(YECs, flat-earthers and conspiracists have issues with accepting the right kinds of testimony.)
It has everything to do with epistemology.
I’m not sure that matters. That would actually leave less space for “faith”, no?
I’ve heard this kind of reasoning before. I’ll also say it carries more weight (he he) than Dr. Craig’s definition above. I don’t really get it though. I believe the chair will hold me based on reasons. I sit on it and it holds me. I continue to believe it will hold me based on the same reasons as well as the additional evidence that it is actually holding me now. Why faith?
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You are applying faith when you start to sit down on it and before your butt makes contact. 
Your reasoning is proven valid and your faith justified when you successfully land on it and go no further.
Unless it’s a situation where you use reason to reach a conclusion, and then drop reason and let faith carry you the rest of the way? I don’t think anyone is trying to say this though.
Once you have the experience, say, of sitting down successfully on a given chair design and condition, then you don’t have to re-evaluate using reason every time, you can just exercise faith and sit right down in a similar one.
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This septuagenarian can give you life examples, if you would like.
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(The most frequent mandate or command in the Bible is “Don’t be afraid”, or one of its several variations – “Be anxious for nothing”, “Fret not”, etc. I don’t have to be afraid of a chair not holding me or a life situation overwhelming me because I have a strong and trustworthy Father.)
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Once a plastic lawn chair started slowly giving out on me and I was heading straight towards a fire pit. Luckily my wife was on the ball and gave me a good hard shove in the other direction. What does this say about faith 
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You have good reason to have faith in your wife to be looking out for your best interests.
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It says that the validity of faith is determined by the object of the faith (the chair’s integrity) not the believer’s confidence (your trust in the chair). You could doubtfully sit in a trustworthy chair, and this would be valid faith. You could confidently sit in a broken chair that tumbles you into the fire, and this would be an invalid faith.
Is valid/invalid the right way to say this? I’m not sure…but the distinction I’m making is the key point.
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That’s fine in my book. Ann Voskamp, in her excellent book on thankfulness (speaking of books 
), One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are, suggests that the opposite of faith and trust is not doubt, but fear.
Christianity may be the only faith that urges its followers to test itself against reality:
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It would show that your reasoning and analysis of reality and your belief was flawed, and your faith misplaced.
I think this is a very important point. We generally don’t give “credit” for sincerely believing something utterly false, though as a college professor, I can attest that many a student has tried 
So here’s the question then, if the validity of the faith is determined by the object, and not my confidence, how then do I go about testing that trustworthiness of the object? In this way, I see “building faith” having a very analogous relationship to experimentation in science.
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It is not like we can subject God to tests of our design. One test that comes to mind is that in Malachi, regarding giving and (not necessarily material) blessing in return:
I’m hesitant to bring up testimony again, since it has been a fairly frequent emphasis of mine, but I think it is relevant. One way scientists gain confidence in an ‘object of faith’, a theory, is by the confirming testimony of others who have ‘put it to the test’. It is analogous to other Christians who have life experience of God’s faithfulness, in addition to that recounted in scripture and two millennia of history. And then when you have your own confirming experience(s), it adds to the weight of evidence confirming the trustworthiness of God as an object of faith.
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So the value of faith is ultimately determined by the truth of the object of the faith? Is there then an imperative to use reason to determine that truth and that our faith is well-placed?
You could substitute “belief” in that equation with the same result. My only issue is that I don’t see the difference between “faith” and “belief”. I don’t think that’s a problem, myself–I accept the idea of belief based on reason, and if faith is just a synonym for belief, well, fine. I can understand why there is a theological attachment to the concept of “faith”. If that is steered away from a negative concept of faith without the exercise of reason, or the value of faith for its own sake chair broken or not, I’m all for it. Always interested in this topic and open to the idea of any meaningful distinctions being made.
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Here’s another question though. Faith as has been described above must be tentative, correct? If reason should come along to demonstrate that faith is misplaced, it should be abandoned or modified? Or should faith be more persistent in any way?
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Perhaps it would help if I elaborated further. I don’t know if you are familiar with the story, but it states that Pharaoh was willing to let them go, so God “hardened his heart”, he refused to let them go, God punishes him with another plague, repeat. This seemed to me completely unfair and unjust, and I was feeling quite indignant about it. Why would this God character do this? Then I got to the start of chapter 10.
Its really hard to find words for what happened next. A voice said sadly “but you forgot”. Not angry or condeming, just incredible sadness. I don’t know if I heard it or it was just in my head, but it kept reverberating around in my mind, worse than an annoying catchy radio jingle. I have a fear of heights, and I felt a feeling of vertigo, similar but far more then when I crawled as close to the edge of Castle Point Hill as I could. I also felt a feeling of wonder and awe, similar but far more than the first time I saw Saturn and its rings through the Thomas Cooke Telescope at Carter Observatory as a boy. Then I experienced a paradigm shift. Nothing changed but everything changed. Figuratively speaking, I could still see the two black faces the same as before, but now I could also see the white candlestick. For example I loved a song by Depeche Mode called “Blasphemous Rumours” which mocked the idea of faith in a good God. I still love that song, but now when I listen it I hear it also talking about God’s grace.
Was my experience connected to Exodus? Well yes, kind of. But since then I’ve met many others who have had very similar experiences and so far the ones I’ve met were all reading the New Testament when it happened, they were surprised when I said mine happened in Exodus.
Causes? Well I’ve never done drugs, I’ve never even smoked a cigarette. They all seemed completely illogical and I couldn’t see the point. A minor stroke? A brain aneurysm? I felt fine afterwards, in fact I felt better than ever before. Like I said, I’m not trying to “prove” anything. I don’t have a problem with other people being atheists. If thats what you see then be honest about it. I still think its a beautiful hypothesis. But as Huxley said, The great tragedy of Science — the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact. I can’t call myself an atheist anymore because I no longer consider atheism to be the best explanation of what I have experienced.
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Well of course atheism isn’t really an explanation. What you mean is that you can’t consider any physical or non-supernatural explanation for your experience. I don’t want to talk you out of anything, but you should know that people have had similar experiences reading the Quran, the Bhagavad Gita, and so on.
Still curious, if you will indulge me. What did “but you forgot” mean to you in connection with Exodus or with anything else? What is it you forgot? Why was the voice sad? And how do you now understand God hardening Pharaoh’s heart just so that God could later show his power through all the plagues?
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… that it was misplaced?
