Faith is arguably the cornerstone of every religion. At the lowest level, every religious believer must have faith in the god of their religion, and there are often doctrines and dogmas involving that particular god which are taken on faith as well. Since the time of the Greek philosophers, countless attempts have been made to associate faith with logic and reason. Despite how many believers have maintained that the existence of their god is self-evident, famous arguments have been offered to provide a more 'sophisticated' basis for belief. Understandably, some people are not content with the notion of having unwavering commitment to an idea, and so they have turned in search of reason and evidence for their beliefs. This is not a bad thing, but the problem is that, however you try to spin it, all faith is blind, by definition.

I. What is Reason and Why Does It Matter?

Anytime you try to determine the truth of something, you are using reason. When you see an object in the road and you decide to swerve away from it, you are reasoning that it would be safer to avoid the object than it would be to run the risk of popping a tire or damaging your vehicle. You might make this decision after factoring in previous experiences, the size and sharpness of the object, and other bits of knowledge and evidence. If it's something small and soft, like a rag, you may just proceed to run over it, especially if there is a car in the lane next to you. Reason tells you that the rag is no match for your tires, and it also tells you that there is greater risk involved if you swerve anyway and hit the car beside you. In this example, the object in the road and the car next to you are evidence that factor into your decision, while your previous experience driving over objects, your experience with the durability of rubber tires, and perhaps your experience running into other cars is all knowledge that contributes to your decision too.

Faith is another means for assessing the truth of something, but it is the opposite of reason. Faith wouldn't just be running over the object and hoping it doesn't puncture anything, faith would be driving with your eyes closed. If you are taking any criteria into account, you are employing reason in your estimations, not faith. Misguided reasoning is not the same thing as faith either. Faith is blind to things like evidence and logic accumulated through knowledge. You wouldn't see the object in the road or the car next to you at all, and yet you continue cruising along. Religions like Christianity prize faith precisely because it rejects evidence and reason for a complete trust and reliance on god. "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding," Proverbs 3:5 says. Reason is "[our] own understanding."

Is reason valuable? Religion does not seem to think so, and we are often told that god's ways are higher than our ways, and thus every attempt to understand things on our own will be unsuccessful in the long run. All of our human thinking over things like the object in the road and the car next to us pales in comparison to closing your eyes and letting god lead you. Most modern Christians would argue that such an application is not what scripture intends, while they advocate applying faith to much bigger and harder questions about our universe. But if reason can guide us so well even on minor details, why should it suddenly be discarded when more significant issues are raised? The margin for error increases proportionately to increases in the global significance of an issue. Throwing away our most useful tool for detecting errors would be a horrendous idea, and history testifies to this.

Unquestioning devotion has led to tremendous amounts of bloodshed, death, suffering, and destruction over the centuries. Whether we're talking about faith in a god, faith in a person, or faith in an ideology, disaster has ensued. Without the freedom of dissent and opinion, there is only tyranny, and reason leads directly to the recognition of those freedoms, because there is always evidence readily available that all of us are humans and deserve all the same rights. Faith sees no point in dissent or opinion, unless they strengthen that pre-existing and unwavering commitment. To live by reason is to live carefully, thoughtfully, and intelligently. To live by faith is to live in blissful ignorance. That's not to say that reason is all that matters, only that when truth is of concern, reason will come shining through where faith will only make things worse.

Some religious believers recognize this fact and have tried to incorporate reason into their faith. For the remainder of this article, we will examine the notion of 'rational faith' and see why it is a contradiction in terms.

II. Justifying Faith

Christian apologetics is itself an attempt to rationally justify faith in the bible and Jesus Christ. According to the apologist, faith can be compatible with evidence and logic and does not need to be an unwavering commitment. The website rationalchristianity.net has composed an article that argues in favor of this kind of rational faith.

What are these reasons to believe? According to the author, one can learn them by visiting a church, praying for a revelation, talking to Christians, reading the bible, and so on. Everything proposed in the article is a very one-sided engagement of the Christian religion, with no concern for presenting objective evidence or answering contradictory knowledge. Nothing is mentioned about investigating the history of the church, the history of the bible, talking to ex-Christians, or studying the work of religious scholars with an expertise in Christianity. Kept at a simple level, close to the already devoted followers, these pieces of advice are just what fosters blind faith. This is best illustrated in another statement made in the article.

The example of other Christians is to be considered as evidence for the truth of Christianity? The author only names one type of believer and conveniently omits the bitter, angry, and judgmental type, as well as the lazy, careless, and superficial type. If nice and faithful Christians testify to the validity of the Christian faith, what do all the other types tell us about Christianity? How friendly someone is to you is no good indication of whether or not they believe what is true. A used car salesman can seem friendly, make you feel important, and yet lie to you right through his teeth. Warm and welcoming Christians are probably not lying about their feelings, they may be quite convinced of what they believe and their honesty with you may be 100% genuine. However, that still tells us nothing about whether or not their religious belief is correct or rational.

The problem with considering any of this advice as a rational basis for faith is that, once again, it is not very rational. Experience is of little merit unless it is founded on reason or evidence, because different people can experience the same event and walk away with completely different interpretations. The bible also contains plenty that seems contrary to our experience (miracles are violations of the laws of nature, and we experience these laws on a consistent basis every day). Every book is also written in a manner that most of us will find relatable in some way or another, and yet it does not follow that the whole text can be accepted as true simply by that fact. This goes for the author's statement on the 'historical accuracy' of the bible too. You cannot verify individual portions of a book historically and then assume the rest of it is just as authentic. By that thinking, one could read The Iliad, learn that Troy is an actual historical place, and then incorrectly assume the entire text of The Iliad is a historical work.

If we have seen nothing else from exploring this article, it should be that any attempt to rationalize faith will fall short. Previous endeavors to this effect have led to some incredibly confusing doctrines, such as that of the trinity, the fully man and fully god nature of Jesus Christ, and the notion that omniscience somehow does not conflict with free will. Faith is not meant to be reasonable, otherwise it would be known as reason and not faith. This is nowhere more clearly stated than in the bible.

III. What the Bible Says

Notice the certitude implied for faith by this verse in Hebrews. Faith is being "sure of what we hope for", "certain of what we do not see," and logic and evidence are not taken into account. The very notion of rational faith is an oxymoron according to how faith is defined in the bible. There is nothing rational about convincing yourself that what you hope for is true or convincing yourself that what you do not see is really there. These are both contrary to reason and human experience. Hebrews 11:1 encourages faith IN SPITE of evidence and logic, not faith accompanied by them.

In the gospel of John, Jesus appears after death to his disciples in a locked room, instructing the doubting disciple Thomas to feel his wounds. Jesus then sharply rebukes him, saying "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." Once again, this is encouragement to faith in spite of evidence and logic, not faith accompanied by them.

According to this passage, god's existence is self-evident and there is no reason to question or doubt it. Somehow his "invisible qualities" have been "clearly seen". This is not merely encouragement to blind faith, it is a discouragement to be skeptical. A tribe living undisturbed in the most remote region of the globe, never having heard anything of Christianity, could be condemned by this verse, since god's invisible qualities are somehow easily observable in nature and "men are without excuse."

Christians who wish to portray their faith as rational will offer up several bible verses in defense as well. One example is Proverbs 1:7, which says "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline." Other examples are 1 Thessalonians 5:21 and 1 Peter 3:15. All of these deal with rationality from a very biased and distorted standpoint. Obedience to god is equated with knowledge and wisdom - reason and logic are redefined into a dependence on faith. 1 Peter 3:15 only instructs believers to answer those who ask questions about their faith, it gives no specifications for whether those answers should be rational and objective or experiential and subjective. Lastly, 1 Thessalonians 5:21 is a passage very frequently taken out of context by apologists.

Paul is actually encouraging his readers not to dismiss prophecies and not to be too skeptical of the works of the spirit. The passage is not an advocation of total critical thinking, it only tells us to test the claims of men who allegedly act in the name of god, and not to be so hasty in declaring them frauds or lunatics. Paul wants us to question the inspiration of certain followers (and he surely had opponents and rivals in his day), but realize that doubt is not allowed for matters of the religion, where "men are without excuse." This is particularly interesting when considered alongside Paul's assurance in Galatians 1:11-12 that his gospel is not made up, it is nothing short of a divine revelation from Christ himself.

Why should we just take Paul at his word though, and why take any Christian at their word, like the folks at rationalchristianity.net seem to suggest? In fact, this is where the entire edifice of 'rational faith' breaks down.

IV. The Irrationality of Faith

Faith is irrational by its very nature. Every principle of faith may be peeled back in layers to an underlying assumption that is both irrational and unverifiable. The bible is the word of god? We know that the bible was written by men, and indeed every book in history has been, so there is nothing rational about assuming a book authored by men is the word of god. How would we find out if god inspired men to write his book? None of us can get into the heads of the bible authors and know just exactly what was going on. They could have knowingly written a lie, they could have written down the words of someone else who lied to them, they could have written their interpretation of an event under no divine inspiration, and they could have simply experienced a hallucination that motivated them to write. Believing the bible is the word of god is an article of faith both irrational and unverifiable.

The issue of god's existence is just as problematic. It may seem entirely reasonable for many people to think there is a supreme intelligence behind our universe, but rationality is not structured on popular opinion. Not long ago it seemed only logical to believe that the gods caused crops to grow, that they cast lightning bolts down to earth, and that disease was either due to demonic possession or wrought as punishment for disobedience. With the advent of science, we were able to see these ideas as mere assumptions, quite detached from reality. But reason could also dispel those assumptions even in their day, as Socrates famously challenged the idea of rain being the work of Zeus by noting how the appearance of clouds corresponded with rainfall.

One reason why god is an irrational concept is that the definition of god is unintelligible. Hundreds of different deities have been imagined in the history of humankind, some are creators and some are not, some intervene in human affairs while others do not, and some are all-powerful and all-knowing while others are not. There is far from any consensus on what god really is, and before we can declare that something exists, we have to know what we're looking for. However, a greater problem arises when we realize that god is almost always proposed as a supernatural agent - a metaphysical being outside the natural world. There is no possible way of verifying or proving the existence of a being that is not subject to the laws of science. Even after rain was proven to be a natural phenomenon of water evaporating into clouds, many Christians still argue that god has a role in it, because he created the laws that govern things like rainfall.

That is, of course, a completely unverifiable statement of faith, and it shows why falsification is important. Without the ability to check and confirm the truth or falsity of an idea, there's no reason to think that people aren't just making stuff up. In his book The Demon-Haunted World, Carl Sagan made the claim that a fire-breathing dragon lives in his garage. To skeptics who might notice the empty garage apparently has no dragon in it, he explained that it is an invisible, incorporeal, and floating dragon that breathes heatless fire.

I have referenced Christianity a lot throughout this article, but practically everything I have said holds true for other religions too. Every religion boils down to at least one basic and required tenet: believing that a god exists. Theists, and even Deists, all maintain faith in a superior being. However, as was just explained, god is an irrational and unverifiable concept. Therefore, all religions are guilty of faith and all faith is blind. If one could really believe in god on the basis of logic and evidence, there would be no need for faith, and yet faith is arguably the cornerstone of every religion.

V. Where Faith Does Not Reach

Wait a minute! Doesn't everyone have faith in something? Don't you have faith in your loved ones? Don't you have faith that when you drive a car, you're not going to be killed in an accident? Without faith, I don't think we would have the courage to do much of anything in life.

This perspective is one put forward by a lot of people in our world, when something like faith is questioned and denounced. It expresses a general misunderstanding of the concept of faith. We do not blindly trust our loved ones though, nor do we get into a car and simply drive without any thought. Trust is contingent on evidence and experience. We tend to trust people who we know, people who have not wronged us in any significant way. Our love for a person may occasionally drive us to trust someone we would not normally trust, but as I stated before, misguided reasoning is not the same thing as faith. If you reason that your loved one deserves your trust, and you accept the risk of having it violated, you have still used reason and not acted on the blind thoughtlessness of faith.

As for the driving example, we do typically factor in some evidence and logic before we head out on the road. If it is particularly bad weather or if your tires are flat, most sane people will not just ignore such things and try to drive anyway. It is not operating on faith to go about one's day without taking every little possible worry into account either. It is possible that you could die in a car wreck, but experience tells us that we have survived many trips in the past, and unless there is some good reason for us to fear for our safety, it is perfectly rational to take the risk involved with driving. Faith is not a part of it, but reason certainly is.

Many theists accuse atheism of being a faith structured around science, the non-existence of god, and other things. Atheism actually has nothing to do with science, and no atheist should have to answer for the theist's failure to be informed, but the truth is that most atheists understand that science doesn't have all the answers. Science is only the best working method that we currently have for comprehending the functions of our universe. But atheism, which literally means 'without theism', cannot be a 'scientific faith' - there is no logical progression that can be made from one to the other. If a person does profess faith in science and they happen to be an atheist too, their faith is in addition to atheism, not because of it.

It is also illogical to suggest that one can have faith in the non-existence of anything. Do we take it on faith that leprechauns or fairies don't exist, or is it the belief in those creatures that is based on faith? The onus of proof is on the person making a positive declaration. To prove that something does not exist may be practically impossible, because every imaginable and unimaginable avenue would need to be exhausted before such a claim could be factually made. On the other hand, proving that something does exist is quite easy. A living specimen can be presented, a fossil can be found, footprints might be discovered, and so on. To prove the existence of a thing does not require an exhaustive knowledge or search of all imaginable and unimaginable avenues. Therefore if someone claims that god exists, it is their responsibility to provide proof for their claim. The position of the atheist is a negation of faith though, and it justifies itself by demonstrating how the theist's proofs fail. If the theist does not provide proof of god's existence, it is something taken on faith. The atheist cannot be accused of having faith in something which she has no reason to believe in.

VI. The Lie of Faith

Faith is not a virtue. "Everything in moderation," as the adage goes. Why should it be thought virtuous to maintain unwavering devotion to an idea, simply for its own sake? Even freedom and liberty have their limits, where they intersect with the freedom and liberty of others. In a world without faith there would still be trust and belief. Trust and belief are capable of moderation, but faith is nothing other than excess, since it is "being sure of what we hope for" and "certain of what we do not see." The moment that faith is tempered with reason and evidence, as trust and belief may be, is the moment that it ceases to be faith. We are a consciously 'grown-up' species, and yet we are now capable of causing greater destruction than any other. It is high time we move past the comfortable, mythic certitudes and the ignorance-is-bliss mentality and take responsibility for our actions. Faith is irresponsibly shirking the gift of critical thinking that we possess.

1. How can faith be rational?. Retrieved Feb. 5, 2009.
2. Sagan, C. (1996) The Demon-Haunted World. p.171. Ballantine Books: New York.
3. Jefferson, T. Letter to Peter Carr, August 10th, 1787.