Faith isn't subjective or opinion. But you're right that I should not tarnish all people of faith with the same brush...

Faith is, by definition, belief in the absence of evidence. That is not rational. If there were rational reasons to believe in deity then you wouldn't need faith, you could use intelligent conclusion, which is how most atheists came to their lack of belief in deity. (Some, like me, were raised without religion and thus did not have anything to overcome.)

And I have great conversations with people of faith about their faith being irrational, and when they are intelligent and open-minded rather than dogmatic, they end up realizing it if they don't already know it. (If they already know it, then it's a shorter conversation.) It's the people who insist that their beliefs in deity are rational rather than faith-based that I argue with the most; if they are dogmatic, they get mad, and we don't usually become good friends. If they are rational people who happen to also have faith in deity, then we can. As I've sid before, I have friends of faith of that ilk.

A *value* judgment, like pretty/ugly, can be subjective opinion. The *existence* of something isn't - that thing either really exists, or it doesn't. Thus if you believe in things for which there is no evidence, you have faith, and that is neither opinion nor rational. If you don't, you don't, and it's rational, although it still isn't opinion.

It isn't my opinion that Australia exists, despite my never having seen it. I do believe that it exists, but not in the absence of evidence. I can't think of anything that I have faith in, actually.