SCIENCE, we are repeatedly told, is the most reliable form of knowledge about the world because it is based on testable hypotheses. Religion, by contrast, is based on faith. The term “doubting Thomas” well illustrates the difference. In science, a healthy skepticism is a professional necessity, whereas in religion, having belief without evidence is regarded as a virtue.
The problem with this neat separation into “non-overlapping magisteria,” as Stephen Jay Gould described science and religion, is that science has its own faith-based belief system...
Note,in the first paragraph it notes "we are repeatedly told:" this is not the author's assertion. He is merely repeating a widely held belief of others. Then, also note, his main point which is, "that science has its own faith based belief system."
At no point is the author questioning anyone's religious faith. He is examining a widely held, and mistaken, belief that what is called science does not require a form of faith similar to that of religion. Whether this a true assertion or not is debatable and should be debated. What is not true is that he is questioning anyone's actual faith.
It's a geometrical shape that has 248 dimensions that Garret Lisi supposedly worked out after folks had been working on it for 120 years: a shape that describes the Universe.
It's supposedly testable.
No, don't ask: I don't understand it. Since my Senior year in high school, though, I have been fascinated with the idea that God speaks Math. I just never guessed He spoke Geometry.
I don't think that is the issue. In my view the author is stating that religious faith has no recourse to reason, that it is somehow independent of reason. This is a condesending attitude common among scientists. Stephen Gould in his backhanded defense of faith as separate from science implied that religion lacks physical evidence for its foundation, thereby placing religious faith safely in a box and excluded from adult conversation.
The question as I see it is not whether science incorporates faith, of course it does, but rather does faith incorporate reason, which likewise it must.
Therefore, I would turn Gould's "non-overlapping magisteria" on its head by saying that both science and religion employ both faith and reason in their mutual goal of understanding this universe.