I find it disturbing that some of my fellow atheists dismiss theism as merely a matter of faith or emotion. This begs all the interesting and important philosophical questions, such as what faith is, what emotion is, whether faith is compatible with reason, how emotion is related to reason, whether belief in God is properly basic (i.e., such that it requires no justification), and whether there is any evidence for theism.

If faith is belief in the absence of evidence (or reasons), then theism need not be, and for most people is not, a matter of faith. The overwhelming majority of theists believe in God on the basis of evidence, including the evidence of religious experience. The evidence is all around us: in every flower, in the orbits of the planets, in the diversity of life. The teleological argument for the existence of God proceeds as follows:

1. The universe appears to be designed.

Therefore, probably,

2. The universe was designed (from 1).

Therefore,

3. There is a supernatural designer, viz., God (from 2).

The first inference is inductive, the second deductive. The premise (proposition 1) is a factual claim that even atheists can accept. (I, for example, accept it.) Debate centers on the strength of the inference from 1 to 2. There is nothing in this argument that requires faith. The other great theistic arguments—ontological and cosmological—also cite reasons in support of the proposition that God exists. The former is a priori, the latter a posteriori. Both are deductive. Anyone who says that theism must rest on faith hasn’t studied these arguments.

If faith is belief in the absence of conclusive evidence (or reasons), then, admittedly, theism is a matter of faith, for few theists would claim that there is conclusive reason to believe that God exists. The teleological argument, for example, claims only that God’s existence is probable on the evidence. Note that by this standard, even scientific beliefs are a matter of faith, for scientists never claim to have conclusive evidence for their theories. They claim only that the theory in question has withstood repeated, rigorous testing. Whether it will continue to do so remains to be seen. Think about it. Scientific reasoning must be inductive, else it could not generate new knowledge about the world. Deduction purchases necessity at the price of informativeness. Induction purchases informativeness at the price of necessity. Even scientists can’t have both informativeness and necessity.

So either (1) theism is not a matter of faith or (2) both science and theism are matters of faith. I can’t think of any sense of “faith” in which theism but not science is a matter of faith.

As for emotion, it is not incompatible with reason (even if it is sometimes an impediment to it). Each of us is both rational and emotional, albeit in different mixtures. That belief in God makes people feel a certain way, or experience certain emotions, doesn’t mean that it’s based on emotion. This confuses the ground of belief with an accompaniment of it. Most of our beliefs make us feel a certain way, but we don’t thereby dismiss them as groundless. For example, my belief that the Detroit Tigers won the 1984 World Series is accompanied by a number of distinct emotions, such as pride and joy. This goes no way toward showing that it’s groundless. Theistic philosophers such as Alvin Plantinga and Richard Swinburne are as hard-headed and rational as any atheistic philosopher. Each has made important contributions to metaphysics and epistemology. If you want emotion, read Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens. Their contempt for theism—and for theists—is palpable.