On Thursday, October 21, 1999 6:03 PM Aaron Davidson ajd@ualberta.ca
wrote:
> What other meaning of the word faith is there?
>
> I have never heard anyone properly use the word faith in any other way --
> religious or not.
I've seen people using faith generally in two ways. One, in the way your dictionary defintions define it -- as a form of irrational belief -- i.e., "I believe it because it's absurd." (This does not mean belief without proof, but belief when it contradicts all else.) The other, is as a form of confidence. An example of this is when someone says she has "faith in her friend to do the right thing." She's not saying this because she does not have evidence. In fact, it's usually because she does have evidence.
Those two ways of using it are often confused, especially since the latter type of faith has certain positive emotional connotations. Even so, this does not help out the person who first brought up the issue. The first type of faith is wrong period. The second type does not support what is conventionally called religion -- not when people can have faith in the Ford F150 truck.:)
Cheers!
Daniel Ust
http://mars.superlink.net/neptune/