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Comment by broscillator | Hacker News Reader

Faith does not mean superstition. I swear youtube atheism debates have confused many to knee jerk react to specific words.

Faith can operate on low levels such as: You arrange to meet with a friend at the park tomorrow.

You don't know for a fact that you will still be alive, or that your friend will, or that an accident won't befall either of you, etc. You operate on faith that your and their word will be made reality.

This is faith. It doesn't need to involve god, it doesn't have anything to do with superstition. You just take a belief and you act as if it will pan out.

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no, that's not faith, by any definition of the word (religious, secular or etymological).

You _can_ have non-religious faith on _people or institutions_ (not necessarily religious, but faith isn't the same as _any set of arbitrary assumptions_ (which is your example). Basic assumptions (in particular those you have evidence for or don't require an internal justification to exist) aren't faith.

Most definitions of the word also require _commitment_ to something or someone, as part of the definition of faith - so someone who blindly trusts a specific car manufacturer and always buys that brand has faith in it, whereas someone who just expects their brakes to work does _not_ have "faith on the brakes".

Trusting someone's word over something trivial isn't faith, it's just trust.

Trust is what makes you believe your friend is not lying, it's cast upon them specifically, it is related to their history and integrity.

Faith is believing that all the other conditions, the ones that we do not think about, will align. It is important to highlight that it is working on a low level, because we take this for granted all the time. Actually it might not be until you lack this low level of faith that you see its presence (through its absence).

Either way, your linking of faith to superstition remains completely bogus.

Just because you want things to mean something doesn’t make them mean that.

As best exemplified by your conflation of faith and superstition.

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