Fool's gold?

Sadly I haven't yet been able to catch up with all the comments on the last post yet, but with a new month dawning and at the risk of looking a fool (for Christ:)), I just want to articulate a little more - particularly for the benefit of atheist readers - how I see the life of faith. I want to widen the camera angle again for a moment.

Atheists have - quite rightly - a high degree of interest in reason and evidence, and how truth claims match up to these. And from what I've read, they often seem to have a pretty low opinion of how religion squares up on these fronts. Let me just clarify, in case there is any doubt, that as I understand it from my reading and investigation about faith and Christianity in particular: defences of the faith also put a very high premium on these criteria, of reasonableness and evidence. So there's plainly a sharp disagreement here.

There's a big discussion to be had about the nature and status of 'evidence'. But just to sketch one of the most obvious broad brush contrasts between the sceptical view, and the faith one. Sceptics are looking for 'evidence' that is tangible and unmistakable to any neutral observer, but within a framework of quite narrowly defined criteria, similar to criteria for observing physical phenomena in a scientific experiment. The common cry is 'Prove it', 'Give me evidence'. By contrast, my impression is that the lens employed in Christian apologetics to discuss the validity of faith from a perspective of reason and evidence, is generally wider. A broader exploration is attempted of how reason and faith operate in real life, in a variety of areas. And a broad criticism that would be levelled at the sceptical viewpoint from this perspective is that it doesn't consistently apply the same principles it uses to attack faith, in other broad areas of thought and life. It strains gnats but swallows camels, to quote, if you don't mind me doing so, er, Jesus.

But here is where the heart comes in. A good defence of Christianity will show the value but also the limitations of reason in attaining truth in its broadest senses. It will show how reason and the evidence that is there leads, invites, beckons, not by proof but with intellectual integrity intact, to the threshold of faith. The heart matters here; there has to be an open-ness. But if that threshold is crossed, like Lucy stepping into the wardrobe, then a whole new world is unveiled. Life and perspective can be changed, perhaps slowly, perhaps suddenly; like the life blood in a butterfly's wings transforming it from grey chrysalis to a vision of light and beauty, or the wind in a surfer's sail lifting the board and sending it coursing across the waves. A step is taken; power, energy, life and motion are released.

Last week my three year old niece and her parents were up to stay. At one point, when we were swinging her or something, her mum said, 'They're so trusting'. A child's instinct to trust becomes in an adult so easily stifled and withered, instead of growing and developing alongside the - no denying it, crucial - capacities to reason, question and critique. Trust opens up experience, and indeed knowledge and revelation that are unattainable without it. It's quite possible to think people with faith are deluded if you want to. But I'd say that sceptics need to consider carefully, with a wide angle lens, if the phenomenon of religious faith in the world, which embraces many sane, thinking people, really falls into the same kind of category as belief in unicorns, fairies and the like. The more dare I say it 'scientific' approach in dealing with a large phenomena of this kind is to explore and examine it first from as many angles, and in as much depth, as possible.

Who knows where that might lead?