Degrees Of Blind Faith

The push to distinguish "faith" from "blind faith" is a futile effort, for at most one can diminish the amount of assumptions in a faith-based worldview: if a person truly has faith in something, they have leapt beyond the belief in logical truths or the commitment to evidentially reinforced ideas into the unknown.  Of course, the common defense of faith-based epistemology is that faith and reason do not have to be at odds with each other.  While it is true that commitment and reason are not necessarily exclusive, even the smallest assumption and reason are utterly incompatible.

At this point, however, one is talking about a completely different concept than the one referenced by most people, including Christian apologists.  Even the undeserving but popular heads of Christian apologetics organizations, guilty of numerous fallacies, at most only try to increase the arbitrary threshold for whatever evidence they treat as utter proof in the absence of total logical confirmation.  They do not truly distance themselves from the idea of belief or trust in the unproven (if you can prove something, it is impossible to trust it to begin with), only from the phrase "blind faith."

Still, calling faith different than "blind faith" is misleading at best.  Unless "faith" refers strictly to commitment ("faithfulness") rather than to belief, faith inescapably involves an element of blindness.  Differing beliefs in the unproven or unprovable might have varying degrees of assumptions behind them, but there is no such thing as faith--in reference to belief that involves assumptions--that is not blind to some extent.  It is possible to commit to an idea that can merely be supported by evidence without assuming it is true, but to cross that line is to betray even the facade of rationality.

A non-rationalist can admit, perhaps even truthfully, that they have put effort into rejecting or minimizing assumptions in their worldview.  They can rightfully distinguish between a totally blind faith and a faith hinging on a lesser blindness.  What they cannot do is legitimately demonstrate that faith is completely separate from intellectual blindness.  The impossible cannot be done even when its impossibility is denied!

There are certainly degrees of faith, but all faith is in some way blind.  It is commitment to that which has evidence--not belief in that which cannot be logically proven--that is not only not opposed to reason, but its ally.  Unfortunately, the word "faith" has become so deeply associated with belief in the unproven that to even use the word in its other sense, in reference to a commitment based purely on rationalistic evaluation of evidence that would be abandoned at the discovery of contradictory evidence, is itself often pointless.