>>8744It's interesting to look at how the myriad metaphysics have adapted in a world in which colonialism and cultural hegemony has left Western European Christianity as somewhat of a religious benchmark against which others compare themselves. Especially in places like South and Southeast Asia and Subsaharan Africa where traditional unorganized religion is still pretty strong and groups try to codify and categorize both beliefs and practices to solidify their place within a wider community among organized proselytizing Abrahamic religion.
A lot of them seem to have appropriated, among other concepts, the Abrahamic notion of apostasy and its relationship with heterodoxy and atheism. Even in "religions" where there have been traditional atheist movements (in the strict sense of the word meaning without worship/belief in deities, but not necessarily a rejection of metaphysics or even some other aspects of theology) nowadays you can see purists outright rejecting such adherents' membership. The example I'm most familiar with is that of modern postcolonial Hindu theological discourse and the parallels with Christian debate and apologetics is striking, even if there's more of a direct relationship with politics considering the ethnic nature of it.
Regarding "faith" though, when I hear that word I generally tend to assume that the user is specifically talking about religion in the monotheistic Abrahamic sense, since in other traditions, even where there is orthodoxy it tends to revolve around some other idea such as dharma. I don't think people who discuss faith really mean to be discussing anything more than worship of a deity, even if they think they mean to be, because in an Abrahamic context that falls more into the field of philosophy. In my experience at least, if a guy asks me about faith, he's not asking what I think happens when I die or what it means to be or to know, but rather what I use to help get me through the uncertainty of an absurd life.
The answer to that question of course, is mai waifu.
