Joss Whedon on faith

I feel ever more and more these days that faith is a well-camouflaged parasite among virtues. It sits enthroned as one of most religions' cherished commandments, yet to me it always just looks like fear in a pretty mask and is therefore wholly undeserving of the adulation it receives. Yet maybe I don't really understand. Joss Whedon made me think I probably don't.

Joss says humanists have more faith than the religious, because while religions advocate faith in gods despite a lack of evidence, humanism advocates faith in humanity's worth despite mountains of evidence to the contrary. I'm trying to decide what I think about this statement.

I would actually adjust his statement a bit, because I do feel there is evidence against the existence of the gods the major religions posit. But still that would only put humanists on even footing with theists in the faith department. So do we have faith?

At first I was surprised that I was not immediately repulsed by sound of a man I respect telling me I have more faith than a religious person--especially given my continual struggle to figure out if faith is a word or concept with any merit. Hearing him say that made me uneasy, but I also felt a swell of pride. Was it the tortured remnant of my religious upbringing that I heard, crying triumphantly from exile in my mental dungeon? I once cherished belief despite evidence because I had been taught it was a noble method of attaining truth. Then I rejected it because I came to believe that it is unreliable and dishonest, and now Joss Whedon is telling me it is actually noble, and that I practice it after all...and I rejoice?! How can this inexplicable sense of victory at his words well from somewhere deep inside this staunchly agnostic brain?

Perhaps he's right that I "have faith" in humanity despite the obvious truth that a large sampling of the members of my species are either contemptibly incurious (if not downright stupid), or disgustingly mean-spirited and violent, or both. And maybe he's even right that this is a Good Thing.
I've been learning a bit about World War II lately. I particularly enjoyed Dan Carlin's series of podcasts on the German/Soviet conflicts and the incredible, unfathomable destruction of human life by human idiocy that took place at St. Petersburg. If I am really capable of knowing that my race routinely executes perversions of this nature, yet persist in believing that humanity can succeed and overcome its bad habits and maybe end up seeding futuristic Wild West colonies on habitable planets, surely I practice some degree of faith?

Nihilists and cynics might conclude that there is no hope for our race, but I must admit I fervently nurture a kernel of hope that we'll one day achieve Roddenberry-style peace and unity. It's probably irrational to do so. I therefore feel disingenuous, as if I'm attempting to have it both ways. Belief in something despite evidence against it in hopes of making it real is either a corrupt falsehood of a notion, or it is one with some value. If I insist (as humanism seems to) that dogged belief in humanity's worth is a vital part of ensuring it eventually comes to deserve preserving, then I must admit the latter.

I want to have a rational basis for everything I believe, and my inclination lately has been to dismiss what I see as theistic fabrications about life after death as the blind gropings of minds that feel they have no other option. But is their desperate grab at personal meaning any less grounded than the humanistic axiom that humanity is worth saving? The alternative of either belief to its holder is seen as too depressing to be useful, and so it is rejected without question in order to make true its opposite. For a religious believer that is faith. For a humanist, maybe that is faith also.

If that's the case, then faith isn't an intrinsically useless endeavor, and if I wish to be a humanist instead of a nihilist I need to find some other criterion by which to judge the worth of a faith-belief.