Basically, I feel like "having faith" in people to not be having a massive and easily brought down conspiracy against you and "having faith" in a god to exist are two completely seperate things even though it's possible to use the same words for them.
Mm, yeah. That's actually how I like to view faith, on a personal level. There's two basic types of faith, faith in the unverifiable (Belief in what
cannot be tested -- tests that cannot be communicated, i.e. post-death, don't count.) and faith in the not-yet verified (Belief in something you have not yet tested, but
can be tested). Most faith related to the divine is of the former sort, most faith related to science the latter. While they're both faith (untested belief), there is definitely a difference in their nature. They're both important (Even science has
some unverifiable axioms in it), but testable faith is much more
applicable, i.e. useful, in a general sense. You can't really
do much with an untestable proposition, other than see what the logical/practical consequences of its assumption is. A not-yet tested proposition, though, can be, well, tested. If nothing else, you add determining truth value to the actions possible related to it.
Once something is verified or proven to be false, its state turns into knowledge of some sort or another. That does have the implicit consequence of making
untestable beliefs incapable of becoming knowledge, but I'm fine with that