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The greater part of science is faith based, including faith we live in a three-dimensional world since the image on the human retina is two-dimensional.

Which eye are you missing? Right, or left?

The retinal stimulation upon any human eye, whether right or left, is two-dimensional. Thanks to the Intelligent Designer, we have more than eyes with which to observe, quantify, and explore His intelligently designed creation.

I thought Fester's point wasn't to deny how stereo vision is provided by our seeing combined images, as opposed to, say horses who have eyes on either side of their head, but to note that the mind always provides more than simply what it receives through the senses, which means that the sort of positivest Derbyshire likes to endorse just won't work in practice. Even Derbyshire has been forced to admit this--- for instance, because of his thoroughly positivist predilections, he would very much like to not be a Platonist about mathematics, but because of the way math actually works, he has been forced to admit, yes Platonism seems to be right.

Faith is integral to science because science is built upon assumptions such as the premise that the past will resemble the future.

After all, the empiricist strain of positivism's logical conclusion ends in idealism, i.e. the denial of matter (by which I mean the denial of the existence of material world) since we never have direct knowledge of matter itself, only mental sense impressions of matter. Matter or, as Locke calls it, "substance" is just what remains after all the specific characteristics of a thing are gone.

As John Locke pointed out,

So that if any one will examine himself concerning his notion of pure substance in general, he will find he has no other idea of it at all, but only a supposition of he knows not what support of such qualities which are capable of producing simple ideas in us; which qualities are commonly called accidents. If any one should be asked, what is the subject wherein colour or weight inheres, he would have nothing to say, but the solid extended parts; and if he were demanded, what is it that solidity and extension adhere in, he would not be in a much better case than the Indian before mentioned who, saying that the world was supported by a great elephant, was asked what the elephant rested on; to which his answer was -- a great tortoise: but being again pressed to know what gave support to the broad-backed tortoise, replied -- something, he knew not what. And thus here, as in all other cases where we use words without having clear and distinct ideas, we talk like children: who, being questioned what such a thing is, which they know not, readily give this satisfactory answer, that it is something: which in truth signifies no more, when so used, either by children or men, but that they know not what; and that the thing they pretend to know, and talk of, is what they have no distinct idea of at all, and so are perfectly ignorant of it, and in the dark. The idea then we have, to which we give the general name substance, being nothing but the supposed, but unknown, support of those qualities we find existing, which we imagine cannot subsist sine re substante, without something to support them, we call that support substantia; which, according to the true import of the word, is, in plain English, standing under or upholding.

As Locke shows, "substance" is not an altogether clear concept. Given that (if one is an empiricist like Derbyshire) we have only empirical properties based upon sense impressions to infer its existence from, it's not clear why the material world should ever be inferred.

The answer is that Fester is correct--- life as well as any activity within it, requires what the great conservative thinker Santayana (no enemy of science or Darwin)called "brute animal faith". This makes a lot of sense, since we've learned that the rules of any problem solving system that can be formalized will produce statements that are true but cannot be proven true within that system. The moral is that truth outruns provability and therefore faith is sometimes required.