"Ya Gotta Have Faith." But Faith in What, Exactly?

It is a commonplace that people need "faith," but the statement is as ambiguous as it is banal.

Today it seems that when most hear the word "faith" they associate it with religion. Religion is, of course, usually exclusive--famously, often to the point of extreme intolerance. Yet those saying "ya gotta have faith" do not often seem to be recommending belief in a particular religion, at times seeming to imply that even something as hazy as the idea that "the universe always has a plan" will suffice.

It is, in short, a commendation of if not religion then religiosity, in the view that the world is an ordered place in a way not necessarily perceivable with the senses or recognizable through the exercise of reasoning from that sensory data--which may well indicate the opposite of any such ordering--with the implication that this ordering is somehow benign ("Whatever is, is right") and a denial that reason is a sufficient basis for humans getting along in this world.

Putting it bluntly, to speak of "faith" in this way is to champion an irrational, anti-rational and highly conservative stance in a shorthand fashion that, I think, goes right over most people's heads, with this perhaps its attraction for many, the fact that the statement is so ambiguous and so banal that few give a highly debatable position any consideration whatsoever making them feel the freer in asserting it.