Faith has two morphing definitions.
1. An unquestionable position: If you dare question it, you are questioning their faith, which is a social sin second only to matricide.
2. Trust. The Royal Society's motto is {translated} "Take noone's word for it". I think a few universities have adopted it too. Religious Faith in this meaning would have the motto "Take those guy's word for it."
My question is this: is it possible to successfully and honestly debate someones faith when it so obviously intermingles with matters that can be proven via evidence?
Depends on what you mean by succesful.
If it's an unquestionable position then you won't succesfully persuade them. Not without going through a long period of offending their deepest conscience in the process. Is that a success?
If it is "I take these guy's word for it.", you might at least be able to get the concession that without taking those guys words for it, the account wouldn't hold up in court any better than any other story with conventiently unfalsifiable supernatural elements in it.
Unfortunately: Creationists tend to have 'faith' that god was respsonsible for life and that a fear that if one starts allowing the creation account to be diluted, everything else threatens to be washed over. So good luck with that.
For the sake of this discussion, we shall assume that the individual is fairly open minded, just a bit mis-guided and happily ignorant.
You could tell her you saw a flying hippopotamus farting rainbows or that the CIA have infilitrated her computer and are reading all of her files. If she questions you, remind her that she took some dead jews word for it that a walking talking snake set off a chain of events that would lead to labour pains.
That might be an interesting place to start on a discussion into when skepticism is actually appropriate.
If she fell for snake oil once, I suppose you could be cynical and try to 'con' her into theistic evolution. Kenneth Miller might be a way to go here (though if she thinks Catholics have cooties, that might again be counterproductive). But that probably betrays the 'honesty' part.
You could do something crazy: Have her take a Biblical Scholar seminar. The kind of thing Pastors go on. Not the propaganda stuff, but the raw information about the Middle East and the culture and knowledge about the Bible itself and what is known about the authors. The really open minded type would be up for it, and will almost certainly find themselves altering their simplistic vision of religion if not abandoning altogether.
This has been written over the course of several hours, with frequent interruption so if it doesn't make coherent sense...sorry.
Edited by Modulous, : it didn't make coherent sense. Sorry.