Matthew Parris puts forward an intriguing argument about faith and doubt. The gist of it is that, contrary to the views held by some progressive theologians, faith precludes doubt. Parris's argument for his thesis hinges on two kinds of case for which he claims that commitment has to be all-or-nothing. One concerns decisions for action:
It may be 60/40 whether a leap should be taken but you cannot do a 60 per cent leap.
So an apparent paradox arises: once a decision is taken, chances of success are maximised if it is carried through with the utmost belief, as though its correctness were beyond question. If you are only half-sure a decision is right, you will reduce its chances of proving itself right if you pursue it halfheartedly.
The other case has to do with putting your confidence in people:
Nowhere is this truer than with the placing of faith in other people. You can never be sure your faith in a person will be rewarded, but if you act towards him as though your trust was incomplete, this will adversely affect his own performance.
What strikes me about this argument is that it leaves the faith that arouses most controversy - faith in God - problematic; because it only half applies there. The kind of faith Parris is talking about, even assuming it is unproblematic with respect to action and to trust in others, doesn't seem to apply to beliefs about whether something is the case or not. I can't have unquestioning faith, faith free of doubt, faith independent of any evidence, in whether certain states of affairs out there in the world, the universe, obtain or not. Well, I can but, mostly, that isn't an attitude that recommends itself. It leads people to make serious errors of judgement. Belief in God may, to some extent, be modelled on putting your trust in another person. But it also presupposes that the 'person' - the being - in question exists, for you to be able to place your faith in Him. And this is a belief about the state of affairs 'out there', a belief of the sort for which we normally require evidential support.