Faith doesn't mean 'belief without evidence'. That's a Richard Dawkins talking point, not anything you'll find in a dictionary. John could have excellent evidence for his own abilities, and yet his faith in those abilities could turn out to be misplaced.
Using faith and belief interchangeably seems disingenuous and ignores the religious context that is part of faith. Faith implies a lack of compromise, a concreteness, and unwillingness to change. Using that term to describe evidence based science, and the belief that evidence ought to be presented before a belief is held is an attempt to reduce science to dogma.
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Faith doesn't mean 'belief without evidence'. That's a Richard Dawkins talking point, not anything you'll find in a dictionary. John could have excellent evidence for his own abilities, and yet his faith in those abilities could turn out to be misplaced.
"Not anything you will find in a dictionary" is a terrible bar to base something off of: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/faith Definition 2b. http://www.dictionary.com/browse/faith definition 2.
Using faith and belief interchangeably seems disingenuous and ignores the religious context that is part of faith. Faith implies a lack of compromise, a concreteness, and unwillingness to change. Using that term to describe evidence based science, and the belief that evidence ought to be presented before a belief is held is an attempt to reduce science to dogma.