Faith Is Not Blind: We All Believe in Something

It is often assumed that faith is synonymous with irrationality—an abandonment of reason, logic, and evidence. And in conversations with skeptics, the charge is frequently leveled that religious belief is a blind leap unsupported by any objective grounding. The challenge goes like this: "Try applying your faith-based reasoning to any other part of life, and it collapses. You wouldn't cross the street on 'faith' alone—you'd look both ways. So why suspend that standard when it comes to religion?"

On the surface, this seems like a powerful critique. But upon closer examination, it's built on a profound misunderstanding—not just of religion, but of what faith actually is, and how often we all, including skeptics, use it.

Faith in the Everyday

The dissenter claims, "To make unsubstantiated assumptions in any other area of your life would result in failure." But is that true? Let's start with something simple: love. Can you prove you love someone by empirical means alone? Can you prove you are loved back—down to the molecular level? If your partner smiled at you today, do you call that an objective sign of love? Maybe. But is it possible to imagine someone smiling while hiding deceit? Of course. The act is objective, the meaning is not.

Love, hope, forgiveness—these are not objectively measurable phenomena. They are deeply subjective experiences. And yet, they form the very core of what it means to live a good and meaningful life. To reduce them to cold calculus or neural firings is to strip them of their essence.

One may wonder: "Would you love your spouse if they showed no objective signs of affection?" But, in reality, the question is flawed. It presumes love is primarily transactional. That its validity depends on measurable returns. But to love someone is not to tally what you can extract from them. True love sees the other as an end in themselves—not a means to your own gratification. This mirrors the love that God has for humanity—not based on what we can offer Him, but on who we are.

The Illusion of Pure Objectivity

Perhaps the greatest irony in this discussion is that those who reject religious faith often do so on the grounds of wanting only what is "objectively verifiable." But this, too, is a kind of faith—a belief that human reason and empirical methods are capable of accessing the ultimate truth of reality. That the world exists independent of the mind. That our senses can be trusted. None of these are provable beyond doubt.

Indeed, as Descartes showed, even the very existence of the external world cannot be proven. All we can truly know is that we are thinking beings. Everything else is inference. To live is to trust—trust that the floor will hold you up when you get out of bed, that your memories are real, that the world won’t dissolve behind your back. We don’t think twice about it, but we live by faith every day.

Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.

— Psalm 20:7 (NIV)

When Reason Becomes an Idol

And here's the deeper danger: when we elevate reason and empiricism above all else, we don’t eliminate faith—we simply reassign it. But now it's faith in our own limited faculties. We start trusting not in God, but in the creations of our own minds: methods, models, scientific paradigms. When reason becomes the final authority, it stops being a tool and becomes an idol. And like all idols, it eventually collapses under the weight of what it was never meant to bear.

This is what the Lord says: “Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who draws strength from mere flesh and whose heart turns away from the Lord.”

— Jeremiah 17:5 (NIV)

When we idolize our intellect, we are doing exactly what Isaiah warned against: bowing down to the work of our own hands, and our own minds.

All who make idols are nothing, and the things they treasure are worthless. Those who would speak up for them are blind; they are ignorant, to their own shame. Who shapes a god and casts an idol, which can profit nothing?... No one stops to think, no one has the knowledge or understanding to say... ‘Is not this thing in my right hand a lie?’

— Isaiah 44:9-10, 19-20 (NIV)

Paul echoes this very idea when he says that even the most brilliant worldly wisdom is utter foolishness before God:

For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight. As it is written: “He catches the wise in their craftiness”; and again, “The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile.”

— 1 Corinthians 3:19–20 (NIV)

Faith as Foundation, Not Escape

Christianity does not demonize reason. On the contrary, it prizes wisdom, logic, and discernment. But it does not worship them. The Church has always taught that reason is good, but it is not God. It is not the foundation of all things. It is a lamp, not the light itself.

Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, who does not look to the proud, to those who turn aside to false gods.

— Psalm 40:4 (NIV)

The Christian claim is not that you must abandon thought to believe. It is that belief comes first, and understanding flows from it. Faith is not the opposite of reason—it is the prerequisite for its fullest expression. For it is only through faith that we recognize that there is something beyond ourselves, beyond our senses, beyond our categories.

So the question is not whether you have faith. You do. Everyone does. The real question is: What is the object of your faith? Is it science? Power? Yourself? Or is it the One who made all of it?

“For understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore, do not seek to understand in order to believe, but believe so that you may understand.”

— St. Augustine, Tractate 29:6 (on John 7:14–18)