Religious people are often pilloried for the idea that faith means the sacrifice of reason, and the willingness to believe things that are patently not true.
And when religious people debate scientists, they're often sort of hung out to dry on exactly those presumptive presuppositions, their willingness to accept on principle, propositions that seem on the face of the impossible.
I don't think that's what faith is at all, in some fundamental sense. I think faith is a form of courage.
if you're hurt by life, and you will be, it's understandable that you might react in a nihilistic and hopeless fashion and become anxious and depressed, and cynical, and bitter and all of that. That's a bad pathway.
Courage that, fundamentally, there is goodness in existence, despite evidence to the contrary.
(1.) you have a duty and perhaps the capability to transcend the suffering and still serve the good... or
(2.) life is so unbearable that it would be best terminated. Faust: "the world is rife with suffering, and it's so unbearable, that consciousness itself, all beings should cease to exist, that would be better, nothing is better than something if something is rife with suffering."
A conclusion that you can be driven to in the darker, terrible times of life.
You have every reason to be embittered, but combining bitterness and a serious personal problem might be worse than fatal. [story of daughter's illness at a young age.]
"if you don't think there are things that are worse than fatal, you have not suffered, because there are things that are much worse than fatal."
"you don't need many experiences like that, to convince you that there's things about the world that you truly don't understand on the ethical front."