Faith without a theist belief?

[Trassk]

A conversation I was having with a friend of mine brought up an interesting take on a what if situation if I found myself in it.

Although I'm not opening this debate on if you do or don't believe in the paranormal, in ghosts and all that, just for this for instants, what if you were in a situation of being forced to face something of this nature.

Now, as many would account for, faith orders like the catholic, Jewish or other religious orders have themselves faith in god and deities and whatever there religion tells them, and from this, they use that faith and following, in stories I've seen and read about, how they call on there divine deities to help fight against or banish or exorcise or just confront such things, all from there belief in whatever they feel is part of there faith.

Thats all well and good, but in the scenario we were talking about, what if you were someone, who being an atheist or agnostic or just not believing in religions and there deities, if you were confronted with something the same as previously mentioned, lets say you brought a house, and find yourself haunted by some unknown presence, and despite your rational mind telling you its not real, it still carries on breaking things, appearing, scaring the shit out of you and so on.

How, as an atheist, how would you confront this? This is something I've often puzzled over, because as far as any religion would tell you, you need god or Allah or whatever divine entity to help confront such a thing.

I don't remember what show he was discussing, but my friends a huge anime fan and watches anime shows all the time. In one series, he brought up how the protagonist of this series confronted the concept of faith and how he is confronted by this without appealing to a god, as a way of confronting evil spirits, and he did so not from praying to a divine entity, but simply from believing strongly in something else greater then himself.
The idea was that what gives a person strength in life isn't so much what a divine godly story tells you, but rather then belief in something bigger then yourself giving you that strength to stand up, in this case, belief in things that science teaches us, about the cosmos, atoms, dark matter, particle research and technology, this became the characters faith, and not from a cross but from his belief in the what science taught him.

This I liked, because regardless of if you believe in a god or not, whatever can give someone a sense of strength from something greater then themselves is what allows them to be confident, find a sense of clarity in life, and overall better thenselves. So if confronted by something like an apparition, an athiest would just as much be able to confront this thing with whatever gives him spiritual enlightenment in what he believes, even if its not religion itself.

of course, this can simply be applied to just following something in life that makes it seem worthwhile, either as a theist or atheist.

[Darsithis]

I'm sorry, but religious topics for the sake of religious topics aren't allowed here.