Faith the paradox... understanding how it is a paradox

I wouldn't put too much stock in philosophy. Most of it was being done when real science didn't exist. You can't consider ANY of those classic questions without applying them in the context of what we know today. Physics, mathematics, biology, chemistry, even psychology all have a considerable amount to say on the subject today of why we are as we are. And it has a lot more to do, mostly everything, with those aforementioned sciences than philosophy does. Philosopy is nothing more than fumbling around in the dark trying to find a light to make sense of it all. And yes, you can talk about reason and logic - both predicated on the science of mathematics - a priori knowledge and all kinds of jive, but that's all it is...jive, without the hard facts to back it up.

Understand how the universe came into being, then narrow it down to our little globe, and then how life got started, then the evolution of said life, and all the logical cause and effect answers that get us to why we are as we are and you don't need faith.

Philosophy studies the fundamental nature of existence, of man, and of man's relationship to existence. … In the realm of cognition, the special sciences are the trees, but philosophy is the soil which makes the forest possible.
—Ayn Rand, Philosophy, Who Needs It (p. 2)

LeCutter,
I like the way Ayn Rand describes philosophy. Scientific enquiry has philosophy as its starting point.
It's interesting to think that before scientific evidence was available to suggest that the world didn't need a god to function, philosophers had already been able to logically and rationally figure it out.