Faith in Science vs. Faith in God

I had the pleasure of publicly celebrating Harold Camping's third strike with the Kansas City Atheist Coalition by doing a faux protest at an intersection near Power & Light. At one point, we were approached by a gentleman for a discussion on why we didn't believe in a god. I like to think he was attracted to us due to our keen choice of headwear:

"TRUTH: Brought to you by SCIENCE"

He chose to address my top-hatted friend, rather than me, so I just listened in on the conversation. His argument targeted an area with which, understandably, most people are not intimately familiar: quarks. It hinged on leveraging the fact that the quark is a particle which, for those who have at least have heard of it, accept its existence as truth. The greater majority of those who fall into this category likely have no knowledge of proof for their existence, but take it on faith that they exist - and this was the point of his argument: we accept the existence of quarks on faith, so why not a god?

Our faith in the existence of quarks, however, is much more complex than faith in a god. Consider the following:

• Research into quarks is done by educated, knowledgeable scientists. This, by itself, would be a merely an argument from authority, which I would normally be immediately suspicious of, if not for the next point:
• I am currently ignorant of evidence for the existence of quarks, but I can, given enough time, do the research myself and gain an understanding of how quarks work and evidence of their existence. The availability of reliable information which can be used to conclude with the aforementioned authority, I feel, helps to substantiate proposals for the existence of quarks.

Contrast that with faith in a god: there is no observable, conclusive evidence for the god. The most it has going for it is the argument from authority, namely a clergy. However, there's no independent source of information that can be consulted to substantiate the claims of, for example, the Bible: I cannot view research or independent accounts that can substantiate the extraordinary claims of the Bible. Without that evidence, I must trust solely the word of men who have come to these ideas through no discernible, repeatable process (contrasted to researchers of quarks, who used the scientific method) and must trust these men to not inject their own agendas or personal desires into the religion.

Ultimately, I can place my faith in something that gives me the power to independently verify the claims in which I put my faith, and that is the defining difference between faith in quarks and faith in god: independent verification.