Theists, what does faith mean to you?

[Kingpin]

 I find it quite interesting how the word "faith" has evolved over the last few hundred years and even more so in the last 20 years.  In the world’s eyes, to say "I have faith" means: I believe something but I’m not sure if it’s true or real, but I need it to be and I want it to be, so I have faith. You make that big leap into the dark. Strong faith, therefore, would be when you suspect what you believe isn’t true, and you are still able to believe it. That’s strong faith. The strongest possible kind of faith you could have would be when you [b]know it’s not true and you’re still able to believe it. [/b]

So are you an agnostic theist then?  No shame in that, around here at least.  I can't imagine being other than agnostic but I can easily imagine ways in which it would be possible to claim theism.  (It just requires lowering the bar considerably, demoting God from interpersonal to intrapersonal.)

I think the emphasis with "faith" should be on your ability to trust it rather than it being empirically true.  So it isn't really a matter of knowing it is or isn't true.  It is simply a matter of your having embraced it as such for yourself.  Faith is therefore a statement about how important something is to you, not about the world as such.

I believe anyone that claims to be a gnostic theist is being disingenuous.  I cannot claim to know something with certainty without proof.  I cannot prove God exists but I believe I can rationally and logically make sense of evidence for the existence of a God in so much as to believe it to be true and therefore put faith in it.  

I fully agree with your second statement.  Faith is not a matter of knowing something to be true, it is indeed based on embracing it as true for myself but based on truth and reality.  If I say that I have faith that my friend will repay his loan to me, that does not mean I will get repaid.  It simply means I believe he is true to his word and trust that he will do so.  Having faith in God does not mean that God exists.  I must presuppose his existence before I can put faith in Him.  How I come to that presupposition is a different matter entirely.