In Christianity, blind faith is good faith

[Randy Carson]

There is no evidence of Jesus written by eyewitness. We have hearsay accounts after the fact.

Such "evidence" would be thrown out of any halfway decent court.

Nope. In a court of law, circumstantial evidence is given EQUAL WEIGHT to direct evidence. 


Circumstantial Evidence Definition: 


Evidence which may allow a trial judge or jury to deduce or logically infer a certain fact from other established facts, which have been proven.

Justice Best in the 1820 case, King v Burdett:

"When one or more things are proved, from which our experience enables us to ascertain that another, not proved, must have happened, we presume that it did happen, as well in criminal as in civil cases."

A presumption of fact.

In some cases, there can be some evidence that can not be proven directly, such as with an eye-witness (known as direct evidence). And yet that evidence may be essential to completely prove a case.

In these instances, the lawyer will complete the evidence by providing the judge or juror with evidence of circumstances from which a juror or judge can logically deduct, or reasonably infer, the fact that cannot be proven directly; it is proven by the evidence of the circumstances; hence, "circumstantial" evidence.

Fingerprints are an example of circumstantial evidence: while there may be no witness to a person’s presence in a certain place, or contact with a certain object, the scientific evidence of someone’s fingerprints is persuasive proof of a person’s presence or contact with an object on which the fingerprint was found.

In 1854, Justice Maule gave this example in R v Burton:

"If a man go into the London Docks sober without means of getting drunk, and comes out of one of the wine cellars very drunk ... I think it would be reasonable evidence that he had stolen some of the wine in that cellar...."

In 2004, the Canadian Judicial Council gave this example:

"(A) witness might say that he or she had seen someone enter the courthouse lobby wearing a raincoat and carrying an umbrella, both dripping wet. If you believed that witness, you might conclude that it was raining outside, even though the evidence was indirect. Indirect evidence is sometimes called circumstantial evidence."

In a criminal law context, the Alberta Court of Appeal stated, in R v McEwan, that:

"On the one hand it is said that circumstances cannot lie.

"On the other hand it is said that truth is stranger than fiction.

"For my part I cannot but think that there is ordinarily greater certainty in proof by direct than by circumstantial evidence. In the case of direct evidence error may arise from mistake or untruthfulness. 

“In the case of circumstantial evidence the same chances of error arise and there is the additional chance of error in fallacious inference by the Court. But whether I am right or wrong in the view that I have expressed, no useful purpose is to be served by contrasting two methods of proof which are in no sense opposed the one to the other and each of which is in daily use to complement the other.

"Proof by circumstantial evidence being a matter of logical reasoning from facts admitted or established in evidence there is always the danger of the tribunal of fact, whether it be Judge or jury, jumping to conclusions from certain facts without due regard to other facts which are inconsistent with the hypothesis which the first set of facts seems to point to....

"There being no direct evidence, the case must rest, on the circumstantial evidence alone, and the general rule is that to amount to proof such evidence must be not merely consistent with guilt but inconsistent with innocence.

"(T)he Court should be satisfied not only that the circumstances proved are consistent with the commission of the suggested act but that the facts are such as to be inconsistent with any other rational conclusion than that the evil act was in fact committed."

REFERENCES:
Duhaime, Lloyd, Legal Definition of Direct Evidence
Duhaime, Lloyd, Legal Definition of Evidence
Duhaime, Lloyd, Legal Definition of the Rule in Hodge's Case
King v Burdett 1 St. Tr. (N.S.) 111 (1820)
R v Burton 1854 Dears. 284
R v McEwan [1933] 1 DLR 398[/font][/size][/color]

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In the context of religion, faith is believing things without proper evidence.  If one uses proper evidence, there is no need for the word "faith" at all.  This is somewhat obscured by the fact that, like many words in English, it has multiple definitions:

What is faith? St. Thomas Aquinas defined it this way:

 
    The Act of believing is an act of the intellect assenting to the Divine truth at the command of the will moved by the grace of God. (Summa Theologica II-II.2.9)[/INDENT]
 
In this definition, there are three things at work:
 

1. God’s grace initiating a response from the person;
   
2. The human will responding to God’s grace and, in turn, acting upon the intellect;
   
3. The human intellect, responding to the command of the will, assenting to a divinely revealed truth.
   

 
The grace of God is primary and precedes an act of faith. The will makes a free choice to respond to the grace of God. The intellect responds to the command of the will and assents to a divinely revealed truth.
 
Faith is not based upon emotions or upon a lack of reasoning but a choice to believe something is true because a trustworthy authority has told us it is true. Divine Faith is believing something to be true based upon the fact that God said so.
 
Most of what we know in life is based upon our human faith that someone else who tells us something is a trustworthy authority. For example, we trust our doctors to tell the truth about our health, we trust scientists to tell us about the world around us, and we trust historians to tell us what has happened in the past. In the same way, we exercise divine faith when we trust in something that God has said to be true.
 
The Crucial Question
 
How do we really know that God has spoken? Specifically, how do we know that Christianity is true and other religions are false? Aquinas said that Christianity is reasonable to believe for three reasons:
 

1. Some of the beliefs of Christianity can be known by natural reason alone apart from faith: that God exists, that there is only one God and that He is the creator of all things. Demonstrating that these parts of the Christian faith are true lends credibility to the rest of Christian belief.
   
2. Other aspects of the Christian faith cannot be demonstrated by reason, but it can be shown that they are not in conflict with reason. For example, the doctrine of the Trinity cannot be demonstrated from reason, but the Trinity can be defended by reason which can show that the doctrine of the Trinity is not unreasonable.
   
3. The Christian faith can be shown to have come from a Divine Source due to the miracles and prophecies that accompany it.
   

 
So, are there miracles and prophecies that accompany the teachings of Christianity? Jesus seemed to think so.
 
John 10:37-38
If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me. But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.”