Knight, they could say, “I have faith that [insert religious account of choice] is the true account of the way things are, and if it were true, then God would have created the universe,” without begging the question. Again, I’m here defending theism at its most plausible; I don’t pretend that this is actually the position that theists tend to take.
Regarding the ontology of our own existence, I’d point out that epistemological contextualism does not refute the transcendental turn. I know that I exist, and that I have experiences. I certainly seem to exist in a physical universe that is populated by material objects and other entities which experience things in the same sort of way as me. But even if we jumped contexts and granted that things are basically the way that they seem, it still would not clear what sort of thing existence is, what explains its manifestation, or whether it exists within the context of something else.
As for whether faith can be fairly characterized as a “wish,” I’m not really sure if that’s fair or not. I personally can’t see how it would be reasonable to have faith in religious accounts or to take a theistic position. So because I don’t understand what could possibly lead a reasonable person to adopt such a position, I’m sort of at a loss to explain why people would do so. But I don’t think anyone would try to characterize faith as having to do with epistemology.
Jon, I guess all I can say is that stupid people advancing a hypothesis doesn’t make the hypothesis wrong. You can take the position without accepting the coherence of polylogism.
Wombatron, agreed!