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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9406504" data-attributes="member: 4937">Which is not the definition of the word faith though.  Different religions have different words for spiritual communion or the apprehension of the sublime, sacred, or numinous and that state is a commonly described state in religious practice.  But I don't know one of them that uses faith in that manner as a synonym for that.I don't disagree with the evidence just I don't see what your evidence has to do with your thesis.  Faith is not a synonym for revelation, communion, or enlightenment or whatever a particular religion technically calls it.I do agree that people unhelpfully conflate faith and piety, but not with the conclusions your draw from observing this.  Faith is much more often nonreligious in character than piety is.  While you can have piety to your parents, often this occurs in the context of a religion that involves ancestor worship - as in both China and Rome (which also both had worship of the Emperor).  If reverence reaches the level of piety, then it's generally religious in character.  Faith on the other hand is generally not religious in character and is only really an important part of one religious system, and really not in the sense that most modern people assume (whether you believe God exists is basically irrelevant in Christianity).  However, that's getting off topic.My point is simply that all religions teach piety.  In polytheistic religions what is piety is usually all that matters.  There is a ritual transaction going on where input A produces output B - spells rather than miracles.  D&D's setting generally makes faith unimportant because it's loosely based on polytheism.  Piety on the other hand, that is simply obeying or paying homage to, is a big deal.   In Greek polytheism no one thought of Zeus as faithful, almost no one believed Zeus loved them, and almost no one loved Zeus.  It may or may not have been a good thing to be someone that Zeus loved, but if he did it probably wasn't on account of your character.  All of that was irrelevant to religious practice.  What was important was Zeus was a king and deserved a certain reverence that if withheld would bring his attention to you in a decidedly unhelpful manner.  Whether you had any personal feelings about the king or his behavior was irrelevant.  Ditto the rest of the list.</blockquote>

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