Buildings do not collapse all the time - a specific building might collapse under certain circumstances....and only once, unless it is rebuilt! When you go to start your own car, you have prior knowledge and experience telling you how reliable your car is. That is not faith, in this context. If you found an old deserted car in the middle of nowhere with the keys still in the ignition, and you believe it will start the first time without checking any of the mechanics or fuel level etc, then that would be an example of the type of faith we are talking about

The dictionary contains multiple definitions of words, you are committing an equivocation fallacy. Faith can also mean 'complete trust', but that is not the meaning that the Bible is suggesting.

Christian faith:
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it the elders obtained a good testimony.
By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible. Hebrews 11:1

When someone says they have faith in Jesus, I think this is a particularly confusing sentence because it is using multiple meanings of the word at once; they are presumably using faith to mean trust (a meaning not under discussion), but at the same time they are also saying they believe in Jesus without evidence (which is the meaning under discussion).

I like what ajmargarine said about faith as a disposition similar to kindness and humility. I think the word for this is virtue. Or I guess fruit of the Spirit in Paul's language.

That said, I don't think faith-as-virtue is really the kind of faith that the OP was asking about, which seemed more like faith-as-epistemological-category. The former is supposed to be the outcome of spirituality, and the latter is more about the process by which one comes to accept that the spiritual exists and is worth seeking after.

edit: foiled by crosspost!

This kid is 50 years old. So perhaps it's too late for me. You, however, still have time to learn how to conduct yourself without coming across like a fool.

But I doubt that will happen.

Nah my sole purpose in life is to be as childish and dull, as I can.
But I respect your age sir.

Then I congratulate you, for your life's goal is accomplished!

So I've been toying with providing an inadequate response to this or zumby's methodology thread because I think they're related.

I consider faith, in the sense I think you mean, necessary due to the lack of a clear methodology for discerning true religious claims from false. If I accept Carrier's hierarchy of methodologies, and I think I do, then I have to accept faith as a failure of those methodologies to answer the questions left to it. This seems reasonable given that these very questions pertain to things I don't think we can know and so fall outside the remit of those methodologies.

A consequence of this is that I consider faith an inadequate source of a moral framework. If we can't apply those methodologies to questions we can't know we can apply them to outcomes that we do. It's also a reason I can't reconcile my belief in God with the concept of a God that judges us by how we know him.

That said my faith is all over my moral framework, my values are informed by it my worldview is framed by it and I consider it an entirely positive contributor to who I am. I won't claim that faith is necessary for an entirely moral worldview nor will I claim that faith legitimises my moral framework. It may do personally but that alone is inadequate.

It would help of OP would provide the source of where he got this notion: "Why does God want us to make a leap of faith to know him?" Is it from the Bible? Many Christians use "faith" to mean "trust" in God.