Faith and achievement

[Jesster]

I got to your definition and stopped. As soon as you can redefine something, we are no longer talking about the same thing. I know you want me to read to the end, but what's the point?

But to answer your question: I think there's a convergence between my definition of faith and the more Christian religious one.  I don't think it's a cultural accident that many great athletes are seen making the cross sign, for example.  I think religious faith can suspend all the psychological impediments to achievement-- in other words, it has a great practical utility.  Personally, I prefer to have faith in my great brain than in Jebus, but in the end, the real joy is in the results much more than the psychological method used to get them.

And now you are giving the placebo affect more credit than it is worth. Just because someone is able to calm themselves, doesn't mean that there is something special about their ritual. It means they are calm and they can focus more on the task at hand. There are non-ritualistic secular methods that have nothing to do with faith that achieve the same thing.