Some people pointed out that faith seems often to be contrasted with fear (I think the best example is when Peter starts to sink in the storm and Jesus says, “Oh you of little faith.") and also contrasted(I think somewhat less often) with doubt (James, for instance, says the person who asks something of the Lord must “believe and not doubt” or “he will not receive anything from the Lord.” The promise of a mountain moving into the sea when spoken to is another example.

This puts the definition of faith closer to Danny’s definition (one that I admit is common in some Christian circles and very common in the secular world). But, in the New Testament, I still don’t think faith usually means holding blindly to something that doesn’t make any sense to you at all, but rather, the sort of faithfulness that means that when you are confronted with two conflicting realities you make a choice out of a sense of commitment to a person/Person. For instance–Jesus is walking on water and you are too, but past experience says this is impossible, but you decide to believe that walking on water is possible because you decide Jesus is trustworthy. Or, a more earthly example, you choose to continue to trust a spouse’s love despite situational evidence to the contrary because of past experience or even because of a felt, inexplicable, awareness of that person’s love.

Of course, here faith can be a virtue, but it can also very quickly become a vice if, for instance, a victim of abuse faithfully stays in a relationship in ways that are destructive to all involved. The faithfulness needs to be well placed, and, like most potentially very good things, can also be very bad if misused/misplaced.

There’s evidence. The question is whether or not you believe that it is good evidence. I do. And I take it that you don’t. It is good and right to demand evidence that would support what one believes.

I hope you continue to find answers in your search for truth.

If this is not what faith is about, then what is it? If belief is based on evidence, then I’d like to see the evidence that Christianity is anything other than a human invention.

You are correct to find a fallacy with this definition of faith. I would submit that “Christians” who take this view of faith are incorrect. And there are plenty of well-meaning, thoughtful Christians who would disagree with this definition as well.

I think my definition of faith probably is closer to something like “holding to your the principles” or “living according to the things you think are true.” This applies equally to the construction of iPods (see the comments on Danny’s earlier post on Faith if you’re confused) as to belief in God.

I don’t think “faith” in the New Testament could have meant simply believing in something in the way we think of it today. If it did, Jesus’s commands to “Believe in me” would not make sense. He was right in front of them, after all. To believe in him wasn’t a matter of believing that he existed like someone might believe Santa exists, but rather being faithFUL to him and what he was saying. The Philippian jailer was told “believe in the Lord Jesus Christ,” presumably before they had said anything else. The blind man asks Jesus “tell me who the Son of Man is so that I might believe in Him.” These uses of the word, I think, make more sense if one reads “be faithful” instead of “believe” where “pistos” occurs in the Greek. Even the English word “belief” (according to “etymonline.com") seems to have originally meant to “hold dear or love". Intellectual assent to an abstract and unproven concept seems to me a later invention and more Greek than Christian in some ways.

At first I was sort of excited by your translation as “faith in things you have faith in” because such a translation sort of supports my definition. Faith is being faithful to what you know. After looking at the Greek myself, though, I think the verse means something more like “Lived faithfulness, is a testimony, the hard evidence, of the things we’re all hoping for but haven’t yet seen.”

The evidence of the lives of those who lived faithfully is proof that what we hope for is real. Moses, Rahab, etc. all lived faithfully, and the Old Testament narrative (which would not really have been in doubt to the author’s audience) confirm this was the right choice. Some folks, it’s true, were sawed in two or otherwise died before things worked out for them, but when we (that is, the early Christians) look back “we” can see that their faithfulness was merited.

You (Danny) still say you believe, though you don’t yet know why, in the “illusion” of free will, and in something like a morality not based on survival of the fittest. When I follow these things through to their conclusion and I (at least) end up at something that starts to resemble a Christian worldview. Faith, I think, is living out these things one intuitively “knows” but for which proof is (perhaps) forthcoming. There is a danger in being unwilling to revise what one “knows” in the face of incontrovertible evidence (as, you point out, even Augustine says). But, I think there is no less a danger in deliberately rejecting those things one deeply feels to be true, even if they cannot be proven by a particular ontological structure.