Faith Doesn't Mean What You Think It Means

It never fails that you start a conversation with someone about religious faith and the conversation moves to the notion that because the entire universe isn't completely understood by science, that much of science is built on postulates that have not been proven and that are often found to be at odds with observations, then science is based on "faith".  I was asked a question the other day that went,

"Do you have faith that the light will come on when you flip the light switch?"

I'm always amazed how easily people get mixed up about what the word "faith" means, especially educated people.  In fact, it's usually about this point in the conversation that I begin to suspect they may be purposely trying to manipulate the semantics of the conversation in order to purposefully confuse the issue, but I usually try to give them the benefit of the doubt because the two meanings of "faith" are quite similar.  You see, in the English language, it's very common for two words to sound alike and even be spelled the same, but have different meanings; broadly speaking, these are homonyms, but they can be broken down much further. 

You see, "faith" can mean several completely different things, as any dictionary can confirm.  Though your dictionary may phrase them differently, among the many possible definitions for "faith (n.)" that it will list, the following (in no particular order) are of interest to us here:

1. A belief that is not based on evidence.
2. Something that is believed with strong convictions.

These two are of of particular relevance to the religious when talking about their belief in beings that inhabit an inaccessible realm.  Here's how they use them:

1. A belief that is not based on evidence. 
This is seriously important for Christianity.  The Bible goes out of its way to let people know that this is a serious virtue.  In fact, the Bible describes this very specifically.

• In John 20:29, Jesus has just convinced "doubting" Thomas (who doubted he had actually come back from the dead) by allowing him to touch his wounds.  Having convinced Thomas only by direct evidence, Jesus makes it clear that he would have much preferred people just take his word for it and says plainly "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe."  
• In Hebrews 11:1 it says that faith is "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen".   

So, in the Bible, a belief without evidence is the understood context of all confidence in the teaching of the Bible itself.  How convenient!  To truly experience God, one must abandon one's need for empirical evidence in order to establish valid claims of things as basic as existence and simply engage in exchanging on a one to one basis wishful thinking for fact.


Science hates this type of "faith".  In fact, science demands just the opposite; in the realm of science, one must have a valid reason to believe in something that is based on more than just a desire for it to be true.  Scientists do not have this type of faith.



2. Something that is believed with strong convictions.
Basically, this is synonymous with having "confidence" in a person or thing to be as one expects it to be.  Everybody feels this type of faith about some things, but sometimes for different reasons.  

In the context of religion, Christians believe strongly in the existence of God without evidence because, as we just saw, they're directly instructed to!  It's part of the deal.  In fact, the more strongly you believe in that which you have no evidence for, the Christians say, the "stronger your faith".  If you give your life over to the teachings of the Bible completely and believe everything it says is true and divinely inspired, it is said that you have "great faith".  During times of turmoil, when a person starts to doubt that God is watching over them, Christians would say that person is experiencing a "crisis of faith".  In this context, Christians both "believe strongly in something" and do so "without any evidence". 


Outside of the context of religion, well, we all pretty much use this second definition the same way.  We typically only believe strongly in things where we we have direct or indirect evidence to support our belief.  We humans are learning machines and we see the world through the lens of our own observations.  We are continually testing and retesting of the consistency of our experiences and seeking patterns.  Every time we reach for the light switch, it's a small science experiment in our minds.  Our hypothesis is that the light will come on when the switch is flipped (this is why we typically reach for them) and this is based on thousands of direct observations about the normal effects of flipping a light switch.  It's likely most people have a handful of experiences where this didn't hold true, but these data outliers are unusual and infrequent to the point where we normally believe, with a fairly strong conviction, based on our own direct observations and experiences, that when we flip on a light switch, that it will electrically connect a device in the vicinity that is capable of producing visible light.  We do not "strongly believe in" that the light switch will turn on a light "without evidence", on the contrary, we have a huge amount of evidence for this, which is why we believe it so strongly.   


So, is all faith a virtue?  It depends where you stand, but moreover, it depends what you mean by "faith".  Not all "faith" is the same.   Science is okay with some faith.  No scientist is going to say they don't have "faith" in the sense of a strongly-held belief that electricity works and is real; even though they can't see electrons moving directly, their presence can be demonstrated in dramatic fashion and their behavior is so consistent that we have developed complex mathematical and practical frameworks around how to harness their power to do things like wake us up for 6am for work or display blog posts on our computer monitors to read.   Of course, science wouldn't say that all strongly-held beliefs are of equal virtue and neither would you.  If someone claimed to you to strongly believe that they could do something ludicrous, like walk on water, you probably would not lend that persons belief any credence at all merely on the basis of the strength of their belief.  No matter how strongly they believed they could do it, our experience would tell us that it takes a lot more than a particular belief to make something physically possible.  

Most people would agree than simply believing something without any reason to believe it is not a virtue at all, but is, in fact, some sort of strange unnatural state of being.  Christians, on the other hand, suspend this notion in the context of religious doctrine, but even they embrace it everywhere else and would probably call anyone who claimed to actually be their messiah crazy until he actually performed a miracle in their presence.  


No, not all "faith" is the same.  The problem is that these two meanings are -so- closely related in the context of religion that it's often difficult to tell which one people are using.  Maybe it would be better if when we stopped using this word altogether.  I propose that henceforth when someone wants to say "you believe in something strongly", they say "a high degree of confidence" instead of "faith".  "Confidence" is neutral and doesn't have an alternate meaning that means "confidence without any rational reason" like "faith" does.  When people mean, "faith" as in a "belief without evidence", how about instead of "faith", we use the phrase "an irrational belief".  We can add "strong" as a modifier to the latter in the case of religion if you like:  

Some examples:

"You have faith that the sun will come up tomorrow." 
...would become...
"You have a high degree of confidence that the sun will come up tomorrow."


"I have faith that I can perform brain surgery on myself."
...would become...
"I have an irrational belief that I can perform brain surgery on myself."


"I have faith that a spaceship is following the Hale-Bopp comet and we should all kill ourselves in order to evacuate the planet and join the spaceship!"
...would become...
"I have an irrational belief that a spaceship is following the Hale-Bopp comet and we should all kill ourselves in order to evacuate the planet and join the spaceship!"


"I have a lot of faith that God is real."
...would become...
"I have a strong irrational belief that God is real."


No?