Without our ability to have faith in something, I doubt very many of us would be able to get out of bed in the morning. As far as I'm concerned, having faith has nothing to do with whether you believe in a deity or not, it's about being able to believe in something that you can't see but know will happen anyway. It's not much of an act of faith, but believing the sun will come up every morning is just as surely an act of faith as believing that eating a piece bread and drinking some wine is the same as snacking on the son of God.

Seriously though, every time we do anything where we have no idea of the outcome we are committing an act of faith. Starting a new relationship, trusting a surgeon to cut you open properly, getting up on stage to perform a song in front of a live audience for the first time, or starting out on any new creative project all require you to have faith in either yourself of someone else.

Of course in all of those instances, the more success we have, the greater our faith in the successful outcome. We have proof that we are able to sing in front of a new audience and not be booed off stage so we get back up there and do it again with even more faith in our abilities to succeed. The same rule of thumb could be applied to all the instances cited above.

Now in the eyes of some people the very fact that we have proof of something diminishes the role played by faith. According to them, it can only be faith-based if there's no proof to verify how something occurred, or if we believe in spite of evidence pointing to the fact that what happened can't be substantiated. In other words, blind faith — where, in spite of the fact that you have no reason to believe in something or someone, you do anyway.

In Christopher Brookmyre's latest book, Attack Of The Unsinkable Rubber Ducks, available in Canada through Penguin Canada, he turns his sights on the people who rely the most on other people's blind faith – psychics. He specifically takes aim at the ones who claim to be able to commune with the dead, and are able to deliver messages to us from the other side.

The "Unsinkable Rubber Ducks" of the title are a reference to the fact that no matter what proof is brought against the charlatans and fakes who populate the world of psychics, there will still be people who will refuse to give up their faith. While willing to admit to an individual's perfidy, they claim it's not proof that there's no such thing as psychic powers, only that a particular person was a fake. In the face of that unshakeable — idiocy, blindness, or as some would have it, faith — there really is nothing that can be done.