When it comes to faith healing in the Peter Popoff mould, though...go Dawkins!

When it comes to the public face of atheism, there's no-one quite like Richard Dawkins. Although he's yet to achieve Robert Winston's ubiquity on TV biology programmes, he has done a couple of shows, the most recent of which was the Channel 4 documentary Enemies of Reason. This was his attempt to go to various mystics, alternative therapists and other less than scientific people, and show that what they were peddling basically didn't work. This follows on from his earlier show, The Root Of All Evil?, in which he argued that all religion is useless and harmful.

Although the two shows have generally similar premises, it's interesting that the focus has changed. Whereas Root Of All Evil attacked religions on the basis that they can't be tested, Enemies of Reason concentrated much more heavily on things which certainly could be tested and shown to be false. This new emphasis, which is inherently much more scientific than the first, sounds to me like a good direction in which to go. After all, Dawkins's position at the University of Oxford is the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science, not the Grand High Railer Against All Things Religious - if he can demonstrate how the scientific method works and how things should be tested with it, that can only be a good thing.

It seems like Dawkins himself should be happy to have changed his emphasis in this way - at least, this is the suggestion that one gets from reading an interview with him in a recent edition of BBC Focus magazine. Dawkins states in this interview that he'd much prefer to be remembered as a biologist, rather than for his religious opinions, which made me warm to him considerably. The problem that I do have with him, though, is that his actions up until this apparent cooling-off seem to be completely out of proportion to his major thesis, which seems to boil down to one statement: Believing anything without any evidence is harmful.

Not surprisingly, I have very little trouble agreeing with Dawkins on this point, as do most of the Christians I know. If you believe something just because anyone tells you to, then you'll believe anything at all. The mistake that Dawkins makes, along with a lot of other people, is in thinking that this is what the concept of "faith" refers to. Faith is a complicated idea, and can result in widely differing actions (note the major differences of opinion among the various denominations of almost any religion or sect), so it deserves careful study rather than out-of-hand dismissal.

The Christian concept of faith (and I won't be looking at any other concept, due to my ignorance of how they're defined!) is most succinctly summarised in Hebrews 11:1: "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." This statement gives us a few important things to think about, so let's break them down bit by bit.

1. Faith does not necessarily either include or preclude evidence.

Neither of the phrases "what we hope for" and "what we do not see" entirely precludes evidence being present - all they specify is that the evidence is not obvious. If I can see, say, a table in front of me, then I don't need faith to believe that it's there, because its existence is obvious. If I'm facing away from the table, though, it's no longer obvious that it's there - I can't see, hear or feel it. I have to use other, indirect evidence, such as some dude saying "hey, there's a table behind you", or seeing someone who was carrying a plate 5 seconds ago and is no longer doing so. This is still definitely evidence, and if I trust the aforementioned dude then I have no reason not to believe that there is indeed a table behind me. But it will be a matter of faith.

That said, using the Biblical definition, faith can also be present with no evidence, either direct or indirect. There's nothing stopping me from believing that there's a purple giraffe called Bilbo standing behind me if I want to. The difference between this kind of faith and the first kind, though, is that this kind is very weak, and will fall over as soon as any evidence is produced. Given the existence of verses like 1 Thessalonians 5:21 ("Test everything. Hold on to the good."), I'm pretty certain that this is not the kind of faith we're called to have.

2. Faith looks forward not back.

If faith applies to what we "hope for" and what we "do not see", it is surely applicable (for the most part) to the present and the future rather than the past. This means that people who denigrate faith on the basis of things like the creation story in Genesis are missing the point somewhat. Faith is, of course, based on the things that happened in the past, but when the Bible refers to people having great faith it is not complimenting them on their intellectual acceptance of statements. Rather, it commends them for what they were looking forward to. Take a look at Jesus' comments in Matthew 8 - the emphasis is on the centurion's trust in what Jesus will do, not what he's done.

3. Faith is about actions more than beliefs.

OK, this one's not quite so obvious from Hebrews 11:1. If you read on from it, though, it becomes obvious that the "Heroes of the Faith" throughout the chapter are overwhelmingly being commended for their actions. Beliefs are mentioned, but they take a back seat to the things that people used their beliefs for. This fits in well with the analogy of the fruit showing the tree's nature, as seen in Matthew 7; incidentally, this passage reflects back on the role of evidence, as Jesus' followers are instructed not to follow false teachers, who are identified by their actions. Faith, therefore, is not academic - it is active.

In keeping with the bit of 1 Thessalonians I quoted above, I hope that anyone who reads this will heartily ignore it if it's obviously rubbish. Hopefully, though, it will show that faith is not the simple, credulous concept seen in the opinions of people like Dawkins. There's a lot more to it - and if your thesis is that everything should be scientifically supported, then perhaps rejecting anything out of hand is not a consistent strategy.