I don’t use the word faith in everyday language because of the religious meaning. If I mean hope, I say hope. If I mean belief, I say belief. I only use the word faith if I mean accepting something without proof from the religious point of view. I know technically I COULD use the word faith to mean hope but why fight a battle I don’t have to? Dealing with religion is difficult enough in daily life in America as it is. And now politics has become entangled with religion. Even Barry Goldwater said that would be a mistake. I’ve been an atheist since birth but that doesn’t mean I don’t acknowledge a higher power. The universe is a power greater than me. The sun is a power greater than me. Even the things I’m physically more powerful than can be more powerful than I in other ways, like a bacteria.

Faith is a word. It has specific meanings. Connotation is another animal. We all have our own way of responding to certain words, but when a particular connotation has taken root, it tends to overshadow any other connotations/meanings a word might have.

So, what specifically is faith? Faith is:

complete trust or confidence in someone or something.
"this restores one's faith in politicians"
synonyms: trust, belief, confidence, conviction. This is the principle meaning of the word, but it has been overshadowed by:

strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof.
synonyms: religion, church, sect, denomination, (religious) persuasion, (religious) belief, ideology, creed, teaching, doctrine
"she gave her life for her faith"

The principle meaning is normally associated with evidence having been given that something or someone is deserving of one's trust as opposed to the second meaning where trust is given without evidence.

In order to avoid misunderstandings, I refuse to use the word in any context. I replace it with any of the synonyms because they are more specific.

There's a difference between "faith" and "blind faith".

I believe the word faith is one of those words with meaning is highly dependent on context when determining meaning.

It's similar to the difference between "theory" and "scientific theory"

That understanding of faith is very similar to my own. In fact, that may be the best description of faith I have ever seen in writing. It’s what faith and the scientific method have in common - that they are both process oriented; if I use this method, I will get the best result available, whatever that might turn out to be. This is as opposed to superstition or fundamentalism which are goal oriented; they know the answer they want and construct a question that will deliver it.

So my only quibble with your statement is that you don’t go ahead and include God and religion too in your rescue of faith. I would rather say “The fact that the words faith, God, and religion are so closely associated with ignorance, superstition, and fundamentalism is annoying”.

Religious faith: the acceptance of asserted truth without a requirement of substantiation.
Colloquial faith: expectation based on experience and evidence; trust.

They have almost opposite meanings. In fact, theists often conflate the two in an effort to make religious faith seem somewhat credible.

I suppose there is a third sense that you are getting at, which is a sort of stubborn optimism that things will work out for good if you mean well and do your best. I tend to think of this as more similar to religious faith than to trust. It is basically belief that there is some kind of dues ex machina in place to insure a certain amount of overall fairness / reward. Even if it's not invested in a benevolent, personal, interventionist god, it implies things without evidence in roughly the same way.

I am not sure we can have faith in anything beyond our own selves, at least not in the with the same force as a true believer can have in god (regardless of what we may think of such a belief). Faith in success, progress and science is different because these are exterior goods and involve others, which are not totally within our control. The person who creates and lives in accordance with the dictates of their own conscience, who have faith in what they do regardless of outcome, I think these people have a deeper sense of faith than any Christian. Faith in this sense is morality, what one ought to do without being told, without outside influence or purpose. It is faith in the truth, where truth is fidelity to one's own self.

I think it is very important to differentiate between two meanings of the word "faith" in everyday language.

Faith, as used in religion, means belief in claims and assertions not based on evidence or proven fact. It allows religions to make extraordinary claims about history, with no evidence, obliging followers to believe those claims on that basis. Indeed, religions make a virtue of faith-based beliefs as a sign that they are "worthy" of their imaginary God or saviour.

But faith in general language is often used as a synonym for the word hope. People say they have faith in the future, faith that the better nature of human beings will prevail, that they have faith in their children, and so on. This means hope, but it is based on something -- one's opinion of human nature, the reading of history, or knowledge of our children. It's really hope, but expressed in that way, based on something, whether justified or not.

We need to reject the religious meaning, loudly and clearly. We should recognize the second meaning as a synonym of language.

Well said