Do you see any benefits to religious faith?

[Mudhammam]

Not unless you have a very good imagination!

I know what I know because I think I know it having satisfied my own questions to the level of confirmation I need.  This level might not be good enough or even too much for another, and many others do not care about the questions I have ask. There is no accounting for anyone else.

Hmm... I'm inclined to say yes, and no.  I agree that you, rather than anyone else, are responsible for your own happiness and whatever ideas you find to be most conducive to that.  On the other hand, other people's ideas -- perhaps at least, and sometimes even more, than one's own -- shape the world in which one must live, so it'd be nice to try to have some measurement by which we can all cooperate in the areas of thought that have practical repercussions for the total sum happiness.  Maybe you think that the specific ideas that appeal to your needs don't overlap with the conditions of anyone else, but are the methods by which you have arrived at your conclusions different from those which underlie the so-called virulent forms of belief, the supposed knowledge of which its adherents have persuaded themselves is every bit as apprehensible as our most basic beliefs about reality, although you and I perceive their notions of reality (it can be anything you want--someone out there is likely to believe it) to be over-simplistic and dogmatical?

What I don't, I know a little about, but it mostly consists of what I don't know I don't know and that's half the reason I'm here getting my ass regularly handed to me. The fastest way to gain growth for me currently is to expose what I think I know, which at the same time exposes my ignorance and I get shone where I am weak and and they are strong. I'm finding it a quite enjoyable self destruction.

I don't put limits on what I can't know. I am (and so is everyone else) objectively composed by what ever universal truth exists, immersed in it and propelled by it, there is no where to go to escape from it. Unless one is actively fighting against it, apprehension is inevitable. Truth is the like the ocean and the journey of life is like a river. When you get to the truth/ocean, the journey does not end, there is a new dimension to explore and new freedom from a one way current to explore it.

Faith means something very different for me.  Mine was authored during a powerful spiritual experience that was followed by an NDE. It was not produce from my mind but it was induced in it...couldn't very well be induced anywhere else...

You had a NDE, the contents of which you have interpreted, I assume, metaphysically?  In so far as you have reasons to support your interpretation of this experience, why call it faith?  And where you don't have reasons, what purpose does faith have other than being a sort of obstinate overconfidence in one of the many directions that your speculation might take?  

You could think of it like a grain of sand that was introduced to my consciousness.  One extremely irritating to the private ego (I am transparent to higher orders of beings) and so over many years I have accreted a pearl of research over it with many many layers.

I'm not sure what you mean by the letters in bold.

My faith and intellect work hand in hand, beliefs are nebulous and subordinate but I also use them like a fishing rod and line, using my informed imagination (belief) to cast out beyond my sphere of knowledge and pull things intuitively out of the ethers. I come up with descriptions that I look up online and it leads me to other peoples works regarding the same things.

I try to orchestrate everything in concert and work the inconsistencies out in all my internal spheres as I go. I've shed scores of beliefs like old skin I've outgrown and grow better ones in a new form....till I outgrow that one.

Knowledge to me is like the rungs on a ladder; to be reached for, pull up by, stood upon, and passed beyond.

I liked how you put this.