This is a Q&A blog post by Talbot School of Theology’s Visiting Scholar in Philosophy, William Lane Craig.

Question

Dear Dr Craig,

In many conversations with atheists and agnostics, they insist that "faith" means "belief without evidence".

Virtually every atheist I've known defines faith in that way.

It is like an axiom in the atheistic and infidel communities and it is one of the main reasons why they reject religious beliefs.

When I asked them for the biblical basis of such a definition, the overwhelming majority of atheists like to quote Hebrews 11:1:

"Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see."

They put strong emphasis on the "what we do not see" part of that passage, as implying or meaning "without evidence."

Some atheists even dare to say that "apologists like to bypass or ignore such passages in discussions about faith."

It seems to me such a passage doesn't have such a meaning or implication, because we could have evidence for hoping for or believing with confidence in something that we don't see (e.g. that my body is composed of subatomic particles, or that an asteroid will pass near the Earth in the year 3000 or that Aristotle was a man instead of a woman).

Current scientific and historical evidence justifies hoping for or believing with confidence those things even if we can't currently see them. But they are still cases of "confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see," and therefore satisfy the biblical definition of faith.

Hence, this biblical definition seems compatible with having good reasons and strong evidence for what "we hope for and assurance about what we do not see."

Can you comment on the proper meaning of Hebrews 11:1 and its relation with the issue of faith and evidence?

William Lane Craig’s Response

I’m honestly surprised to learn that the attitude you describe is still prevalent among unbelievers! I thought this old canard had gone the way of the dodo. In our present generation, the idea of having a reasonable faith supported by evidence seems to have much greater currency. I guess some people never learn.

At any rate, what you say in response to this interpretation of Hebrews 11.1 is absolutely correct. As the author’s many examples in that chapter illustrate, what he’s talking about are events in either the past or in the future that are not observable by the five senses. Faith is said to be confidence in such non-present realities. Many of the persons mentioned in the chapter had good reasons for what they hoped would happen in the future.

In any case, all this is irrelevant to the rationality of Christian belief. For even if we accept the secularist’s claim that faith is belief without evidence, then the proper response is, “Well, in that case, my acceptance of Christianity is not by faith. For I have good reasons to think that Christianity is true.” Given his idiosyncratic definition of “faith” (belief without evidence), one is not limited to “faith” for one’s knowledge of Christianity’s truth. So ask him, what does he think of your reasons for belief?

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