In discussions with my Christian friends I often find myself asserting that their religious beliefs are based on faith, and when I use that term it’s clear that I am using it in a deprecatory sense. I contrast the bases for their beliefs with the bases for scientific beliefs, which, I argue, arise not from faith but from objective evidence. My friends respond that, yes, they have faith—in their religion, in scripture, in God—but that I, too, have faith—in scientific beliefs and in the scientific method. But that’s not properly true if one defines faith, as I do, as belief despite a lack of objective evidence, because scientific beliefs arise not in the absence of evidence but by reason of the evidence.
