After leaving behind the foundational “faith” in which I believed most of my life, I struggled for many years afterward with the concept of faith, and what value should be ascribed to it.

I knew that it had value. I knew that faith is what brought pilgrims and pioneers over seas and mountains to build the society I now enjoy. I knew that faith put satellites into space and created the spectacular technology from which I communicate with them in the palm of my hand. Faith was a crucial component in the decision to have my four delightful children, and the reason I don’t murder them during the times when they are far from delightful. “Leaps of faith” like these, from others and myself, are behind most of the wonderful things I enjoy in my life.

But I had also become aware of the ways in which “faith” can be used to fool oneself or others into believing fruitless or even harmful ideas. When something is unbelievable, other people might tell you to “have faith” and persevere in spite of cautionary flags. When we approach something with a pre-existing determination to believe it to be true, we are highly susceptible to being fooled via confirmation biases and the avoidance of cognitive dissonance. Supporting evidence is accepted, while everything to the contrary, regardless of how much more abundant it may be, is rejected. We are made suckers through “faith”.

That was my conflict–until a few years ago when I read something brilliantly insightful. Toward the end of the CES Letter, the most comprehensive, concise, and coherent criticism of my former beliefs I have ever encountered, author Jeremy Runnells wrote a gem which is easily missed. (I finally met him for the first time a few months ago and told him how meaningful it was to me, and he said that I was the first person ever to comment on it.) Here it is:

“Faith is believing and hoping when there is little evidence for or against something. Delusion is believing when there is an abundance of evidence against something.”

Yes! That’s it!

Faith in its purest form may not be absolutely helpful, but it is tremendously improved after filtering out the DELUSION component which has been inserted into “faith” over time (let’s be honest, mostly by the religions of the world).

This single clarification restored my faith in the concept of faith. Even though it’s been many years since I first read it, I still think about it often.