This thread is not about evidence for God’s existence. It’s about how to define the word faith.
All atheist/agnostic argumentation has defined faith as belief without evidence. It is the most prominent reason for their choice of agnosticism/atheism.
If atheists/agnostics are confident that their answer to the question of God’s existence is the best answer, then they will necessarily have confidence in their own reasoning.
If however they have lost confidence in use of the term faith to mean “belief without evidence,” and if they are interested in truth more than in saving face, then they should come to terms with it.
Right, and I think that the word faith has been overused by religious apologists to the point that it has been rendered meaningless. If faith is going to describe everything from belief in turning an ignition key to theism, and that faith in Jim Jones and faith in electromagnetism are the same thing, then faith can literally mean anything. A word that can mean anything means nothing in a discussion.
If however they have lost confidence in use of the term faith to mean “belief without evidence,” and if they are interested in truth more than in saving face, then they should come to terms with it.
I see no evidence that the definition of the word faith has any bearing whatsoever on the arguments of either side. You seem to have glommed onto this superfluous argument and run with it. As you can plainly see in above posts, a discussion about theism almost instantly turned into a discussion of evidence. Every argument I've seen between theism and non-theism at some point turned into an evidentiary discussion, so however the word faith is defined is completely irrelevant.
From a secular perspective, faith is rarely understood and frequently misidentified as a dual of knowledge.
Secular epistemology hinges about 10 words expressing very different concepts of Knowledge:
Faith,
Truth,
Naming / Identification,
Meaning,
Justification,
Intuition / Understanding,
Belief / (Psychological) Certainty,
Perception,
Logic,
Memory.
Secular definitions of knowledge tend to follow something such as, “a soundly justified true belief”.
In Christianity, two different passages describe salvation and how one is saved. John3:16 and Eph 2:8-9
Joh 3:16-18
(16) For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
(17) For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.
(18) He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
Eph 2:8-9
(8) For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:
(9) Not of works, lest any man should boast.
In the Greek, the words translated as faith and believe are the same word. This may help is better understanding its meaning.
Knowledge in Biblical Greek, is discernible from secular studies, because the source is more authoritative. The veracity of God is immutable, whereas the secular man-made definition assumes our ability to discern truth.
An additional element in God given faith involves perception.
The anthropology of man in the New Testament is trichotomous: Body, Soul, and Spirit.
Each have a system of perception. The Body has 5 senses of perception, also a basis of Empiricism. The soul has a system of perception as a basis for Rationalism. Faith is the system of perception of the human spirit of the spiritual domain.
Things which are spiritual are spiritually discerned, but unbelievers do not have a living spirit until they have faith in Christ. They are dead to spiritual things. Spiritual language to the unbeliever is foolishness, because they lack the faculties to spiritually perceive. This doesn’t make the spiritual domain any less real, nor its consequences upon us.
On the contrary, faith is the beginning of true knowledge, far exceeding the limited perspectives of Empiricism and Rationalism. Believers will place priority on faith, over empiricism of rationalism, because the latter 2 systems of perception allow many spiritual errors resulting in death, but understanding life requires all three, with faith being sufficient for all things which we have been created to perform.
Until one understands faith, their grasp of knowledge is sophomoric at best.