You may not pray to a god, but everyone relies on faith in unknowns to complete their value system. You may not have a holy book or clergy, but everyone relies on authoritative texts and trusted authority figures to tell them truths about the nature of reality that they themselves have never experienced. You may think you rely on knowledge rather than faith, as most people believe of themselves, but you haven't even bothered to do the simple observations and calculations necessary to prove simple scientific facts, such as the Earth revolves around the sun. You are faithful, in a way not very distinct from the religious.
Science is not about never making assumptions or starting from zero on every possible subject, that would be so impractical as to be absurd, but about being willing to modify your beliefs on a scientific basis in response to the evidence before you, there is a difference between trust and faith, and between being willing to modify your assumptions and holding to some conclusion even when there is ample reason to re-evaluate your opinions. This difference is not in having good reasons for one's every belief, but in being willing to change one's mind for the right reasons.
True, I did not do the calculations to show the heliocentric model as being true, nor to establish that the earth is not a flat disc, but I trusted the people who claimed that these were well established by others, so that I would not have to figure everything our from scratch (a requirement for scientific knowlewdge to build upon itself). However, my level of confidence in these things as being true are proportionate to the level of justification I can bring to the ideas I believe in, I will never assert absolute certainty in anything beyond my own existence in some form, my level of certainty is on a continuum, with my existence on the side of absolute certainty, and everything else somewhere else on the scale.
When I encountered flat-earthers and geocentrists, i did not simply reject them as being wrong a priori, I heard their claims, looked to those who addressed them, and found the counter-arguments satisfactory, especially since they had the last word due not to censorship of flatties, but due to the flatties simply having nothing to say in return, and so burying their heads in sand. All this was trust vs trust, and makes clear another point, that evidence is not just direct observation, like certainty, it also lays upon a continuum, and some evidence is superior to others, but there is no reason to therefore conclude that only the very best form of evidence can be used, absolutism is impractical. now, if the debate has gone further, and there was more to support the flatties claims, one may move up to the next degree of evidence, since the argument could not be resolved at a lower level.
think of three roomates, one stores a cake slice from a wedding in the fridge, it disappears overnight, the roomate who owns the cake is furious, and demands to know where their cake went, one of the two other roomates says that the third roomate ate it, having seen the event take place, in such a situation, a scientifically minded wedding-attendant may base their assumptions on this level of evidence, but when the other roomate says that the other one was the one who ate it, the wedding-attendant may then move onto the next level of evidence to resolve the situation.
the point of all this is that your insistence on extremes is what makes your argument flawed, both in certainty and in evidence, there is a continuum, and they exist due to practicality, one does not have absolute certainty or nothing at all, and one does not have to rely on just the most accurate means of establishing belief to believe in anything at all, both of these approaches would get us nowhere.
faith is unwaverable, it is not tied to anything at all but inner certainty itself, the conclusion is a priori, and not subject to change, to pretend that is equivalent to making presumptions based on what is likely and modifying them later as new information comes in, is a false equivalency.
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