To talk a little more about evidence for faith, what we're really after are the reasons for faith. Evidence is the data presented to prove the facts. It is anything that tends to prove or disprove something, it gives us grounds for belief. Reason and Truth are also related. Reason is the mental process we use in order to form a conclusion about something. The best definition of truth is that truth corresponds to reality. Again, truth conforms to the way things are. It is the objective of evidence and the object of reason. Evidence is presented in order to reveal the truth about something, and we use reason in order to point us to the truth. Evidence and reason are important, but they aren't the only way we can know truth. When it comes to reason and faith and the way they relate to truth, it isn't either/or. It's both/and. Both reason and faith help us get to the truth. Reason gets us there by enabling us to discover what corresponds with reality. But faith is also necessary because you can't personally prove everything that is real in the world. To illustrate- assuming you've never been to Nepal, you weren't alive during the Civil War, and you've never been bitten by a rattlesnake, how do you know that Mt. Everest is a real place, that Abraham Lincoln was a real person, and that a rattlesnake bite can be fatal? The reason you know these things is that you have exercised faith by believing what other people tell you about real places, people, and things. You can't personally prove these things, but you have good reason to believe that what other people have concluded about them is true.
(Taken from Evidence for Faith 101-Bickel and Jantz)
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