Once again I am answering something from early in the thread without reading the whole thread. This was interesting to me, though.
I think your definition of faith as "belief without regard to reason" is a fair one
Can be. I'm a believer in Christ, and I don't like that kind of faith.
I especially like "firm belief in something for which there is no proof" as offered by my Webster's.
This seems much different to me from that first definition, and I have no problem with this one.
Faith does not admit of degrees--you either believe or you do not; that belief may be weak or strong in the face of challenge, but the state itself is absolute. Science, however, admits of a broad spectrum of confidence, ranging from "it looks like it might be" to "it almost certainly is."
What if I'm a religious person, and I say, "This seems very likely to be true, but I can't know for certain, of course." What if I think that based on reason and evidence (good or bad, we're not judging the quality of the reasoning or evidence here; let's assume it's not great reasoning or evidence). Do I have faith? I'm not certain, but I am religious (in this scenario). Does this qualify as faith?
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