Did Jesus teach Fideism to Thomas?

Fideism is the idea that Christians should believe in Jesus work of salvation without any evidence or proof.  A passage that is often cited in support of this is from Jn 20.  Thomas refuses to believe until he personally touches and sees the risen Jesus.  He sees Jesus and believes without touching.  

Then Jesus says, "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." 

 

This is taken by many in churches to mean that one should believe in Jesus without any proof or evidence whatsoever (Fideism).  And points exactly like this are often made by atheists as well.  I find that Atheists are not so much former Christians who were abused by the church.  I'm sure that has happened many times.  But my experience has been that Atheists were simply taught incorrect things at church.  And they reject the faith based on what it is not instead of what it actually is.

 In the case of the doubting Thomas passage, the strongest argument for a Fideist reading is that of the plain meaning of the text.  What else does Jesus mean except that those who believe without the sort of evidence that Thomas demanded are actually more virtuous and faithful than Thomas.

But if you understand how the evidence for the Resurrection works, it seems clear that a very different interpretation is actually much more plain and simple.  Thomas and the other Apostles are the evidence for everyone else.  Thomas got visual evidence.  But for others, Thomas is the evidence.  He is a witness.  Simply put, there is no way that the entire world could ever come and see Jesus.  The length of the line would be incredible!  And before photographs, how would 99.9999999...% of people even know how to identify that they were seeing Jesus?

 Simply put, why think that visual evidence is the only form of evidence?  Later in John,(next chapter) Jesus makes it clear that He is sending these witnesses out to teach about Him.  And as we see in other books of the New Testament, they prove their honesty and reliability with how they live their lives.

 

Jesus' message to Thomas seems clearly not just for Thomas, but for all the Apostles.  Others must be brought to faith in Him through their testimony.  This is surely what we see in the letters of Paul.  He refers to certain people as witnesses to Christ's Resurrection.  Then Paul argues for the credibility of these witnesses on the basis of what they are willing to endure for this message.

 

Furthermore, John 20 follows up the verse about not seeing and believing with this.

^"Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name."

 

Does this not sound exactly like what I'm talking about?  While the Apostles faith is based in their having witnessed Jesus, ours is based on their testimony.  The problem for us today is that we don't even think that testimony can be evidence in this context of faith in Christ.  But the irony is that we base our lives on testimonial evidence all the time every day.  Simply put, we trust other people.  There are examples galore.

1)When you buy milk, you place your trust in the store that it isn't laced with rat poison, which is odorless and tasteless and can easily kill you.

2)When you let someone else drive, they could easily kill you.  But you know and trust the person.

3)When you stand in line with complete strangers, they could be murderers.  But we've learned to trust society in general.

4)When you go to the ER, you place your life and death situation in the hands of total strangers.  But you know and trust our medial system.

5)We could go on and on and on.  Is your house a fire hazard?  Who built it?  What exactly does the bank do with your money?  Will you actually get a paycheck at the end of the week?  The news told you something major happened today.  Did it actually happen?