Via The Information Paradox:

There is a difference.

I had another discussion at work with the “Holy Janitor” yesterday where he seemed totally confused. It was a passing conversation that I kind of butted my way into, but I wanted to see where he was going to take this statement. He said, “Everyone has faith in something”.

Now, as soon as I heard this I had a good idea where he was going to head with his reasoning if I pressed him, and I did so I could make my point. I said, “Not everyone”.

And then he took the conversation exactly where I thought he would. He continued, “What do you mean? Yes they do. When you get in your car and drive down the road, you don’t know if your brakes will work or not when you step on the pedal, but you have ‘faith’ and press down anyway.”

Perfect!! I was ready. I said back to him, “No, that is not faith, THAT is ‘reasonable expectation’ based on previous experience/evidence. I do not ‘believe’ the brakes will work, I ‘expect’ that they will work based on every other time I stepped on the the pedal and the car began to slow. The same argument is used regarding the Sun coming up in the morning, people who don’t realize the difference between faith and reasonable expectation will say that we have faith that the sun will rise. That is not true, we have a reasonable expectation that we will see the Sun come up on the eastern horizon tomorrow based on the 4.5 billion years of previous evidence of it doing so. So, no, not everyone has ‘faith’ in something, ‘faith’ is belief without evidence and I don’t wish to live my life that way.”

One of our coworkers was sitting at a nearby table and another was at the counter preparing his lunch, both began nodding their heads and the one at the table said, “he is exactly right”.

The “Holy Janitor” looked dumbfounded, stood there speechless for a minute, then just walked away.

BGH has a good point here. I’ve never really drawn a line between faith and reasonable expectation, but I think he’s exactly right. While there are a few things I could claim to have “faith” in, for the most part, I tend to live my life based on expectations derived from evidence or the lack thereof. The only time actual faith comes into play is if I launch into a venture of which I’ve never had any previous experience. However, in those cases, I generally try to do enough research on said venture to develop some expectation of what I might encounter.

Very interesting post!