You do not grasp my point, friend. Even you are "a man of faith" within the meaning of that term as I understand it. Every scientist or engineer who ever lived and thought is "a man of faith."
The scientist's faith is that the world is intelligible. If the scientist did not believe that, then all his science would be in vain; indeed, there could be no science at all. And the engineer faithfully believes in the complete adequacy of the mechanistic principles of his calling. If he doubted them, he would not be an engineer at all.
It seems to me that all human knowledge rests on faith at its very foundation. That is, without faith there is no spur towards knowledge, no scope for the operations of logic and reason, nothing for intelligence to work on. Without faith in something, there is really nothing at all for a man to do. He might just as well curl up in the fetal position and resign from the human race.
But this rarely happens for the very simple reason that every man believes in something, whether it is true or not. If he didn't, he wouldn't even be a man.
Yet evidently you have been trained to cast a cold eye on belief in God. This seems to pass as quite fashionable nowadays in certain circles.
And yet for countless millennia by now, belief in God has been universal to all mankind everywhere. Doctrinaire atheism is quite a contemporary phenomenon. And I note that where you find it, you find not only contempt for God, but also contempt for mankind in general — but especially that part of mankind that believes in God, and particularly the Christians among them.
But back to my opening comment, that every scientist must believe the world is intelligible or there couldn't be any science at all; science per se would be a pointless exercise if the fundamental intelligibility of the world was in doubt.
And yet I know of no scientist, offhand, who asks the question: Why is the world intelligible? What is it that embues it with intelligibility? From whence do its laws arise? And other questions of that kind — the answers to which cannot be found within the spacetime reality of ordinary existence and experience, of the direct sensory perception on which the scientific method ineluctably depends.
Science does not ask these questions. Indeed, such questions seem a bit above science's paygrade, given its utter dependence on sensory perception/observation/measurement which is its fundamental, even sacrosanct method.
I might add that there are plenty of "non-observables" of the greatest importance to human beings. Indeed, the ability of man to detect them is a sign of his categorical superiority to the lower animals.
But to not ask such questions doesn't mean the questions disappear. Plus by its own methods, science cannot disprove, or falsify the eternal Presence of God — the God Sir Isaac Newton called "The Lord of Life with His Creatures."
I just wish you guys would stop behaving like the Dog in the Manger.... The rule there being what the dog cannot eat himself must be denied to all other creatures for which it is the most suitable and nourishing fare.
Anyhoot, back to my claim that faith and reason are NOT mutually exclusive: If you were to scrupulously, honestly analyze your own thought processes, I think you would find I am right about this.
But hardly any person does that sort of thing nowadays.... Few people understand their own thinking. But then critical thinking is getting to be a lost art it seems.
Thanks so much for your reply, 21stCenturion!
God is not a hypothesis. He lives. His Name is I AM. I've known Him for a half century and counting.
The atheist claim is therefore as absurd to me as someone saying that my brother does not exist simply because he does not know him.