Common among many atheist arguments is the presupposition that the act of “faith” is something that, if done, is done instead of relying on evidence, perhaps even in opposition to relying on evidence. According to this view, faith is something exclusively reserved for religion, and science is proffered as an alternative to faith, relying as it does on empiricism, which is to say reliance on direct, testable observation. Of course, the very notion of relying on evidence implies that one is performing an act of faith in evidence, for faith, coming from the Greek term pistis (πίστις), means to trust in or to rely on, to have conviction of the truth of something, from peithō (πείθω), which means to be persuaded, as in by argument or demonstration, and not only as regards transcendental matters but mundane also.
A certain problem thus immediately arises for the atheist, a problem which ought to be raised, because to restrict faith to such a narrow, religious range of meaning is to stack the deck against religion in order to isolate acts of faith from acts of reason, and through the fallacy of special pleading exclude the many acts of faith that atheists commit each day. For example, an atheist will say that it is not “true” that God exists, but within that statement is presupposed some notion of truth.
Now, truth is invisible. Truth cannot be seen or heard, but must be abstracted from what is seen and heard. One may see many true things, but the things themselves are not truth. Truth is being claimed about some aspect of those things, but the truth itself is not those things. And yet, atheists typically affirm that they believe in truth.
Likewise, logic is unseen. One can see evidence for it in various types of statements, but logic itself is not empirical, and transcends the instances in which it is discerned. What is more, concepts are not empirical, one may see ink on a page, but the word written there is only mentally perceived, and certainly the concept which is expressed by the word is in itself non-empirical. And yet, atheists purport to rely on logic.
Again, love is concealed from the naked eye. One may observe many acts of love, but love itself remains hidden from view. For example, a mother may provide her child some hot chocolate on a cold winter day, and through this act one might perceive that there is love present. On another cold day, a person could order a hot chocolate from a coffee shop, and perceive in this act no love is present. Of course, the situation could be reversed and the mom be said to have no love, and the barista to be most loving. The point at hand, however, is that love is not an identity with the act of giving hot chocolate. The love itself is invisible, and the mere act of giving a drink is insufficient to determine whether or not love is there. And yet, atheists will often extol the real value of love, basing claims of accusation against religionists on a perceived lack of love.
What is more, peace is invisible. Peace is not simply the visible act of not fighting, or the visible act of sitting still. Even if one were to identify an act of peace, one must yet have an abstract criteria which transcends the act and which enables the act to be described as peaceful. One does not “see” peace, one perceives the invisible peace via empirical percepts.
Yet again, gravity itself is invisible. People see things fall all the time, but seeing something fall is not seeing gravity itself. One can test for the effects gravity may have on an object, but gravity itself is out of empirical view. In fact, many scientific realities are not directly verifiable empirically, only the effects they have on the things that are being measured.
In sum, there are many invisible, non-empirical “things” that most atheists would grant are in some sense real, especially in cases such as gravity. The question remains, how does this relate to faith, especially to “religious” faith?
St. Paul describes the nature of faith: “Now faith is the substance [ὑπόστασις, hypostasis] of things hoped for, the evidence [ἔλεγχος, elegchos] of things not seen. … By faith we understand [νοέω, noeō] that the worlds have been framed by the word of God, so that what is seen hath not been made out of things which appear [φαίνω, phainō]” (Hebrews 11:1, 3).
In other words, faith is the intellectual substance or substructure of what is not immediately present to the senses. Faith is that act which perceives what is only mediately present through phenomena (φαίνω, phainō). Faith is the organ, so to speak, by which one understands (νοέω, noeō) and interacts with that which undergirds phenomena, what ties together the disparate experiences of the senses into a rational construct or hypostasis. Faith is the mind’s noetic substantiation of invisible, non-empirical realities, including such things as truth, logic, love, and gravity. For example, love produces many effects, but the effects of love cannot be a mere identity with love, otherwise a hateful barista’s giving of a hot chocolate would be indistinguishable from the act of love of the tender mother giving her child the same type of drink on a wintry day. Faith is thus the mind’s transempirical perception of such things as love, and also the means by which one performs empirical acts of love.
Moreover, St. Paul does not describe faith as: “faith is in the substance of things hoped for.” Neither does he define faith as: “faith is… in the evidence of things not seen.” Rather, faith is itself the substance and evidence or proof of things distant and invisible, i.e. that which is not known by the senses but discerned by the mind. Faith is thus something much more substantial and epistemological, for it is that by which we understand (νοέω, noeō) the invisible things or causes in which phenomena are rooted. In other words, an object’s visible falling is rooted in the invisible thing or force called gravity, and faith is the operation of the human mind by which one can perceive or understand that gravitational force which gives rise to the empirical falling.
Since gravity itself is not sensed, only its effects on various objects, faith is the epistemological process by which we connect the effects on those various objects to the source of those effects, i.e. gravity. In short, even though gravity is invisible, we have faith that there is such a thing called gravity because we understand the evidence, i.e. its effects, and perceive these effects as unified in a thing called gravity. Likewise, we have faith that our mother loves us because the various actions she performs visibly can be hypostatically unified in what is understood as love.
In this sense, faith is understood as the normal process of understanding from sensory experience that which is not itself reducible to sensory experience, and as such bears a resemblance to the cognitive process of abstraction, though in the case of faith it also includes that by which one can perform acts of or from that noetically perceived hypostasis, for example acts of love. It is also that by which we can receive these realities through their effects, as in, say, receiving acts of love as acts of love. Faith is, as such, not only that by which we understand these things, but also that by which we connect with, enact, and receive them. In other words, we can measure gravity, share love, live in peace, receive justice, know truth, give mercy, and celebrate beauty, when none of these things are in themselves strictly reducible to the empirical; and the means by which we engage with these invisible realities is embedded in the epistemological process termed faith. Despite being manifest through evidence, they transcend the evidence, and so it is said that we have faith in something, say love, and then point to the visible evidences of it.
Just as a hand is what enables us to grasp a ball, faith is what enables us to noetically “grasp” love, truth, logic, peace, etc. Moreover, just as one sees by means of eyes, it is likewise by means of faith that one perceives love, truth, logic, peace, etc. On the basis of its perception, faith is what opens the possibility of giving and receiving love, having the perception and conviction of truth, using and assessing logic, seeking and pursuing peace, etc. Just as the eye enables the mind to perceive physical forms or objects, so faith enables the mind to "see" or perceive the aforementioned noetic forms or “objects.” Faith is, in this sense, the eye of the mind; it is, as it were, the life or activity of the soul.
And so, when an atheist says they don’t rely on faith, or believe in invisible realities, but only empirical data, we can point out that this is untrue. Simply believing that there is some truth is itself the evidence in their belief in the invisible reality called truth, and their reliance on (i.e. faith in) it in acts of reliance on (i.e. acts of faith in) empirical data. Of course, God is truth, and insofar as an atheist relies on truth, he relies on God. Likewise, God is love, and insofar as an atheist advocates love, he advocates God. God is also pure being, and insofar as an atheist believes things have being, he is pointing to the hypostatic reality of God. God, although He is much more, is also the principle of order, the Logos, and so as much as an atheist declares order in the universe, he declares the principle of order, which is God. The atheist is unable to work out the balance of all these attributes or unify them in the single concept called God, mostly because of an excessive reliance on the empirical and a deep misunderstanding of the God concept, and also because of bad behavior by religionists. Nonetheless, the atheist performs acts of faith in non-empirical realities, and must in order to function as a human being, for faith is among the most typical of human activities. Only through the fallacy of special pleading can he deny this.
