[Renall]

Originally Posted by Wanderer

I called it "faith" to imply that the person "creating" it isn't the lier, but the believer.

I think you're right. I think that although chick Beato knows that it was a simple trick, she still chooses to believe it's magic. When I coin it as "faith", I am encompassing this concept as well.

The creator could also believe it though. In fact, couldn't the creator believe it even if nobody else does? The main thing is somebody is presented the gold and chooses to embrace it. Whether that's a person doing it to themselves out of genuine belief or self-deception, or a person deceiving others or simply representing a belief they hold for others. Still, I wouldn't use "faith" as that's something of a loaded term. A gold truth can be approached rationally, I think, by a person who believes the gold truth to accurately represent reality as they understand it, so long as their misunderstanding is wrong in some fashion.

As an example, let's say I observe that the stars in the sky appear to rotate in a mostly regular pattern around the earth. From this I profess that the Earth is the center of the universe. Supplemented with other information (such as religion and other observations), this is a truth that people would come to accept, although the conclusion is in fact faulty. However, it would take a much deeper degree of rational study to conclude things like the transversals of the planets do not conform to the model of a geocentric universe. And a greater degree of courage still from there to conclude that the "gold truth" of Earth at the center of the universe is wrong.

Nobody deceived me into believing the Earth was the center of the universe and I wasn't deceiving others when I suggested it to them. They believed me because my facts (red) appeared to present that scenario as the most reasonable truth. We weren't exactly accepting on faith that my conclusion followed from my premise, we were just wrong. Jumping to conclusions. Failing to notice all the data.

I'm not disputing your claims, just that I'd use a different word than "faith," because it implies the person accepting it isn't doing so based on reasonable facts that appear conclusive (but aren't) when in fact they could be.