My Fellow Atheist

[tavarish]

Then what would you define as faith, Arcanus?

Being persuaded and fully committed in trust, involving a confident belief in the truth, value, and trustworthiness of God. When it comes to Christianity, 'faith' is defined by three separate but vitally connected aspects (especially from Luther and Melancthon onwards): notitia (informational content), assensus (intellectual assent), and fiducia (committed trust). So faith is the sum of having the information, being persuaded of its truthfulness, and trusting in it. To illustrate the three aspects: "Christ died for ours sins" (notitia); "I am persuaded that Christ died for our sins" (notitia + assensus); "I deeply commit in trust to Christ who I am persuaded died for our sins" (notitia + assensus + fiducia). Only the latter constitutes faith, on the Christian view.

Consequently, notitia and fiducia without assensus is blind and therefore not faith. This shipwrecks the egregious canard that faith is merely a blind leap. Faith goes beyond reason—i.e., into the arena of trust—but never against reason. From the Enlightenment onwards, faith has been subject to constant attempts at redefining it into the realm of the irrational or irrelevant (e.g., Kant's noumenal category); but all such attempts are built on irresponsible straw man caricatures that bear no resemblance to faith as held under the Christian view: notitia, assensus, and fiducia.

(NOTE: "Christ died for our sins" is an example, not the sum, of notitia or informational content.)

Very well put, and it's a breath of fresh air to have someone illustrate their definitions so clearly.

I do have a few qualms with this however:

By your admission, faith would be defined more as trust than blind belief. This would pretty much equate the faith required for a belief in God with the faith that a particular weather forecast is correct. Both require information, assent, and commitment to the subject material in one way or another.

However, the fact that a belief, spouted by many to be the product of an objective, absolute, and very well defined God has to have objective evidence to back up that claim. Without it, any subjective faith would be irrelevant and hold importance solely to the believer. I fully make the claim that faith by itself does not constitute irrationality, but faith in a God that is not objectively verifiable traverses into the realm of delusion and at the very best, wishful thinkin on the part of the believer.

Given all three of your criteria, faith in God would be administered as the product of a particularly persuasive argument, and not of objectivity and necessary falsifiability. Just because an argument is persuasive enough to convince someone does not make the actual concept true or false, nor will it persuade people with a higher standard of evidence. To the outsider without evidence, it's easy to perceive that the believer practices in blind faith, even if they are absolutely convinced of their claims.