Well, I do love the term believe. And I also like the term faith. Because it is of degrees of belief and faith that we are talking about.

In 99.9% of interesting things in life there are no absolute certainties. As such whatever we take for granted might be wrong to some degree.

The problem with faith and belief is their source and their degree. A typical example is the religious bigot: total and undiscussable faith in something there is no evidence for or against.

I have faith and belief in, say, evolution. A faith based on existing evidence and a rational process that can be democratically shared with all humans. A faith that can be REVISED in the presence of new evidence or a good, preferably testable, argument. But I don't have complete certainty about the topic.

One of the reasons that I've loved your post is because it exposes some of the typical bigotry in the left side: some issues (like this) are very hard to discuss with progressives: either you are with dogma or you are casted out.