Belief in God When Evidence is Lacking

I read an excellent essay last week by C.S. Lewis. It is entitled "On Obstinacy in Belief" and can be found in a book called The World's Last Night (2002). His argument is against the idea that scientists and Christians approach belief in opposite manners (the prior dismissing belief when evidence is lacking and the latter holding on all the more firmly when evidence is lacking). His thesis is as follows:

"The purpose of this essay is to show that things are really not quite so bad as that. The sense in which scientists proportion their belief to the evidence, and the sense in which Christians do not, both need to be defined more closely."

Although his argument is far more involved than the following, here are some key points:

1. Scientists (in the lab) are not so much concerned with believing things as they are with finding things out.
2. When speaking of belief, we need to separate the assent to that belief from the adherence to that belief.
3. No one, scientist or Christian, assents to a belief without sufficient evidence. When the scientist assents to one belief and the Christian to another, it does not mean that one of them is rational and the other irrational (because they both believe they have sufficient evidence). Rather, one is correct, while the other is incorrect. Determining which has assented to the correct belief is not the point of his essay.
   
4. It is at the point of adherence to that belief that one can rightly accuse the Christian of continuing to believe in the face of poor or adverse evidence.
   
5. Though others would contend that scientists do the exact opposite, it is here that Lewis states, "I think the contrast between [the scientist] and the Christian can be weakened."
   
6. His argument is that scientists don't actually adhere to believes inside the lab (remember point 1) but they adhere to their hypothesis inside the lab. If you want to compare how a scientist adheres to his belief with how a Christian adheres to his belief, you have to observe the scientist outside of the lab.
7. Illustrating this, Lewis explains that if a scientist finds a doubt to his wife's fidelity, does he insist on examining this doubt with complete impartiality, setting up experiments to find the validity of his doubt? The implied answer is no. This illustration is not given to produce an exact parallel between the scientist's adherence to belief and the Christian's adherence to belief, but only to serve as a precaution against exaggerating the difference between them.
8. Lewis now sets out to prove the logical response of Christians who praise the adherence to belief in God when no sufficient evidence exists or even in the midst of adverse evidence.
   
9. Key to his argument at this point is the point that once a Christian has assented to a belief in God, he immediately enters a trust relationship with God. Where evidence was necessary to support the assent to belief, demanding evidence to adhere to a belief is harmful to the relationship and shows a lack of love.
   
10. Lewis states: "Love involves trusting the beloved beyond the evidence, even against much evidence. No man is our friend who believes in our good intentions only when they are proved."
    
11. Therefore, "there is no real parallel between Christian obstinacy in belief and the obstinacy of a bad scientist trying to preserve a hypothesis although the evidence has turned against it."
    

Lewis is by far a greater thinker than I will probably ever become. Each one of his sentences are composed with more thought than I generally produce in a given day. With that said, don't be surprised if you did not follow my breakdown of his argument. Don't let my fuzzy thinking prevent you from seeking out the book (it's in the library) and reading through it. I found many of his thoughts to be quite provoking. I am sure that they will be life changing if I meditate on them long enough. It is a good thing to understand how and why I believe in God even in the mist of adverse evidence.