I agree that such can describe many people, but orthodox Christianity doesn't prescribe wishful thinking or worse, blind faith. If you read the Bible, it is very much an evidence-based religion. A good summary is More Than a Carpenter, by Josh McDowell (192 pages).
Everyone lives by faith. How can you be sure --- I mean really sure --- that the chair will not collapse beneath you, this time? I guess you don't know, 100%. But nevertheless, you sit in it.
Faith != Blind Faith. Blind faith is a particular kind of faith, which has no reason for its being --- in fact has reason against its being. Faith, by itself, is just to go on believing something that you have been given enough evidence for, in spite of irrational fear or self-centered temptation to disavow. There is a reason that sexual loyalty is also called "faithfulness."
The Bible is evidence-based because: in the Old Testament God said, believe that I am the one true God because of this or that miracle that I just did; in the New Testament, it keeps talking about testifying, "I bear witness," "believe on the testimony of these witnesses," citing them by name.
Here someone will say, but how do we know any of that really happened, just because it's written in a book? That's where manuscript evidence comes into play, whether the people who say they wrote this or that really wrote this or that, and that's where I point you to a book like Josh McDowell's, which will talk about how the Bible has tons more manuscript evidence than any other book on the face of the earth. We know that John wrote John far more than that we know that Homer wrote The Odyssey. There are other books too, like The Case for Faith. I just generally pick Josh McDowell because it is the shortest, and I know your time is valuable, and your patience for contradictory opinions is limited.
Here again someone will say, but just because I know John really wrote the book of John doesn't mean that John wasn't lying. That's where McDowell --- and the other books --- will talk about logic and human nature. Most of the disciples were martyred, terribly. Who would die for something they knew to be a lie?
> to call Josh McDowell an expositor of Orthodox Christianity is a bit offensive
lowercase o orthodox: "conforming to what is generally or traditionally accepted"
Besides, what in More Than a Carpenter would a Greek Orthodox believer disagree with?
John may have really believed / perceived what he wrote and simultaneously been wrong about it. Human perception is unreliable, malleable over time, and subject to distortion from a wide range of internal bias and external stimuli. Plenty of people around the world genuinely believe in religious and spiritual experiences that directly contradict the experiences that you hold to be true.
By contrast, there are few concepts more "heretical" (in the literal/etymological sense of the word) than "sola scriptura," i.e., to "become a church unto oneself."
It is precisely this implicitly heretical "sola scriptura" preoccupation (and with it, such anxiety to prove the veracity of the physical texts themselves!) that contradicts the very concept of orthodoxy.
Sitting in a chair is either a) not an act of faith or b) the word faith itself designates nothing at all.
It's the old "God of the gaps" argument. "Faith" here means ignorance. The reason we don't know the chair won't collapse is because we didn't pay attention in science class, or we don't know how structural integrity works, or we don't know the properties of certain materials, or whatever.
This idealism as opposed to materialism seems to be prominent throughout what I've skimmed of this site.
Are you familiar with Marvin Harris (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Harris)? I think he draws his causal arrow backwards -- it's not that a society develops ways of thinking because they'd be adaptive, it's that societies that happen to develop adaptive ways of thinking flourish -- but it's fascinating to watch his style of analysis in action, and he makes more good points than bad ones... at least if you ask me.
Without going into a litany of examples, surely even devout Christians understand that large portions of the Bible are difficult to match to reality/science/etc.
[1] https://sites.google.com/site/shkrobius/inthebeginning....
I really didn't want to get into a point-for-point thing, but the "day" is just one issue. Birds and whales (great sea monsters) precede reptiles and insects, grass precedes light, etc. The Ark, and other stories, have similar issues that are hard to wave away.
What's the problem?
> grass precedes light
verse 3: And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.
verse 11: Then God said, "Let the land produce vegetation . . . "
Really?
> verse 3: And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.
What are verses 14-17 about, then?
Edit: For clarity...
a) Birds preceding reptiles and insects seems obviously flawed.
b) Verse 3 "Let there be light" would almost have to correlate with the big bang...light somewhere, but not on the earth. Verses 14-17 seem clearly to be about the sun being created. Created millions of years after the grass (and other things that need light?), if we take the notion that "days" aren't literal, and are meant to match what we've seen in science.
This has the verses laid out in a way that's easy to follow: http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Genesis-Chapter-1/
If one tries to nitpick on every little detail in the Scriptures, they will have a lot of occasions to do so. It is quite easy to find apparent contradictions by interpreting the Bible in a way that is suited to your goal. It is not, however, a proof that the Bible contradicts itself, as it relies on a specific interpretation. When it come to religious matters, very few things can be proven or disproven.
The way I see it, Christian faith is about being humble. You can't find God if you read the Bible with a self-righteous, know-it-all attitude, trying to disprove it line by line. I found this[1] page to explain this point of view quite well.
You cannot apply the principles of science to metaphysical matters, because science concerns itself purely with the physical, tangible world, and has no answers to offer regarding its origins, its meaning, etc. Science and faith do not contradict each other; rather, they complement each other. I like to think of myself as a highly rational individual; mathematics and programming, for example, delight me. Yet I have no issue believing that the Bible is true, and that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is the creator of the Universe. Does that make me a fool? In the eyes of some, yes. Is it possible to be cognitively biased in a specific area yet highly rational in others? Absolutely. But to say that reason precludes faith is simply incorrect.
[1]: http://www.christiananswers.net/q-comfort/contradictions-bib...
How about logical impossibilities and contradictions? Can God create copies of himself, or split himself into multiple aspects, such as into the Greek gods? If not, then God must be limited to logical possibilities. If yes, then any and all explanations are equally valid, so God is literally meaningless.
> science concerns itself purely with the physical, tangible world
That's not even remotely true. Physics constantly plays with metaphysical models, and it keeps the ones with explanatory power that can be mapped to observable phenomena.
> I like to think of myself as a highly rational individual
There's an alternative explanation here somewhere, but my highly irrational mind is having a hard time seeing the truth.
(That instruction probably didn't happen, since two chapters later David's raiding the Amalekites just as if they weren't exterminated at all; but if it did happen, well, I wonder who Saul was talking to. The Devil likes to pass himself off as an angel of light; the test of an interaction with a supernatural being is what the said being asks you to do.)
And if you really want to embarrass a fundamentalist, talk about how you're a Creationist, and then start talking about the second Creation narrative -- the one that begins with "the spirit of God moving over the waters". Or talk about how you want to put the Ten Commandments on the courthouse lawn, and then reveal that you mean the Ritual Commandments (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritual_Decalogue). Or read the Books of Samuel, which are obviously two different narratives (with quite different outlooks on life) interleaved with each other...