The New Atheists win the argument before it starts by defining the word “faith” as believing things with no evidence. The Bible never used the word that way.
The most effective move in the New Atheist playbook is not an argument at all. It is a definition. Richard Dawkins and the writers who followed him built their case on a particular meaning of the word faith: faith, they argue, is belief without evidence — blind trust held in spite of evidence, the very opposite of reason. Once that definition is granted, the debate is over before it begins. Reason on one side, faith on the other. The thinking person and the believer can no longer even sit at the same table.
Take the argument at its strongest, because it deserves that. If faith really meant deciding to believe things for no reason, or clinging to a conclusion the facts have already overturned, then Dawkins would be right to despise it, and so should you. A faith that runs from evidence is not a virtue. But here is the problem the New Atheists never address: that definition of faith is not the Bible’s. It is one they supplied and then defeated. And you cannot claim victory over a position by inventing it for your opponent.
The way the Bible actually uses the word
Open the New Testament and watch what the writers do with faith. They do not oppose it to evidence. They ground it in evidence and then ask for trust on the basis of it. John says so outright about why he wrote his account at all:
Therefore many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name.
John 20:30–31, NASB1995
“These have been written so that you may believe.” That is evidence offered in service of faith — recorded events presented so a reader can weigh them and trust. Luke opens his Gospel the same way, and he sounds less like a mystic than an investigator:
…it seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order… so that you may know the exact truth about the things you have been taught.
Luke 1:3–4, NASB1995
Investigated carefully. Consecutive order. The exact truth. This is not the vocabulary of blind belief; it is the vocabulary of a case being made. And Luke tells us that after the resurrection Jesus “presented Himself alive… by many convincing proofs” (Acts 1:3). The word for “proofs” is the term for demonstrable, compelling evidence. The biblical writers are not asking you to switch your mind off. They are handing you testimony and asking you to reckon with it.
The claim that invites its own disproof
Here is the fact that should end the “faith is evidence-free” caricature for good: Christianity staked its entire truth on a public, datable, falsifiable event and then dared the world to check. Paul does not hedge. He writes that if one historical claim is false, the whole religion collapses and everyone should walk away:
…and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain… and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins.
1 Corinthians 15:14, 17, NASB1995
Read that as an atheist and marvel at it. Paul hands his critics the knife. He names the one thing that, if disproven, ends the argument in their favor — and then he points them to the witnesses:
…He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep.
1 Corinthians 15:5–6, NASB1995
“Most of whom remain until now” is an invitation to cross-examine. Paul is telling a first-century audience that the majority of five hundred witnesses are still alive — go ask them. That is not the behavior of a man peddling blind belief. That is a man producing evidence. A faith that names the fact which would destroy it, and then produces the witnesses, is the opposite of the thing Dawkins described.
Historians who study the period, believing and skeptical alike, tend to grant a core set of facts that any honest theory has to explain: that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified and buried, that His tomb was found empty, that His followers were convinced they saw Him alive afterward, and that this conviction turned frightened men into people who would die rather than recant. You can argue about the best explanation of those facts. What you cannot do is pretend the Christian is believing in the teeth of the evidence. He is trying to account for it.
Everyone is living by faith of the ordinary kind
There is a second problem with the New Atheist definition, and it is closer to home. Trust grounded in evidence — which is what biblical faith actually is — is not the religious person’s odd habit. It is how every human being, including the atheist, gets through the day.
- You trust that your memory is broadly reliable, though you cannot step outside it to verify it.
- You trust that the universe is orderly and will behave tomorrow as it did today — a conviction no experiment can prove without assuming it first.
- You trust testimony — the vast majority of what you “know,” including most of your science, you have never personally verified. You believe it on the reliability of witnesses.
- You trust that your reasoning tracks truth — the one assumption you must make before you can argue for anything at all.
Dawkins’ confidence in science is itself a form of warranted trust — reliance on evidence, testimony, and the orderliness of nature. That is exactly the structure of biblical faith. The believer is not doing something alien to reason; he is doing the same thing the scientist does, and extending it to the best explanation of a wider set of facts. The word for that is not blind. It is the word the writer of Hebrews chose:
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
Hebrews 11:1, NASB1995
Assurance. Conviction. Not a wish. Not a leap into the dark. A settled confidence — the kind you place in a person whose character and track record you have come to know. Biblical faith is not believing without reasons. It is trusting Someone you have reason to trust.
The honest question underneath
So do not let the debate be won by a definition slipped in before the first fact is examined. When someone tells you faith means believing without evidence, answer plainly: that is not what the word means in the book you are talking about. Then move the conversation to where it belongs — not “is faith irrational,” but “what actually happened to the body of Jesus, and what best explains the men who died insisting they had seen Him.”
Because in the end the New Atheist and the Christian are asking the same thing of each other: follow the evidence. The gospel has never been afraid of that request. It was written down, in order, so that you would examine it — and having examined it, believe, and in believing, have life in His name.
Teaching the Word. Watching the Times.
— SmithForChrist