Little Hawk, to be more precise: I'm talking about faith in the existence of a God, where "God" is defined the way that most of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam define it -- a god with a personality, who bothers with the affairs of humans, listens to prayers, etc. Not the spirit world, of which there is sufficient evidence to put it in the "unknown" camp. Not anything outside of the space-time continuum, which, as you say, we can't possibly know anything about. I have no problem postulating the existence of alternate universes -- the theories make sense and mostly derive from known phenomena, even if there is as yet no way to really test them. Anyone who has ever experienced the effects of deep meditation knows that there is something going on outside of the "normal" physical world -- at the least, rationally unexplainable connections between points of energy. This could, of course, be brain chemistry and not taking place anywhere but inside our heads, but that doesn't really matter in day-to-day living.

I see what you mean about people who don't know anything about science having faith in it. I thought you were talking about scientists and other scientifically educated people, who would consider faith in an untested conclusion exactly the opposite of science. I suppose the difference is that someone who doesn't know anything about science in a real sense can still have some rational confidence that if a scientist is saying something it might well be true, or at least possible. Unlike a church-goer sitting in a pew listening to their pastor tell them that God will listen to their prayers, that Jesus rose from the dead, and that this wine is now blood. No evidence, but complete faith. The two really are different -- the faith doesn't come from the same place, and is not of the same type.

You're probably right that I shouldn't say I have no faith in what my culture told me. I will say, however, that whenever I become aware of something in myself that I'm taking on faith, I pull it out and examine it in whatever way I can. I try to stay aware that faith can be problematic to self-knowledge. So I guess maybe this still isn't faith, but rather untested and unconscious assumptions. Again, not the same thing.

You say you can understand my "concern" about people having unreasoning faith in God, and that I shouldn't "judge" them without more knowledge. The reality is that I'm not at all concerned about it, and the only judgment I make is that they are willing to believe things that don't make any sense and for which there is no evidence. It doesn't have anything to do with how I perceive them as people -- the factor that is most important to me in judging people is whether or not they are good-hearted. That's not something that is determined by whether or not they are able to carry conflicting concepts around with them.

Of course I have to know what people mean by religion before I can know what they mean by faith. But when I hear someone in our culture say, without further explanation, that they have faith in God, I think I can draw a reasonable conclusion as to what they are talking about. So can you, of course, but one of your functions around here is to take conversations off on tangents, so that's OK.