That's stretching the meaning of faith beyond reason. Pun intended. What you are talking about isn't religious faith. Which I believe was what he was talking about. Yes people don't know the future. So they have to make assumptions about how things will work. And they act based on that. But that isn't religious faith. If things don't work how people expect, people change their assumptions. Change what they have faith will happen. If you want to use that word. But you can't do that in religious faith. You have to believe in something against all evidence to the contrary. Or lack of evidence.
We could get really detailed here. I don't want to go that far.
By the definitions of "religion," all people have religion. And their religion involves a great deal of faith, no matter who they are.
When a person talks "formal religion," one that has a name and some holy or sacred writings, remember that he interprets the doctrine and aspects of his formal religion differently than everyone else who has the same formal religion... differently at least a little.
The religion of a little child often can be twisted this way and that in the little child, by those who want to train him in formal religion. But his religion that is based in reality is strongest of all religions. This is because he still holds the memory of how he was created and built in Mommy's tummy, even though he can't express the concepts involved, and even though he can't easily be made to understand that he might be being asked to express them. The rest of us have chosen to bypass such complicated memory concepts, and in so doing we have made our religion less than reality... usually far less.
The idea that atheism is not a religion, or that atheists and others live without religion, is entirely false... by the definitions of what religion is. All suggestions of belief or faith, and all faith systems, are simply attempts at describing reality. The further we get away from the reality of the little child, the further we get into religion.
