Religious faith is exactly that, and that is my fundamental malfunction with it. The more closely and credulously one holds to religious dogma, the truer that statement is.

Colloquially, outside the religious context, faith is almost the polar opposite: it is belief that something will happen based on past experience (direct or indirect). It is justified vs unjustified belief. When I mean that, I just use the word "trust". When I mean religious faith, I always use the adjective "religious". I do this because theists are always conflating the two definitions in a vain attempt to give religious faith some credibility by analogy.

I think that’s true... the world around us is the greatest teacher we have, and reason and knowledge arise from all we have learnt from it.