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pigglet
Your point is well taken about faith and one's belief system developing pretty much simultaneously. The two occur in tandem, and a bit of hair splitting, if not complete speculation, is inherent in attempting to definitively state their order of occurrence. That said, my experience has been to incorporate events and actions, on faith, into my evolving personal mythology, so I have concluded that faith edges out belief in order of sequence.
I'm not sure what Martian meant by "higher" when he posed the question raised in the OP, but faith is a bridge for me to get to meaning. On the other hand, the need for meaning evokes the faith to get there. It's kind of like lightning...as the strike approaches the ground, there is a charge rising up from the ground to meet it. Maybe the right answer to Martian's either/or question is "yes".
As for changing my beliefs to incorporate new knowledge, the flexiblilty built into my personal mythology would accommodate that...it's kind of like upgrading software. The metaphor gets stronger, as I grow older, in that the "upgrades" are incremental now, where they may have been revolutionary in my younger days.
What I have faith in is that the beliefs embodied in my personal mythology have meaning. Listing all of those beliefs goes beyond this topic, but would include, among other things, that there is value in love, compassion, empathy, sacrifice, self-actualization, and acquiescence.
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