I would argue that faith is the willingness to accept the
irational without any kind of logical evidence.
Faith is something that many people
need in order to get through their daily lives. It is a protective blanket.
As for the ability to
will yourself into having a faith, a belive that it is possible. As a young teenager, I came to a point in my life when I realised that my religion and my science
were in fact mutually exclusive. It pained me greatly, and made me very depressed. I knew that I was at an early enough stage where I could in fact "will" my faith. I knew that if I blanked my mind for a while, that I would eventually forget, and that I would be able to delude myself. I had to make a very big decision, truth or contentment (
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...threadid=14122). Ultimately I choose that I would rather believe the truth rather than what makes me comfortable, but it is indeed quite a prediciment.