📘 About This Series
This post is part of a daily response series to The Problem of God: Answering a Skeptic’s Challenges to Christianity by Mark Clark. The series critically engages with each chapter and section of the book, examining Clark’s arguments through the lens of reason, historical evidence, and The God Question’s core philosophy: what’s true doesn’t fear investigation.
Today’s post responds to content found in pages 30–32 of the book — the section titled “Everyone Has Faith.”
If you’re just joining us, you can view all prior entries in this series here: godordelusion.com\thegodquestion
🔄 Is Belief in Science Also “Faith”?
Responding to Mark Clark’s argument that everyone has faith—even atheists
In The Problem of God, Mark Clark attempts to level the playing field between believers and skeptics by claiming that everyone has faith. The atheist who trusts in science and evidence? Faith. The secular doctor who says a dying patient “won’t be suffering anymore”? Faith.
His argument is simple: No one is exempt. Whether you’re a religious believer or a rationalist skeptic, you’re making assumptions about things you can’t prove. Therefore, all worldviews—including atheism—are faith-based.
It sounds clever. But does this hold up?
Let’s examine the three layers of Clark’s argument.
1. 🔁Redefining Faith to Include Everything
Clark starts by challenging the idea that “faith” is something only religious people have. He writes:
“Everyone believes in something and makes assumptions about reality that can’t be proven even through science.”
To illustrate, he tells the story of a nurse overhearing doctors agree that removing a patient from life support would end the patient’s suffering. How did they know there wouldn’t be suffering after death? They didn’t. That was a faith statement.
Clark’s move is to redefine “faith” as any belief without absolute proof.
But here’s the problem:
Faith isn’t merely lack of proof. It’s belief in the absence of—or often in defiance of—evidence.
If we broaden “faith” to include all reasonable trust or inference, we destroy the very distinction Clark wants to erase. Trusting that gravity will work tomorrow is not the same as believing someone rose from the dead 2,000 years ago because an ancient text says so.
Equating the two is rhetorical sleight of hand.
2. 🧠Smuggling in Religious Faith Through Everyday Uncertainty
Clark argues that even science is driven by faith, citing biologist Richard Lewontin, who once said scientists have “a prior commitment to materialism.” Clark interprets this as evidence that scientific naturalism isn’t based on facts, but on philosophy—thus, it’s just another faith position.
Here’s what Clark misses:
- Lewontin’s quote acknowledges that science operates under a methodological assumption, not a metaphysical dogma.
- Methodological naturalism says: “Let’s assume natural causes, because that’s what works.” It doesn’t say, “Only nature exists.”
Clark wants to portray science as secretly religious—driven by unprovable metaphysical beliefs. But this is a category error. Science does not claim certainty. It welcomes revision, which is the opposite of religious faith.
3. 🧩The Four Big Questions and the Faith of Worldviews
Clark concludes this section by quoting Brian Walsh and J. Richard Middleton, who claim that everyone has a worldview, and that worldview is how we answer four questions:
- Who am I?
- Where am I?
- What’s wrong?
- What’s the remedy?
This is a fair observation—worldviews matter. But Clark wants to turn worldview thinking into a justification for belief without evidence. Just because all people interpret reality doesn’t mean all interpretations are equally valid.
Atheists may answer those questions differently than Christians, Buddhists, or Muslims—but what distinguishes the secular thinker is a commitment to revise those answers when evidence demands it.
That’s not blind faith. That’s intellectual honesty.
🧩 Final Thought: Faith Isn’t the Problem. Unexamined Faith Is.
Clark’s goal is clear: if everyone has faith, then no one can criticize religious faith without hypocrisy. But this argument fails because it hinges on a flattened definition of faith—one that ignores the difference between trust earned through reason and belief granted without it.
Trusting your doctor is not the same as trusting the Bible.
Making assumptions in science is not the same as worshiping a resurrected savior.
And living with uncertainty is not the same as embracing doctrine.
Yes, we all live with some unknowns. But that doesn’t mean all faiths are created equal. Some are built on evidence, openness, and correction. Others are built on ancient authority, fear, and unchanging claims.
Let’s not confuse the two.
God or Delusion? 