Is Faith Irrational?

​Some years ago on one of his broadcasts, Bill Maher defined faith as “the purposeful suspension of critical thinking.”1 Similarly, Richard Dawkins, Neil deGrasse Tyson and others have defined faith as “believing something in the absence of evidence.”2 But are these definitions of faith accurate?
In preparation for a lecture I recently gave on this topic, I decided to check the world’s foremost authoritative source for all things pertaining to the English language, namely, the Oxford English Dictionary. Featuring 20 volumes and over 21,000 pages of content, the OED is not the typical dictionary you are likely to find in an average household. But thankfully, it is now accessible through an online subscription, so I created my own account, and began investigating the true meaning of the English word “faith.”


One thing that becomes clear with an exhaustive dictionary of this kind is that just about every word in the English language happens to have multiple definitions. And, as it turns out, the word “faith” is sometimes used in a variety of ways. Sometimes it refers to an oath of loyalty (as with “a good-faith promise”), but it can also refer to a system of religious belief, such as “the Muslim faith.” But among all the varying definitions I was able to discover in the OED, one I was not able to find was the idea that faith is “believing something in the absence of evidence.” In fact, what I actually found was the complete opposite. According to the OED, one of the definitions of faith is this: “Belief based on evidence, testimony, or authority.”3

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Among the citations included as an example of this definition of “faith” is a selection from a book by Isaac Watts written in 1725 titled, Logic, or The Right use of Reason in the Inquiry after Truth. Here is the relevant passage:

Is Faith Irrational? | The Heidelblog
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