Faith Versus Belief

Faith and belief are terms that are usually used interchangeably.  However, they are not necessarily the same.  You can believe in something without having faith in it.  You can also have faith in things you do not actually believe. 
Belief is what we suppose in our minds to be true. To believe in something is to acknowledge that it exists in a reality outside ourselves. To believe in God, for example, is to accept the idea of a Higher Power above and beyond ourselves.
Faith is an hold on to something to with our minds, our hearts, our wills and our emotions.  Believe is intellectual assent; faith is our personal foundation. 
Our beliefs may or may not have anything to do with how we live. Many of us have beliefs which have nothing to do with our everyday lives.  If we do or do not believe in aliens or Sasquatch, it will probably not have much bearing on our family lives or our choice of occupation.  It is an intellectual choice, not a life-supporting foundation.
Belief in God is for many people little different from belief in Bigfoot. They accept the concept of God, but that is all. One can believe in Jesus' existent, even in His resurrection and divinity, yet it makes no difference to them in their everyday lives.  A person may believe in God, yet cannot point to a single life decision or personal habit influenced by that belief.  They may as well believe in the Loch Ness Monster.

Faith can exist where there is no belief. We can build our lives around things that we know to be fantasies.  It is living in the subjunctive case.  We ask "what if this were true" and construct imaginative views of life around it, until we forget that it is merely a supposition, not reality.
Think of a person who plays the lottery every week, and fantasizes about winning it.  They become so focused on the dream of lottery winnings that they sell all that they have and buy tickets. It is still a remote fantasy, not as likely as being struck by lightning on a cloudless day, yet they have built everything around it. Intellectually, they know the odds. They know the difference between truth and fiction, yet they choose to define themselves by their allegiance to willful fantasy. emotionally, they have bought into the dream so deeply that they do not care.  That fantasy has become the basis for their life. 
Belief is what we hold in our mind.  Faith is what gives meaning to our existence.  Ardent sports fans,  movie buffs, re-enactors, serious gamers may just be part-time hobbyist, but at least a few become so engrossed in this that it becomes a faith, not a hobby.  They look to their heroes and imaginative fantasies to give meaning to our existence. In the age of virtual reality, this becomes more and more common.
"Fantasy religions” which Adam Possami labels “hyper-real religions” are increasing.   In Dunedin, New Zeeland, nearly two percent of the population listed on a census their religious preference as “Jedi Knight.” Often these religions start out as a joke, but over time they develop real belief systems, code of ethics,  fellowship,  and rituals.  Some start out as serious attempts to build a moral philosophy on fictional stories.  There are religion based on the movie The Matrix, Start Trek, the novels of H.  P.  Lovecraft and Robert E. Heinlein. It does not bother their followers that they have a non-real mythology--any more than(as G. K. Chesterton suggests in The Everlasting Man) the ancients always believed the myths and stories of gods and goddesses were true. In postmodernism,  the actually reality of the narrative that shapes our lives is purely incidental.  Apparently, knowing that something is unreal is not necessarily an impediment to having faith in it.  
While it is possible to have faith without belief, it is not ideal.  When our faith is challenged by real-world problems, unreal forms of faith tends to fall apart.  Even a child knows enough not to point a toy gun at a real robber.  We cannot continue to play games when our lives take a somber turn. 
As inadequate as faith is without belief, having belief without faith may be worse.  When we believe one thing and live another, we are live a lie without uttering it.  For such a person, belief exists but it impotent. We have denied the link between the head and the heart.  A person who is mistaken may be corrected, and that correction can change their lives, but one who knows the truth and does not live it is like a person with nerve paralysis.  They have severed the spinal chord of their lives, and no longer respond to the mind.  A hyper-real religionist may be following fiction, but they can change through confronting reality, but the non-following believer is inoculated against reality,  severed from the real, and cannot be persuaded by it.  Only the most desperate of circumstances can bring them to seek the power of true belief.
Belief and faith are not the same, but they should stay together.  Together, they enable us to withstand the challenges of life.

Here's some questions  for discussion:

Do you agree that it is possible to have faith without belief or belief without faith?  How important do you think it is to have your faith and belief together?
Do you think in you own life, your beliefs and your faith match?  Do you depend upon your beliefs to form the basis of your everyday life decisions?