Ok, this is a very sensitive and controversial topic for religious people and they are highly intolerant towards discussing any and all aspects of this, at least in my country they are, but over here i don't think you people would have any issues.
So, I want your opinions about how you think people define the concept of faith in religious contexts, when they say "you have to have faith" what do they mean? From what I've observed faith comes in where logic fails, sensible religious people try their best to logically explain things, but because they are defending religion, they are bound to be logically incoherent at some point, when all evidence points against them, that is when they say "You need to have faith, for believing in the unseen is a true sign of faith!" Many islamic scholars believe this to be a fundamental aspect of islamic beliefs.
So for me, faith is nothing more than a wild card to replace and cover up logical fallacies and absurd claims, what is your opinion? I'd definitely like to hear the opinion of those who are agnostics and or religious.

P.S
don't give me the literal definition of word faith, i am discussing faith as it is described in religions, especially islam! because that is where i came from!

looking forward to thoughtful responses.

I feel faith is a necessity of life to some extent. However there is faith that is grounded in some reasonable assumptions, and there is faith in the sense of religion.

For example I have faith that tomorrow the sun will rise, that I won't get a terminal disease in the next 10 years and that the train I enter to go on a vacation will not derail. These are all assumptions of faith which make my life liveable.

'Faith' is trust. I argue that it is formed logically, and applied in cases when the outcome is not certain.
Trust is formed based upon past experiences in a relationship. Religion is a relationship with God, which is formed through experiences with him. These experiences are not miracles or revelations, simply subjective encounters of what is good in the world.
So you use faith when you are not sure what will happen, but faith has to build up from memories. It can not be pulled out of thin air.
Also, like you can never KNOW whether or not your friend is going to lend you money, you can never KNOW whether or not God is real. I don't get how people claim to know that there is a God in a religion that preaches faith and doubt, which by definition mean "I'm not sure."

(June 20, 2013 at 4:01 am)littleendian Wrote: I feel faith is a necessity of life to some extent. However there is faith that is grounded in some reasonable assumptions, and there is faith in the sense of religion.

For example I have faith that tomorrow the sun will rise, that I won't get a terminal disease in the next 10 years and that the train I enter to go on a vacation will not derail. These are all assumptions of faith which make my life liveable.

I agree with you in spirit, but not in practice; you gotta be wary about giving theists another out, though the "you have faith too!" argument has its own set of interesting implications they don't really want to think about. I wouldn't call the examples of the faith you have faith at all; I'd call that reasonable expectations.

You have evidence for the rising and setting of the sun, as it's done so every day for as long as you've lived, assuming you haven't spent any time at the extreme edges of the globe, but even then we have demonstrated explanations for why it stays dark for days, or vice versa. You have a history behind your expectation that you won't get a terminal disease, but importantly you aren't taking that expectation as a binding condition of the world, either; if you did contract something bad, you wouldn't deny it because of your experience that it's a rare occurrence for you. You know that mostly trains don't derail, so you've got a probability calculation, however loose, to show that your train most likely will not derail. And if you see that, say, one of the carriages is missing a wall, or a set of wheels is askew, you don't then expect the same risk of derailing as a fully functional train. You factor the evidence available to you into the equation.

Faith, in a religious, capital F sense, is a belief that justifies itself, and that remains in spite of evidence, and not because of it. When a theist falls back on faith, what they're doing is saying, "I'm okay with not having evidence for this claim, but you aren't, so let me pretend like I have some by employing a term the dominant cultural influence of my religion has twisted into a righteous concept." Faith is the excuse you give that lets you retain belief in a claim without having evidence for it, or while the preponderance of the evidence is against you. It's the emergency brakes on an argument the theist is losing.

Now, to be fair, this isn't just a religious Faith; conspiracy theorists and believers in pseudo-science also employ it, but that doesn't make it any better, either. It's just admitting defeat without having to deal with the image of having lost.

(June 20, 2013 at 5:26 am)Consilius Wrote: I don't get how people claim to know that there is a God in a religion that preaches faith and doubt, which by definition mean "I'm not sure."

Easy:

Consilius Wrote:Religion is a relationship with God, which is formed through experiences with him.

Cognitive dissonance at its best.

faith is the excuse people give for believing in something with no good reason and no evidence

King James Version - Hebrews 11:1 "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

It's one of my mother's favorite verses.

I've always said that faith is nothing more than indulging the desire for purpose.

When I was a believer I saw faith as being like trust, in that it was based on some form of evidence. Jesus had explained to his disciples that there would be signs, and the faithful would recognize those signs and be strengthened by the knowledge that the time of his second coming was near. I think that for believers, faith really is "evidence-based". It's just that the "evidence" is either very flimsy or only recognizable as a sign if you convince yourself that it is. Thus, when the new pope was chosen recently, a cloud formation over Florida that had a vague bird-like shape was determined to be a sign of approval from god. And if that isn't silly enough, remember that crowds of worshipers will show up to venerate the moldy spot on your window that looks like the virgin Mary.