Some Christians attempt to defend their ‘faith’ by claiming that it is a ‘gift’ from God that, supposedly, one should be thankful for! I hear this claim every so often and I am always baffled by it. This is just the latest instance that I received:

“Faith is first and foremost a free and loving gift from God; without the gift there can be no faith.”

This makes absolutely no sense to me. Faith, simply put, is believing a proposition without sufficient evidence. Atheists have been arguing all along that if God exists, He hasn’t provided mankind with any convincing evidence of His existence. Apparently some Christians, like the one quoted above, seem to agree but insist that this is God’s gift to us! So…God’s gift to us is the ability to believe in Him without convincing evidence? Some gift! Not only that, but believing in propositions without convincing evidence is silly at best and dangerous at worse.

Would we accept such an explanation from anybody else? Imagine that the President wanted to invade the country of Iraq (it’s a stretch, I know) because he believed that they were building weapons of mass destruction. Immediately, of course, the people of his country demand evidence. The President however, explains it this way:

‘You must have faith in me, my fellow citizens. Faith is first and foremost a free and loving gift from your elected leader.’

Hardly! Faith is not a gift. It is an excuse for not being capable of adequately convincing others that your belief is true.

If God wants to give a gift to us, then here’s a novel idea. How about God gives us the free and much more loving gift of evidence! Without that gift there can be no and should be no belief.