American a-theist in residence, Sam Harris, says that faith is "the permission that religious people give one another to believe things strongly when reasons fail" (listen to the speech here ). Harris seems to think that faith is something one does after all else falls short, a final leap in the dark, a punt. It is as if we can only get so far on our own steam and have to guess at the rest. And, having made the leap, we keep each other bolstered by excusing ourselves from rationality. There may be many religious people who think this way, but by no means all. Christians have other, better ways to define faith. I have been thinking about John Calvin's definition lately (it made an appearance in a recent post here ). It is striking how different it is to the definition supplied by Sam Harris: “Now we possess a right definition of faith if we call it a firm and certain knowledge of God's benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise ...