It does matter, because if you define faith as a belief without evidence, then yes, it's easy to ridicule. Just like if you define God as the spaghetti monster, it sounds ridiculous. But then I could just define atheism to my own liking and say it's the belief you can do whatever you want, or evolution as the belief we evolved from monkeys. But these are distortions of the meaning of the words.It doesn't matter. Faith doesn't involve either of them. Proof nor evidence. That's why you are wrong to focus on semantics when what I wrote truly reflects my points.
Also, now you claim it includes neither proof nor evidence, but you give nothign to back this up.
Actually, the dictionary you quoted gives this example to the 2nd definition:
"He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact."
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Then the same dictionary defines hypothesis as such:
1 a proposition, or set of propositions, set forth as an explanation for the occurrence of some specified group of phenomena, either asserted merely as a provisional conjecture to guide investigation (working hypothesis) or accepted as highly probable in the light of established facts.
2 a proposition assumed as a premise in an argument.
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Then, as I already quoted from wikipedia:
"Evidence, broadly construed, is anything presented in support of an assertion. This support may be strong or weak. The strongest type of evidence is that which provides direct proof of the truth of an assertion. At the other extreme is evidence that is merely consistent with an assertion but does not rule out other, contradictory assertions, as in circumstantial evidence."
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So your very own dictionary agrees with wikipedia on what evidence is, and differentiates between evidence for a hypothesis, and proof that that the hypothesis is true.