Claim 7 of 9 · Case 09 · Atheism
In the Bible the word “faith” means grounded trust, not belief without evidence.
One claim from the free evidence repository at apologetics.pro.
A common objection defines faith as believing things without evidence, which would make faith the opposite of reason. That definition is a modern polemical one, associated with writers such as Richard Dawkins. It is not how the Bible uses the word. The New Testament term translated faith, the Greek word pistis, means trust or confidence, the kind of reliance you place in a person or a thing you have reason to rely on. Honest limit: this is a claim about the meaning and use of a word, which scholars can check against the text and against standard lexicons. It does not by itself show that Christian beliefs are true. It only clears away a caricature so the actual evidence can be weighed.
Backed by 2 pieces of evidence
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion
This states the objection in its own words, so what follows isn’t answering a straw man. It names the exact definition that biblical usage is being measured against.
Hebrews 11:1 and the meaning of the Greek word “pistis”
From the text and the language, biblical faith is grounded trust. That answers the objection: the belief-without-evidence definition is brought in from outside, not drawn from Scripture.