” he could fly, I had to literally place my life in his hand by “trusting in” him to do so.
“Trusting that” is the mental side of things. I intellectually trusted that he had the training and credentials to fly. “Trusting in” is the emotional side - it’s where the rubber meets the road. This is where I had to trust in Tony enough to put my life in his hands. It’s easy to believe that a roller coaster is safe as we watch others ride it… but getting on one ourselves is a whole different matter.
For some reason, atheists keep trotting out this “blind faith” trope. Yet the Bible never calls for blind faith: “But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.” - 1st Peter 3:15
Jesus did not call for blind faith either, He constantly provided proof and evidence for his claims: Now when John heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” And Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. - Matthew 11:2-5
Now, I admit I think Christians themselves have a great deal to blame for this misperception, because many cannot give coherent reasons for their belief and so it appears to non-believers that they are just believing blindly for no good reason, or perhaps for emotional reasons. But then, that applies equally to ALL people, religious or not. There seem to be very few people, atheist or religious, who can offer intelligent, articulate, reasoned arguments for their positions.
Turned Around: What happens when you replace the word Faith with Atheism?
Everybody Has “Blind Faith”
Every day as you drive to work you have faith that the cars that have the red light will stop while you barrel thru the intersection. You have to trust that they will stop or else you’d never be able to drive to work. Think about the “blind faith” required to catch a flight in a commercial airline. You have to trust that the plane is air worthy, that the mechanics have done their job properly, that the airline has kept up the maintenance, and that the plane won’t encounter a flock of birds and blow out the engines and be forced to crash land in the Hudson river. In most cases, you never even physically see the pilots of the plane. You have to trust that they are not hung over, over worked, tired and or suicidal. Notice how much “faith” is required to simply catch a flight. This process of having faith that and having faith in, is so pervasive in our lives we don’t even realize we’re doing it:
We relax on a bus when we don’t know the driver; we relax on a plane when we don’t know the pilot; we relax on a cruise ship when we don’t know the captain.
Another good example is of getting married. When you first meet your potential spouse, you don’t know them at all. Blind faith would be deciding they’d be a good spouse after just one date. That would naturally be silly. However, if you had a two year engagement filled with road trips, daily work grinds, getting to know each other’s crazy families, mistakes, arguments and make ups… by that point you’d have a fairly good idea of what kind of person they are and what kind of spouse they’d be. And yet, it would still require a “leap of faith” to take the next step of commitment and get married. It’s a leap of faith because there is no guarantee of success. But it wouldn’t be a “blind faith.” It would be an informed faith based on prior evidence and history. That is the faith spoken of in the bible.
There Is No Such Thing As Absolute Proof
Recently, I watched a video where a young coed on campus told a Christian speaker that she would never believe in Jesus or the bible without “100% proof.” As soon as I heard that, I knew that was an impossible standard. We can’t have absolute proof about anything. There is a reason our courts of law use the term “beyond a reasonable doubt” when declaring someone guilty even when there are numerous witnesses, video, audio, confessions, etc. Because doubt will always exist no matter how much “proof” we may acquire. So the question always come down to what is a reasonable level of evidence to believe something? It takes approximately 8 minutes for light to travel from the sun to the earth. For all we know the sun went supernova 5 minutes ago. We won’t know if it did or not for another 3 minutes. We cannot prove the sun will still be shining 3 minutes from now, but it’s a reasonable belief that it will still be shining based on experience, history, a basic understanding of solar lifetimes, etc. I had a reasonable belief in Tony’s ability to fly a plane even though I had no personal first hand proof because I had enough historical evidence that pointed to his abilities and reliability.
So we’ve established that everybody exercises faith on an everyday basis. The question then becomes is that faith, that trust, a reasonable faith based on reason and evidence? Atheists claim Christian faith is not. But why should we listen when they can’t even get the basis of the Christian faith correct? This attack on “faith” is really a straw man argument to discredit Christianity without the integrity of actually addressing its real points head on.
Anytime someone attacks an opponent’s position using such things as strawman arguments or ad hominem attacks, it becomes immediately clear that they only do so because they don’t have a valid, substantial basis for their position. If they did, they wouldn’t need to resort to such fallacies, misdirection or misinformation.
Is It Reasonable To Believe In A Creator?
This great quote by Dr Frank Turek sums it up perfectly:
“You believe in a lot of things you’ve never seen. You believe in your mind. Have you ever seen it? No. You believe in the laws of logic. Have you seen those? No. You believe in gravity. Have you ever seen gravity?… No. You’re not seeing gravity, you’re seeing the effects of gravity… And that’s how we know God. We know God by his effects. We see a creation; we know there must be a Creator. We see design in the universe; the cause must be a Designer.”
A Mountain Of Evidence (excerpted from my article “The Intellectual Absurdity of Atheism”)
Here are just a few of the hundreds of logical, scientific and rational arguments for the existence of a Creator. This will be kept short as each topic requires entire books to adequately cover. These are extremely strong philosophical arguments, backed by scientific evidence that grow exponentially stronger with each passing year.
The Fine Tuning Argument: As cosmological science has progressed, scientists are increasingly discovering just how much the universe is ridiculously fine tuned to a razor’s edge to simply exist let alone support life. The Fine Tuning Argument explained. Three Illustrations That Demonstrate the Degree to Which the Universe is Fine Tuned. God’s Crime Scene.
The Moral Argument: Every law has a law giver. There is a moral law. Therefore, there must be a moral law giver. The Moral Argument explained.
The Ontological Argument: If God possibly exists, then God must therefore actually exist. The Ontological Argument explained.
The Cosmological Argument: Whatever begins to exist has a cause. The universe began to exist. Therefore the universe has a cause. The Kalam Cosmological Argument explained.
The Information Argument: DNA & Information - Specified, complex information only comes from a mind. The Information Argument explained.
The Contingency Argument: Why is there something rather than nothing? The Contingency Argument explained.
The Teological Argument: All designs imply a designer. There is great design evident in the universe. Therefore there must be a Great Designer of the universe. The Teological Argument explained.
The Cumulative Case Argument: When the evidence from many different sources all point to the same conclusion. The Cumulative Case Argument explained.
Why Should We Believe In The Bible - And Not Another Religion?
Greg Koukl of Stand To Reason addresses this:
“Lots of people have spiritual experiences. Any Mormon can tell you of his experience with Jesus, the created spirit brother of Lucifer. Jehovah’s Witnesses experience the incarnation of Michael the Archangel. New Agers experience Jesus the Ascended Hindu Master. Each has an experience, but each can’t be right. Which is the true Jesus? What objective authority separates wheat from chaff?”
Over and over again, the bible tells us to “test the spirits:” Test, examine, reason, question and determine what is true. Unquestioned belief is never demanded or even encouraged. Truth does not need to be defended - only lies fear the light of day. So how then do we determine which Jesus is the real one? How do we determine if Christianity is true or some other religion is more true? Turns out it’s actually not that hard: See my article, “The Most Hated Verse In The Bible.”
No One Should Believe Anything Blindly
As a lifelong atheist, I didn’t come to believe in the God of the Christian bible in my mid 50’s from blind faith. A lifetime of skepticism, along with a very pragmatic and critical mind demanded logical, reasonable explanations I could sink my mind into. Thankfully, I discovered apologetics where a great number of extremely educated scientists, philosophers and scholars provided an intellectual, scientific and philosophical basis for my understanding of the bible and Christianity. Because of them I have rationality, logic and objective truths as a bedrock foundation under my feet for my trust in the God of the bible and His Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Below are a few examples of how atheists misrepresent the idea of faith. Click any image to enlarge for better reading.
