Question about "faith"

[The Grand Nudger]

To the contrary, I think it is primarily cognitive. Faith/Trust requires the processing and appraisal of information to execute. I think anyone that says faith is primarily a feeling is reaching really deep into their pockets to make stuff up.

Throwing an awful lot of christians under the bus on that one.  Christians who do express that their faith is a feeling, perhaps even the strongest feeling that they have.  

There's nothing wrong with having very strong feelings, John. Very strong feelings can inform us the same way that knowledge can inform us.

Let me ask you a couple q's. If I trusted that god was going to throw me in the pit - is that faith in god? If I believed in the christian god, but wasn't a christian - is that faith? If I knew there was a god, and rejected it...is that faith?

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While you chew that over, I'll offer something that is like faith, at least in my estimation. Patriotism.

I don't think that america is the greatest country in the world on account of any particular fact that could be true or false. I haven't reasoned my way to it. I don't trust america, as I trust my wife - but I'd like to and would if I had the opportunity. I often have very little confidence in it - but I would like to have much more and would if I had the opportunity. Nevertheless, I feel very strongly about america. My faith, if you will, in america... is like any religious persons faith in their own convictions in a way that I think is instrumental to what faith is and means. It's not a true thing - it's a thing that I'm so committed to that I would make it true. A thing I feel so strongly about that I would search for and explain a way for it to be true, whatever the given circumstance or fact on the ground, and even as those facts change.