The problem is when you use this definition of faith to apply to Christianity, as it was written well before this definition even existed.

I'm am NOT. I am using the word for Christianity, as it is being written today. You're the one that brought up what it supposedly meant in the bible. What it means today. I disagree with your interpretation of prior meaning, but it is entirely irrelevant.

So then is there some body of knowledge that exists on a spectrum between proof and circumstance that is used to support Christianity? If you say no to this question you are just being blatantly dishonest.

If your point is that the "evidence" required to make something not faith approaches zero, you are simply manipulating the definition, and once again, doing it independently of the actual intended meaning. There is a distinct difference between "I have faith in God", and "I have faith my car will start." The meaning is different.

For the pedantic/nit-picky apologetic, faith (in reference to god/unknown) should be defined as:

"belief independent of the degree of evidence," or "belief disproportionately strong for the degree of evidence".

Again, it is the Entomological Fallacy. You are neither magically creating sufficient evidence, nor are you establishing that "faith" is "belief based on [some] evidence". I've discussed evidence with Christians many times, and in response to specifically the lack of credible evidence, they often respond "you must have faith" - which is functionally the same as "you must worship." Christians use the word independently of evidence.

I thought what you were doing was realising that Christians claim their religion is based on faith, and then defining faith yourself as 'belief without evidence' rather than attempting to understand how they were using the word.

I am using the word as most Christians use it. See above for a more pedantic definition.

I assumed that since we are on DebateAChristain you would making an attack against the internal consistency of the bible, suggesting that Christianity itself, or the bible itself, admits to being based on 'belief without evidence'

Actually no. I was introducing a topic of conversation. Either Christianity/religion could exist in present form without the possessing the current concept of "faith", or it can't. Whichever may be true, is true regardless of your discomfort. Personally, I don't think it can, because religion relies on worship, which is essentially what the current concept of "faith" is. People do not worship facts; we don't worship gravity, or the Big Bang, or evolution. We (mankind collectively) worship the concept of Social Darwinism; we worship conspiracy theories; we worship gods. Whether I am correct or not doesn't invalid the topic, and whether a specific word is translated to the specific combination of letters as "F - A - I - T - H" has nothing to do with it.

People believe in god to a degree disproportionate to the amount of evidence. The strength of appeal of religion, I think, relies on the lack of evidence, just as conspiracy theorists rely on being outside of consensus (i.e. they loose interest if something is accepted as demonstrated).

I think you misunderstood what I meant when I said "... have any connotation about belief with or without evidence because..."

Again, what they thought isn't entirely relevant, unless you can in fact establish they had sufficient evidence. Which of course would be the same as establishing sufficient evidence for everyone at any time. That hasn't happened.

You seem to imply they had greater "evidence" than we have today, AND that it was that evidence which caused them to worship the god. Again, I would say the opposite - people do not worship that which is demonstrated. And by your own argument, they chose to worship despite evidence, not because of it. They used the word independently of evidence - they had faith, which supposedly happened to be supported by evidence; not they have evidence therefore they believed the evidence to be correct. The use of the word belies that it was used as a product of evidence.

But the biggest flaw in your argument isn't with addressing the meaning of "pistis", it's in addressing the meaning of "evidence". They didn't have the concept of "belief without evidence", because they didn't have the concept of "evidence" as today. You're essentially saying "pistis" meant "belief without [nothing]". It's nonsensical. They certainly did have a concept of evidence, but not the same as ours. They didn't rely on a formalized concept of evidence for EITHER use of the word - "I have faith in god"; "I have faith my camel will start"... It's not that "faith in god" was the same as "faith my camel will start", it's that "faith my camel will start" was the same. Whether the camel starts or not was a condition attributed to god, and therefore dependent ON god. In other words, it would be "I have faith my camel will start [because I have faith god will have my camel start]." (And of course, whether the camel started or not was in turn evidence their faith in god was well-placed.)