Don't Gotta Have Faith
Faith is a polarizing word in my circles. Depending on what side one comes down on regarding the existence of God, people have biased meanings for the concept. I know atheists who define it as �belief in something contrary to evidence� and theists who define it as �justified, true belief.� A working definition of faith for which I�ve had the most luck in finding agreement is �belief in something beyond what the evidence warrants.� Let�s plug this common term of �faith� into a few use cases for the word. �I have faith that my wife will never cheat on me.� I think this works. My wife has never cheated on me in the past (as far as I know) and has never behaved in such a way that I think she would consider cheating. That said, I know relationship data shows that cheating is common. So in this case, I have a decent amount of evidence in the form of past experience that justifies a belief that she probably won�t cheat in the future, but a realist should still consider that it could happen m...