Christian Attacks on Modern Science:

A primary target of the Christian Right in America is secular, godless science. Modern science relies on methodological naturalism, which means that it doesn’t incorporate any supernatural or religious assumptions and doesn’t seek any religious or supernatural explanations for natural phenomena. This outrages believers who think that their religious and theistic beliefs should be incorporated into everything in life. In fact, though, modern science has to be secular and godless.

Godless Science Demands Evidence, not Faith:

All scientific explanations must ultimately be based on verifiable evidence. Without evidence, a purported explanation may be little more than speculation. In traditional religious and theistic systems, however, claims and explanations are typically based upon faith — you either accept them based upon faith or you do not. There is no presumption that evidence exists or is even necessary. Indeed, if there were solid evidence, faith would be irrelevant.

Godless Science Demands Critical Questioning, not Obedience:

Scientific progress would not occur if scientists were not encouraged to question traditional assumptions, re-check older data, and seek out anomalies which can lead to new, better explanations. Religious and theistic systems, however, typically place far more emphasis on obedience to authority and tradition, rejecting skeptical, critical questioning of traditional beliefs. This helps religions preserve orthodox beliefs over long periods of time while inhibiting progress.

Godless Science Demands Provisional Beliefs, Not Dogmas:

No matter how well supported by repeated evidence and experimentation, all scientific explanations are technically provisional: it is accepted that they could be overturned or expanded in the light of new evidence. In religious and theistic systems, however, there is no room made for the idea that beliefs are merely provisional. Since they are not originally based on evidence, it is not contemplated that new evidence will change anything. This is the basis for dogma and dogmatic beliefs.

Godless Science Does Not Respect Tradition:

In science, the fact that a belief or explanation is traditional is ultimately irrelevant. Science has been ruthless in its quest for better explanations of natural phenomena and the history of science is littered with the carcasses of traditional explanations found to be inadequate or completely false. Religious and theistic systems, however, rely heavily on tradition and are often focused upon preserving those traditions, even against the pressures of secular, godless science.

Godless Science is Based Upon Godless Mathematics:

It is sometimes said that all science reduces to mathematics and one unavoidable fact of math is that it is thoroughly secular and godless. It’s curious that while many complain about “godless evolution,” they never seem to notice that the mathematical foundation of science is more ruthlessly godless than anything else in life. No equations and no mathematical systems ever take anything religious into account, including gods. Religion and gods couldn’t possibly be more irrelevant to math.

The Values of Godless Science are the Values of the Enlightenment:

Modern science is largely an outgrowth of the Enlightenment, a period when religious institutions and ecclesiastical authorities began to really lose their power over every aspect of people’s lives. The Enlightenment was thoroughly secular in that it did not derive its impetus or principles from religious tradition or authority. The same is true for science today, which has inherited the Enlightenment’s values of skepticism, empiricism, and secularism.

Godless Science is Not a Religion:

The power of science’s secular and godless methodology may be why some try to deny that science is secular and godless in the first place. This is curious, since the same people usually use secular and godless as criticisms. If godless is a bad thing, and science is a threat, why not draw attention to the fact that science is godless and deny the value to science completely — unless the hope is to somehow preserve all the benefits of science while abandoning what makes those benefits possible.

Godless Science is More Reliable than Religion:

With its naturalistic, secular, and godless methodology, modern science has produced incalculably more information about how our world works and how to make it better for us in the past few hundred years than all religious and theistic systems in the previous several millennia. There are probably more people alive today than have been killed because of religion, which is quite a feat. The advantages of godless science can hardly be measured.

Good Science is Naturalistic & Materialistic, Therefore Godless:

Because modern science is methodologically naturalistic and materialistic, it never considers any supernatural explanations or sources of evidence. This doesn’t mean that science necessarily denies the possible existence of anything supernatural, it just means that nothing supernatural plays any role in anything science does. This also means, therefore, that gods do not and cannot play any role in anything science does. A god does not have to be supernatural, but the sorts of gods which might qualify as “natural” — like the ancient Greek deities — don’t factor into anyone’s thinking anymore, whether scientific or otherwise.

This godlessness of modern science bothers a lot of people for whom God or gods play a fundamental role in all their decisions, assumptions, values, and general living. There are people for whom the absence of gods is inconceivable, and thus the absence of gods in science simply makes no sense. One means by which some try to sneak gods into the scientific process is through “values,” because it is alleged that science has no intrinsic values. This is false, but it is true that science lacks many of the values traditionally ascribed to religion and doesn’t make any value judgments about the use of scientific knowledge.

This isn’t an appropriate place to bring gods into the picture, though, because gods are as irrelevant to making value decisions about science as they are to the scientific process itself. No gods and no religions are the least bit necessary to determining whether certain research programs should go forward, or if they do, what should be done about the information discovered.

BY: Austin Cline (Atheism Guide)

Reposted From : http://atheism.about.com/od/philosophyofscience/p/GodlessScience.htm