Background Genetic research can yield information that is unrelated to the study’s objectives but may be of clinical or personal interest to study participants. There is an emerging but controversial responsibility to return some genetic research results, however there is little evidence available about the views of genomic researchers and others on the African continent. Methods We conducted a continental survey to solicit perspectives of researchers, science policy makers and research ethics committee members on the feedback of individual genetic research (...) findings in African genomics research. Results A total of 110 persons participated in the survey with 51 complete and 59 incomplete surveys received. Data was summarised using descriptive analysis. Overall, our respondents believed that individual genetic research results that are clinically actionable should be returned to study participants apparently because participants have a right to know things about their health, and it might also be a means for research participation to be recognized. Nonetheless, there is a need for development of precise guidance on how to return individual genetic research findings in African genomics research. Discussion Participants should receive information that could promote a healthier lifestyle; only clinically actionable findings should be returned, and participants should receive all important information that is directly relevant to their health. Nevertheless, detailed guidelines should inform what ought to be returned. H3Africa guidelines stipulate that it is generally considered good practice for researchers to feedback general study results, but there is no consensus about whether individual genomic study results should also be fed back. The decision on what individual results to feedback, if any, is very challenging and the specific context is important to make an appropriate determination. (shrink)

Does our available evidence show that some particular religion is correct? It seems unlikely, given the great diversity of religious - and non-religious - views of the world. But if no religious beliefs can be shown true on the evidence, can it be right to make a religious commitment? Should people make 'leaps of faith'? Or would we all be better off avoiding commitments that outrun our evidence? And, if leaps of faith can be acceptable, how do we (...) tell the difference between goodand bad ones - between sound religion and dogmatic ideology or fundamentalist fanaticism? Believing by Faith offers answers to these questions, inspired by a famous attempt to justify faith made by William James in 1896. In doing so, it engages critically with much recent discussion in the philosophyof religion, and, especially, the epistemology of religious belief. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:What Does It Mean to Believe? Faith in the Thought of Joseph Ratzinger by Daniel CardóJean-Paul JugeWhat Does It Mean to Believe? Faith in the Thought of Joseph Ratzinger by Daniel Cardó (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2020), xv + 116 pp.Father Daniel Cardó's book What Does It Mean to Believe? is a concise and penetrating synopsis of Joseph Ratzinger's theology of faith, especially "faith (...) as an act" (7). As any reader familiar with Ratzinger knows, the subject of faith or belief is the very axis on which his theology turns. Ratzinger identifies this question of belief as the impetus of his theological research: "I chose fundamental theology as my field because I wanted first and foremost to examine thoroughly the question: Why do we believe?" (13). Cardó has thus chosen the perfect topic to introduce readers to Ratzinger who might otherwise be too intimidated by the Pope emeritus's countless homilies, lectures, and writings. Yet, Cardó has not merely provided us with another introduction to Ratzinger; rather, we may justly apply the author's words regarding Ratzinger to this book and say that its "simplicity almost hides [its] erudition" (3). In this book, Cardó assembles what might be compared to a medieval catena or florilegium, as he gathers excerpts from a wide variety of Ratzinger's works and conveniently organizes them for the reader.From the outset, Cardó contextualizes his book by presenting faith in God as the only adequate response to the contemporary scandals within the Church. In this way, he aligns his position with Ratzinger's 2019 essay on the sexual abuse scandal, wherein the Pontiff writes: "Only where faith no longer determines the actions of man are such offenses possible.... Ultimately, the reason is the absence of God" (5). Thus, the origin of this book, explains Cardó, is his conviction that "understanding more deeply the richness of the act of believing can help renew our faith" (6). Following his introduction, Cardó divides his book intro three parts, each a different angle of approach to the act of faith.The first part situates the act of belief in the context of two contemporary challenges, agnosticism and relativism, and explains how doubt (not as an act of defiance but as the experience of uncertainty) is a necessary, rather than incompatible, component to trust in God. In this section, Cardó draws heavily from Ratzinger's Introduction to Christianity, which remains an accurate assessment of faith's place in a secular society a half-century after it was first delivered as a series of university lectures. Moreover, Cardó summarizes Ratzinger's argument that we must reclaim a notion of faith not as a subjective feeling or opinion, but as a mode of accessing and entrusting oneself to a reality that transcends the human [End Page 979] capacity to examine empirically or recreate it and is for this reason the only sure ground on which to base one's life. Agnosticism and relativism, the twin diseases of our era, deprive humans of their only reliable existential footing. Cardó writes: "Without truth, it is impossible to believe with certainty in anyone or anything. The common inability to trust and to have deep interpersonal relationships... are some of the characteristics of a society that believes that one cannot believe anymore" (34).In the second part of his book, Cardó considers the act of faith both as given by God and as received by humans. Just as God cannot be confined to human techne or faciens, neither can the act of faith be reduced to human effort; rather, Cardó writes, "faith is a gift that God gives to us,... [and] God's giving of the gift takes precedence over human initiative" (36). Faith, according to Cardó, is an "act that has the character of an answer: that is, it is a response to the initiative of God" (35). Cardó characterizes this response as encompassing the entirety of one's daily existence, which is carried out on the foundation of a logos that both causes and transcends human reason.The third and final section of the book describes faith as personal, integral, and ecclesial. In short... (shrink)

Trust within a secular or organizational context is much like the concept of faith within a religious framework. The purpose of this article is to identify parallels between trust and faith, particularly from the individual perspective of the person who perceives a duty owed to him or her. Betrayal is often a subjectively derived construct based upon each individual's subjective mediating lens. We analyze the nature of trust and betrayal and offer insights that a wise believer might use (...) in understanding his or her relationship with the divine. We suggest that the parallels between trust and faith involve a willingness to relinquish one's power or control in the expectant hope that our needs will be met. Betrayal, however, is often profoundly misunderstood. (shrink)

Assuming that the reader accepts, albeit provisionally, that James's "will" to believe, early and late, implies that his ethics is traversed by a deontological streak, and by a "faith" which implies epistemic form on the relevant facts (both interpretations the writer argued for in two previous essays), a final feature of his position entitles one to interpret his "will" to believe as, not merely a willingness or readiness, but as a controlling resolve, in the strong sense, to interpret the (...) facts in a manner appropriate to our living in the "strenuous mood," a mood which is congruent to our universe viewed as "moral." Consider, as a crucial instance, the will to believe which undergirds the "keeping" of a friendship. (shrink)

Preface ix Acknowledgements xi 1 Introduction: towards an acceptable fideism 1 The metaquestion: what is the issue about the ‘justifiability’ of religious belief? 4 Faith-beliefs 6 Overview of the argument 8 Glossary of special terms 18 2 The ‘justifiability’ of faith-beliefs: an ultimately moral issue 26 A standard view: the concern is for epistemic justifiability 26 The problem of doxastic control 28 The impossibility of believing at will 29 Indirect control over beliefs 30 ‘Holding true’ and ‘taking (...) to be true’ 33 A second—direct—locus of doxastic control 35 Moral doxastic responsibilities 41 The moral significance of faith-beliefs 47 Linking moral to epistemic justifiability: reinstating the standard view? 48 3 The epistemic justifiability of faith-beliefs: an ambiguity thesis 53 Plausibility of requiring epistemic for moral justifiability under a realist interpretation of faith-beliefs 53 Interpreting the link principle: epistemic entitlement as requiring evidential justification 55 Evidentialist requirements specified by an implicit evidential practice 65 Rational empiricist evidential practice 66 Applying rational empiricist evidential practice to theistic faith-beliefs: an ambiguity thesis 68 vi contents 4 Responses to evidential ambiguity: isolationist and Reformed epistemologies 77 Two strategies for defending the moral probity of theistic faith-belief in the face of evidential ambiguity 78 Appealing to a special theistic evidential practice/improved epistemologies 79 An isolationist epistemology 79 Reformed epistemology 86 Conclusion: the need for a fideist response to ambiguity 99 5 Faith as doxastic venture 101 Agenda for a defence of doxastic venture 102 The nature of theistic faith 103 The doxastic venture model 106 The psychological possibility of doxastic venture 111 A Jamesian account 112 ‘Passionally’ caused beliefs 113 6 Believing by faith: a Jamesian position 122 An initial hypothesis for a Jamesian thesis on permissible doxastic venture 123 The notion of a ‘genuine option’ 125 A ‘degrees of belief ’ challenge 128 Evidentially undecidable forced options 129 Permissible doxastic venture: supra- not counter-evidential 135 How theistic religion could present essentially evidentially undecidable genuine options: the notion of a highest-order framing principle 137 Restricting thesis ( Ji) to faith-propositions: thesis ( J) 145 7 Integrationist values: limiting permissible doxastic venture 151 Can counter-evidential fideism be non-arbitrarily excluded? 151 A coherence requirement and integrationist values 155 Moral integration of faith-commitments 163 Implications for reflective faith-believers 167 Coda: A reflection on Abraham as forebear in faith 170 contents vii 8 Arguments for supra-evidential fideism 174 The importance of defending the epistemic permissibility of faith-ventures 176 Strategies for supporting fideism 178 An ‘assimilation to personal relations cases’ strategy: experimental ventures in interpersonal trust 180 The ‘assimilation to personal relations cases’ strategy: cases where ‘faith in a fact can help create a fact’ 182 A consequentialist strategy 185 A note on Pascal’s Wager 187 The tu quoque strategy 189 Is hard-line evidentialism self-undermining? 190 Attitudes to passional doxastic inclinations 194 Epistemological externalism again: a presumption in favour of fideism? 196 Scepticism about passional doxastic inclinations as guides to truth: how passions may be schooled 197 The significance of scientific theories of passional motivations for faith-commitment 204 An impasse? 206 9 A moral preference for modest fideism? 208 Implications of accepting ( J+) for orthodox and revisionary theistic faith-ventures 209 The apparent fideist/evidentialist impasse and its implications 211 Beyond impasse? Direct moral evaluation of the fideist/evidentialist debate 215 Self-acceptance and authenticity 216 Hard-line evidentialism as grounded in doctrinaire naturalism 220 Coherence amongst moral and religious passional commitments 225 Conclusion 227 Bibliography 230 Index 237. (shrink)

What Believers Don't Have to Believe, author Craig Payne uses evidence from the Creeds, Christian history, the scriptures, and philosophy to establish what one is required to believe to maintain Christian orthodoxy, and how much one is not required to believe. This book focuses on five areas of disagreement: creation, biblical inerrancy, human nature, Christian political involvement, and eschatology.

This paper traces the borders between presupposing, believing, and having faith. These three attitudes are often equated and confused in the contemporary image of the historically and culturally situated character of rationality. This confusion is problematic because, on the one hand, it prevents us from fully appreciating the way in which this image of rationality points towards a dissolving of the opposition between faith and reason; on the other hand, it leads to forms of fideism. After bringing (...) this differentiation into sharper focus, a concept of faith in turn will come into view which challenges contemporary forms of fideism, to the extent that it embraces the possibility of examining and evaluating our systems of beliefs and basic presuppositions. This examination has nothing to do with justification or verification but rather with a sort of confrontation and discernment of the trust we have in what we take for granted. (shrink)

New Atheists, such as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, energetically say, No! Many others, including some believers, insist that faith is utterly beyond reasoned ...

Today, there are different understandings of the first article on the content of the Christian faith, for which an analysis from a theological perspective is necessary. This research sought to reveal the meaning of the first article on the content of the Christian faith in recent theological works that have been produced, through the use of a hermeneutic exercise, conducting a bibliometric and categorical analysis and using NVivo software to analyse the qualitative data. We concluded that the recent (...) theological literature addresses the meaning of the first article of the Christian faith based on the existence, concept and definition of God and his attributes, as well as his power, behaviour, creation, revelation and reign. Although there is little extant material compared to other topics or areas of knowledge that can be explored using these tools, this fact is explained because, normally, theologians are not interested in publishing in high-impact journals. The way of approaching God in contemporary literature can be enriched by taking into account specific contexts, such as poverty, discrimination, suffering, violence, human trafficking, immigration and political realities, in such a way that it is not only a metaphysical reflection of God but also a historical and immanent and even an interreligious research that broadens the concept of the Christian God and answers questions that contemporary society asks in daily life. (shrink)

Is the Universe on our side? "My own investigations over a period of many years have given me a quiet assurance that there is a God who has given us sufficient clues in life, nature, human thought, beauty and art to satisfy the genuine inquirer that he exists, and that he has expressed himself most meaningfully in Jesus Christ. However, you may come to a different conclusion at the end of this book and that is your right as a thinking (...) responsible person. All I can do is to invite you to join me in looking at the arguments again..." Writing in a popular style but with careful reasoning, George Carey explains the traditional message of Christianity in its stark confrontation with modern unbelief and indifference. Here is a brief, aggressive, but always warm and generous appeal to faith for modern readers. (shrink)

Trieste Publishing has a massive catalogue of classic book titles. Our aim is to provide readers with the highest quality reproductions of fiction and non-fiction literature that has stood the test of time. The many thousands of books in our collection have been sourced from libraries and private collections around the world.The titles that Trieste Publishing has chosen to be part of the collection have been scanned to simulate the original. Our readers see the books the same way that their (...) first readers did decades or a hundred or more years ago. Books from that period are often spoiled by imperfections that did not exist in the original. Imperfections could be in the form of blurred text, photographs, or missing pages. It is highly unlikely that this would occur with one of our books. Our extensive quality control ensures that the readers of Trieste Publishing's books will be delighted with their purchase. Our staff has thoroughly reviewed every page of all the books in the collection, repairing, or if necessary, rejecting titles that are not of the highest quality. This process ensures that the reader of one of Trieste Publishing's titles receives a volume that faithfully reproduces the original, and to the maximum degree possible, gives them the experience of owning the original work.We pride ourselves on not only creating a pathway to an extensive reservoir of books of the finest quality, but also providing value to every one of our readers. Generally, Trieste books are purchased singly - on demand, however they may also be purchased in bulk. Readers interested in bulk purchases are invited to contact us directly to enquire about our tailored bulk rates. (shrink)

Countless scholars have wrestled with the ambiguities and complexities in determining the role of the noema in Husserl’s theory of intentionality since his transcendental turn, and consequently converted what was intended to be a structural solution to a problem into a contested problem itself.1 Shifting emphasis from the ‘whatness’, or ontological concerns of the correlate noesis—noema to the ‘howness’, or methodological force of phenomenology, allows me to discuss two things. The first is theological. Before and since Janicaud’s pronouncement of the (...) ‘theological turn’ in phenomenology, the intentionality thesis has been rejected as a means to account for certain experiences given differently to object-phenomena (Janicaud, 2000). In accounting for religious experience as a complex movement between faith and doubt, my work reaches not for the ‘essence of phenomenality’ (Marion), or a givenness beyond intuition made invisible, nor does it seek to describe a transcendence beyond immanence, or proof in the existence of a god/gods, rather it concerns itself with the processes and underlying structures of belief. Arguably by focusing upon the noetic and noematic structure of intentional acts, intentional analysis is revitalised for delineating the belief modalities of faith and doubt in religious experiences. (shrink)

One is occasionally reminded of Foucault's proclamation in a 1970 interview that "perhaps, one day this century will be known as Deleuzian." Less often is one compelled to update and restart with a supplementary counter-proclamation of the mathematician, David Lindley: "the twenty-first century would be a Bayesian era..." The verb tenses of both are conspicuous. // To critically attend to what is today often feared and demonized, but also revered, deployed, and commonly referred to as algorithm(s), one cannot avoid the (...) mathematical and philosophical legacies of probability. // But attending to these probabilistic or Bayesian legacies must include an undeniable theological legacy in which they remain entangled. // We are not, today, discovering quirky theological metaphors in contemporary technics. It's the other way around. The technologies are mere metaphors of past theologies. (shrink)

Faith is a trusting commitment to someone or something. Faith helps us meet our goals, keeps our relationships secure, and enables us to retain our commitments over time. Faith is thus a central part of a flourishing life. -/- This article is about the philosophy of faith. There are many philosophical questions about faith, such as: What is faith? What are its main components or features? What are the different kinds of faith? What (...) is the relationship between faith and other similar states, such as belief, trust, knowledge, desire, doubt, and hope? Can faith be epistemically rational? Practically rational? Morally permissible? -/- This article addresses these questions. It is divided into three main parts. The first is about the nature of faith. This includes different kinds of faith and various features of faith. The second discusses the way that faith relates to other states. For example, what is the difference between faith and hope? Can someone have faith that something is true even if they do not believe it is true? The third discusses three ways we might evaluate faith: epistemically, practically, and morally. While faith is not always rational or permissible, this section covers when and how it can be. The idea of faith as a virtue is also discussed. (shrink)

Does faith that p entail belief that p? If faith that p is identical with belief that p, it does. But it isn’t. Even so, faith that p might be necessarily partly constituted by belief that p, or at least entail it. Of course, even if faith that p entails belief that p, it does not follow that faith that p is necessarily partly constituted by belief that p. Still, showing that faith that p (...) entails belief that p would be a significant step in that direction. Can we take that step? In this essay, I assess, and reject, seven reasons to think we can. Along the way, I discuss having faith in a person, being a person of faith, believing something by faith, and believing a person. (shrink)

I offer an epistemic framework for theorising about faith. I suggest that epistemic faith is a disposition to believe or infer according to particular methods, despite a kind of tendency to perceive an epistemic shortcoming in that method. Faith is unjustified, and issues into unjustified beliefs, when the apparent epistemic shortcomings are actual; it is justified when the epistemic worries are unfounded. Virtuous faith is central to a great deal of epistemology. A rational agent will manifest (...) faith in their perceptual abilities, in determining which experts and testifiers to trust, in their a priori reasoning, and in the epistemic capacities that are specific to their social environment. To ignore faith is to ignore a crucial element of our social and individualistic epistemic lives. One exercises faith when one forms beliefs despite a kind of apparent epistemic shortcoming, which may or may not correspond to a genuine weakness in evidential support. For example, standing on a bridge one knows to be safe, despite one's natural but irrational fear, can manifest a kind of epistemic faith. So too can forming perceptual beliefs, or engaging in logical inferences, despite lacking a dialectically satisfying response to skeptical arguments. The same goes for beliefs that are informed by one's ideological stance – these too count as manifestations of faith, and under some circumstances, such faith is epistemically appropriate. One upshot of my project will be that an intuitively appealing neutrality ideal for education and discourse is untenable. I'll conclude with some discussion of practical questions about whether, when, and why it can be worthwhile engaging seriously with people who have radically opposed views and frameworks. (shrink)

: Thoreau's journal contains a number of passages which explore the nature of perception, developing a response to skeptical doubt. The world outside the human mind is real, and there is nothing illusory about its perceived beauty and meaning. In this essay, I draw upon the work of Stanley Cavell (among others) in order to frame Thoreau's reflections within the context of the skeptical questions he seeks to address. Value is not a subjective projection, but it also cannot be perceived (...) without the appropriate kind of emotional orientation or attunement toward the world: that is, an attitude of trust or acceptance. Without this affective receptivity, or "perceptual faith," our knowledge of reality is limited. The beliefs we hold onto in the face of objective uncertainty establish the framework within which we make particular evaluations, and in this sense they are a necessary condition of practical reason. Every understanding has its mood. (shrink)

Faith Envy explores the idea that both believers and nonbelievers envy those with more faith. Hermen Kroesbergen shows how philosophers Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein, and Weil, who each had their own kind of faith envy, can serve as guides to this phenomenon and the contemporary concept of faith.

This paper begins with the oft-repeated claim that having faith involves trust in God. Taking this platitude seriously requires at least two philosophical tasks. First, one must address the relevant notion of “trust” guiding the platitude. I offer a sketch of epistemic trust: arguing that epistemic trust involves several components: acceptance, communication, dependence, and confidence. The first duo concerns the epistemic element of epistemic trust and the second part delimit the fiducial aspect to epistemic trust. Second, one must also (...) examine what differentiates faith qua trust. I argue that we should not distinguish faith from trust merely by believing religious propositions but by the attitudes they express. In particular, the attitude of faith is more deeply entrenched and central to one’s noetic structure than trust simpliciter. The paper ends by arguing that the account proposed insofar as it accommodates and explains certain “faith desiderata”. We can thus give content to the “faith is a kind of trust” platitude with a model of trust on hand while showing how that model confirms and explains important features of faith. (shrink)

Faith: Jewish Perspectives explores important questions in both modern and premodern Jewish philosophy regarding the idea of faith. Is believing a voluntary action, or do believers find themselves within the experience of faith against their will? Can faith be understood through other means (psychological, epistemic, and so forth), or is it only comprehensible from the inside, that is, from within the religious world? Is a subjective experience of faith fundamentally communicative, meaning that it includes (...) intelligible and transmittable universal elements, or is it a private experience that we can point to or talk about through indirect means (poetic, lyrical, and so forth), but never fully decipher? This book presents various manifestations of the concept of faith in Judaism as a tradition engaged in a dialogue with the outside world. It will function as an opening and an invitation to an ongoing conversation with faith. (shrink)

According to a simple formulation of doxasticism about propositional faith, necessarily faith that p requires belief that p. Support of doxasticism is long-standing and was rarely a matter of dispute until William Alston (1996) proposed that that the content of propositional faith need not be believed if it is accepted. Subsequently non-doxastic theories that reject the belief requirement have proliferated and have come to dominate literature in the field. This paper aims to redress the balance by identifying (...) a dilemma for non-doxasticism that comes into view when we draw out the implications of non-doxasticism for the interpretation of affirmations of religious propositional faith. One horn of this dilemma commits non-doxasticists to hermeneutic fictionalism: a substantive, contentious and little explored theory about religious discourse. The other appears to render the affirmation of faith prima facie bullshitting, leading to problems about the integrity of religious discourse and its speakers. (shrink)

Aquinas’s thought is often considered an exemplary balance between Christian faith and natural reason. However, it is not always sufficiently clear what such balance consists of. With respect to the relation between philosophical topics and the Christian faith, various scholars have advanced perspectives that, although supported by Aquinas’s texts, contrast one another. Some maintain that Aquinas elaborated his philosophical view without being under the influence of faith. Others believe that the Christian faith constitutes an indispensable component (...) of Aquinas’s view; at least when Aquinas focused on those statements that, though maintainable by mere reason, belong to the Christian revelation. In this essay I intend to show that the aforementioned perspectives can be reconciled on the basis of Aquinas’s concept of faith. If we do not limit ourselves to considering faith as the assent to the revealed truth, but also look at what leads the believer to assent—i.e., charity that unites the believer with God and is gratuitously conceded by God himself—then the relation between faith and reason appears to be twofold. On the one hand, the truths of faith cannot participate in the rational inquiry, because according to Aquinas faith lacks the evidence searched for by natural reason. On the other hand, since Aquinas holds that faith is the assent to the revelation due to the love for God that is granted by God himself, the believer will take faith as more certain than intellect and science, and the truths of faith will constitute the orientation and criterion of her/his rational investigation. The truths shall constitute orientation because the believer aims to confirm by reason what she/he already believes. They will also be criterion, because in case of a contradiction between rational arguments and revealed truths, reason must be considered mistaken and the rational investigation must start anew from the beginning. (shrink)

For many religious believers, belief in God is as fundamental as my belief in my own body. That is because the believer thinks that belief in God is a necessary condition for living a meaningful life. This paper argues that belief in God is not necessary for living a meaningful life. Morality, meaning, and love are all independent of God. All that is required for a meaningful life is a sustaining belief that humankind is worth something. This kind of (...) class='Hi'>faith is available to an atheist. (shrink)

Between Faith and Reason is a description of the interaction between our need to believe and our ability to reason. Faced with a reality that threatens him emotionally, man develops and adheres to articles of faith that help him cope with that reality. The author cuts through conflicting interpretations of the human condition to a simple but powerful internal dynamic which points to the fact that reason is always disequilibrating. he book attempts no ultimate explanation of the conflict (...) between rational knowledge and emotional uncertainty, but calls attention to its presence and emphasizes the need to cast a comprehensive and honest view over this conflict if we are ever to make sense of our actions. (shrink)

In the book of Romans, also called ‘Paul’s Letter/Epistle to the Romans’, it is clear that Paul created a very close lexical semantic relation between the concepts πίστις/πιστεύω [faith, believe], δίκαιος/δικαιοσύνη [righteous, righteousness] and σωτηρία/σῴζω [salvation, save]. Although it is said that the theme of righteousness (by or through faith) is the focal point of Paul’s theology, especially in Romans, this term is very closely linked to the two concepts, faith and salvation, in this letter. The aim (...) of this article is to investigate that relation, specifically in the two passages of Romans 1:16–17 and 10:6a, 8b–10, in an attempt to come to an understanding of what Paul had in mind when he used these three terms together in these passages. (shrink)

Atheists mistakenly think that faith is just a matter of belief without evidence. Many theologians, in particular, insist that this is a naive understanding of faith, and they describe more sophisticated or elaborate concepts of faith. One approach to defending religion claims that atheism itself depends on faith. If that can be demonstrated, then atheists are no better off than the religious, and it becomes just as arbitrary to deny the existence of the gods as to (...) believe in them. The claim that “faith” is something personal and modest is unconvincing when viewed in the light of history and contemporary political reality in many countries. Atheism is self‐refuting, as rational argument presumes the existence of god, and while this particular argument deserves its own discussion, the idea often seems simpler. (shrink)