Pull up a chair

[Mudhammam]

IMHO faith is roughly equivalent to trust. People express their trust in people, things, and ideas. I trust my wife, I trust bridges (most of the time), and I trust some ideas enough to live my life in accordance with them. In the realm of ideas I trust the belief that honesty is the best policy. I trust that my senses do not overtly decisive me. I take it on faith that other people have minds.

And here's where your equivalency of faith and trust falls apart:

I have faith that reality exists apart from individual minds. And I trust that God exists and living a good life involves loving what is good and true.

You see what you did there? You went from using trust in a sensible way to express a justified confidence in people and things that are actually known to exist, to the presumptuous assertion that Santa Claus is real (I mean God... but I prefer Santa because at least everyone knows what you're talking about then).

Few things are certain. Most everything else requires some degree of faith.

Equivocation. Back to using faith in the sensible form, or in other words, "everything requires some degree of presumption." Yes, and by 'everything' we mean 'that which is known to exist through our array of senses.' God is not one of those things, hence he has no requirements... except your imagination.

Can anyone be certain that God does not exist? No.

The Christian God? I'd bet my life on it.

But you trust your reasoning and have faith in its conclusions. I'm not certain that God exists but I consider it highly likely based on my reflections on life and I try to live accordingly.

Again, you're talking about necessary assumptions we have to make versus unnecessary and unsubstantiated assertions pulled out of thin air. They're not the same. We could always opt for Solipsism but that wouldn't mean other minds don't exist, it would just mean they don't exist in the manner we typically assume they do.