Is 'faith' really a 'great cop-out'?

[Edwardo Piet]

Faith, like anything else can be misapplied or misunderstood but faith per se is perhaps a necessary part of understanding (or not understanding) the fuller picture.

Sorry I did not catch your first name,

Well although I am glad you agree with my post, I am sorry to say I do not agree with yours. Faith will by its nature push you in a certain mindset and will frame evidence in a subjective way. Now it is very hard to examine evidence pro or contra a god or gods when your mindset is already that you believe one exists. Particularly if you believe that it is your version of god being examined.

The trouble is in the fact that the human brain is very eager to connect cause and correlation, so we are by our very own nature predestined to believe things without evidence.

What I do is try to look at evidence and see if there are natural causes to explain claims, as opposed to assume the causes are supernatural. And usually no matter how far fetched the natural solution may seem, it is still a million times simpeler than getting a supernatural deity in the equation because then you need to explain the supernatural deity.

What I will not do is presuppose that when I don't understand it and no one has a reasonable or naturalistic explanation that "god did it". Because all that does is make the equation more complex and explain nothing. I don't know to me is a much more valid answer, at least the most honest one.

I very strongly agree. I guess I'd only substitute, "a million times simpler" for, "trillions and trilloins of times simpler", to say the least perhaps. I don't know whether you can overemphasis this based on what we *understand. Perhaps I'm wrong. I dunno. Maybe I am. But with my current understanding I actually think millions of times simpler is an understatement. Perhaps I'm wrong. Or even very wrong, I dunno, correct me if you (or anyone else) think(s) I'm wrong.

I ask this as I just noticed a quote of Richard Dawkins. I would love to be able to proove things for myself e.g E=mc2. (I am rubbish at even basic maths and know that I can't fathom equations like this but I have faith that others understand and know the workings of them.) I don't think faith need always be negative as Dawkins asserts. Yes, it can mean you have blindly accepted something without trying to understand it, (which would make you a fool) but it can also be because you are not capable of understanding the whole picture but you understand and 'see' how other related stuff works.

Well, I'd basically say that once faith isn't blind, isn't irrational, isn't a cop-out etc, then it is no longer faith. If faith isn't blind I think that's just belief not faith.
*=changed 'know' to 'understand'