I’m pretty sure that you didn’t mean to equate faith with wilful ignorance, Richard, and I’m sorry if I gave the impression that I thought you did.
But the fact remains that there are many people—both Christians and non-Christians—who do view faith as either being or demanding some form of wilful ignorance or other. Some of them view this misconception to belittle and denigrate faith, while others act on it and practice wilful ignorance in the name of “faith”. And some of us have actually had to face the consequences of having done so. When you say things such as this:
anyone who has, or who is recovering from, such a misconception will hear you equating faith with wilful ignorance, whether that is your intention or not. You need to understand that there is a difference between what you say, what you actually mean, and what people listening to you think that you mean. The goal of clear communication is to try to keep that difference as small as possible, and bearing in mind the presuppositions and assumptions that your audience make is an important part of that.
The whole point that I’m trying to make here is that faith and reason should be seen as complementary, not as contradictory. If someone finds that reason is undermining faith, it’s because they haven’t learned how to make the two work together and build each other up. They need to be taught how to do that, not to ditch one in favour of the other.